Comparison Between Theatre And Oppression

Can theatre enable people to tackle the oppressions to which they are subject?
Compare and contrast the work and approach of two applied theatre practitioners and companies in order to explore this question.

According to Oxford Dictionary Online, oppression is defined as ‘prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or exercise of authority’ (2014). Within theatre, oppression is a powerful subject to tackle. Not only it is used as the subject of many productions, it is also a key part of many rehearsal exercises. Oppression comes in many different forms, such as sexism, racist, classism etc. It is also experienced all over the world, from third world countries to the richest nations. Augusto Boal, born March 16th 1931, was the founder of Theatre of
It is an effective way of allowing the spectators to engage and be involved in the production – thus allowing them to become spect-actors. Boal writes about the process in his book ‘Games for Actors and Non-Actors’ (1994). The process begins with the spectators watching a performance that portrays a particular image of the world. The spectators are then asked if they agree with the performance, and more often than not they will say no. The spectators watch the performance again, and are invited to change it – to come up with a different ending. The actors are to try and end it as it was ended before. They are to change ‘the vision of the world as it is into a world as it could be’ (1994, p.20). The audience are told to take the place of the protagonist first, however the actor doesn’t immediately leave the stage, as they go to the sides and support the spect-actor. As soon as a spect-actor replaces the protagonist, the fellow actors become agents of oppression, intensifying the amount of oppression that was on stage previously, ‘to show the spect-actor how difficult it is to change reality.’ (1994) There will come a point where the spect-actor puts a stop to the oppression put on the actors, at which point the actors, one by one, give in. The spect-actors are then allowed to replace anyone on stage, to show different forms of oppression previously unnoticed. The audience must
When interviewing Fox, Coult and Kershaw mention that ‘at each moment of the show, there’s a kind of invitation to the audience. Not exactly to get up and do something, but they are participating in a way they wouldn’t in other types of theatre.’ Fox agrees with this, saying that ‘the audience surrenders a certain right to you, which you have not to abuse. The audience is a guest, and you take them on a magic carpet, and you bring them back again’ (1983, p. 29). This is very similar to Boal in the sense that he also took his audiences on a journey, but made it very clear that the world they had created as spect-actors was not the world in which they lived. However, Welfare State used more outlandish methods of creating theatre, so the audience could distance themselves from what they were watching and partaking in, whereas Boal was very clear that his productions were talking about the state of Brazil at that time, directly pointing out the oppressors and the