A Role to Play for the Theatre of the Oppressed

Abstract

The 7th International Festival of the Theatre of the Oppressed (IS July-2 August 1993) kicked off with disarming series of performances by Boal's own Rio de Janeiro Center. The scenarios and Augusto Boal's parallel commentary documented the history of TO (Theatre of the Oppressed) theory and practice, culminating in dramatization of the now-famous episode of Boal's discovery of Forum Theatre.' The breakthrough moment came when woman in the audience said that the wife onstage, dominated by her husband, needed to have a very clear discussion with him. The woman was so upset by the actors' apparent inability to do what she imagined that she walked onto the stage and showed what she meant-beating the husband/actor with broom until he stopped abusing his wife. At the Festival, the audience of 300400 delighted in the historical recreation of the birth of the spect-actor. Daily at 5:00 P.M., after full day of workshops and lectures, audiences gathered for the first hour of three-hour performance series in the Rotunda of the downtown Bank of Brazil headquarters, the unlikely chief sponsor of the TO Festival. This first hour featured potpourri of performance groups from the Rio area including samba drumming and singing, performance in Brazilian rap, and demonstration of capoeira, Brazilian martial art. One of the most surprising performances was by group of 70-80 laid-off street cleaners, contingent from the more than 800 that the city had fired earlier in the year. The cleaners, appearing in their bright-orange cleaner uniforms, included in their repertoire not only samba and other Brazilian rhythms, but hauntingly beautiful renditions of classical I8th-century European choral literature. Then there was Abayomi, group who taught the large audience how to make miniature dolls from pieces of scrap cloth. Abayomi's workshop concluded with everyone singing lullabies to the new dolls. Of the many non-Forum theatre presentations, one was a jaw-dropper (as I described in my hasty notes). The group Verao da Cor-Tiago Justino was dressed in bright-red fantasy costumes with white, yellow,