Boal e as raízes subversivas do teatro do oprimido

Abstract

Augusto Boal (1931-2009) became internationally known for developing some techniques, until then unprecedented, which compose the poetics of the Theatre of the Oppressed. Besides being a director and playwright, Boal was also a writer, thinker, and (why not?!) philosopher. He authored several works in which he dissertated and also engaged in dialogue with the ideas of some classical thinkers in the history of Philosophy, including Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hegel, and Marx, besides traversing through history and various branches of art (theatre, literature, poetry, music, painting, cinema, etc.) and science, such as neurology. Due to being considered subversive, he was eventually exiled during the military dictatorship period. A somewhat eccentric figure, as despite graduating in Chemistry, he was internationally recognized as the "Ambassador of World Theatre" by UNESCO (2009). The Poetics of the Oppressed elaborated by Boal is also a political poetics. A subversive political poetics, as the techniques developed for the Theatre of the Oppressed expose an aesthetic-pedagogical path towards transforming spectators (passive beings) into spect-actors (active beings), thus creating possibilities for overcoming the reigning abyss between actors and spectators and profaning the stage. Boal's main objective, according to his own writings, would be to provide all the oppressed with conditions for significant change in their lives, perhaps, a rehearsal, for the most beautiful performance: a revolution. In this sense, the working class, expropriated from the means of production of labor and also from the means of aesthetic production, could count on yet another element for the programmatic organization of their daily struggles, theatre, which could become a the-act, an artistic manifestation dedicated and linked to profound social transformation. This path urges us to investigate the relationship between the conceptual work elaborated and experienced by Augusto Boal and the conceptual work elaborated and experienced by Karl Marx.