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Famed Brazilian Artist Augusto Boal on the "Theater of the Oppressed"


We are joined in our studio by one of Latin America's most famed dissident artists, Brazilian Augusto Boal. He reflects back on his life in exile and his use of theater as a tool of resistance. Brazilian artist and activist Augusto Boal sees theater as a dialogue and an opportunity to act out social change. Drawing on Paulo Friere's pedagogy of the oppressed, Boal developed Theater of the Oppressed out of his experimental work at the Arena Theater in Sao Paulo during the 1950s and 60s. Boal took the theater to factories and farms throughout Brazil and developed plays around the experiences of people silenced by poverty and oppression.

Boal's plays were increasingly censored by the government and in 1971, the military dictatorship imprisoned him for four months. When he was released he was forced into exile and spent fifteen years in Argentina, Portugal and France before returning to Rio.

Theater of the Oppressed techniques--from QUOTE "Invisible Theater" on the streets to solution-oriented "Forum Theater"--spread around the world. Boal is in New York this week running a theater workshop at the Brecht Forum and he joins us now in our firehouse studio. Welcome to Democracy Now.