Boal applies Friere's theories on education to theater. He traces how theater has evolved over the centuries from something with more audience participation to a model in which the audience sits passivly and watches. He suggests that through empathy with the characters and catharsis through the action in the story, spectators are rendered passive. He belives that when spectators have no control over the outcome of the story, it affects them in their lives outside the theater. He believes this passivity translates into the spectators' wider life and that our model of theater helps to create a general society that is helpless and incapable of social change.
Boal started a "people's theater" in Peru in which audience members participate in the action. They improvise a scenario in which spectators have the opportunity to change the action to see what kind of outcomes may arise. He gives a series of theater exercises at the end of the book, and they sound truly fun. We plan to try some of his ideas out next year in race, class and gender. Boal has presented workshops on his methods all over the world. I got this book from Elisa Hernandez, and she and I plan to go to one of these workshops for training in his methods. Unfortunately, Boal died last year, so we won't be training with him personally, but he left behind a movement in theater and many people are teaching his techniques.
2 comments:
I admire any reader who takes on such a meaty, intellectual, demanding and important read -- especially during the summer when I prefer to take on sweet candy rather than health food that's way too good for you.
Boal's theories, as you present them, are fascinating. I question the use of his idea of viewer (or reader) passivity. Certainly, a reader is not passive if they intellectually engage in the narrative. If I remain in my seat (or lying on the couch), I like to think of myself as actively wrestling with the concepts and themes of what I'm reading. Same goes for the cinema. Even though the characters we follow as they take on the Hero's Journey are indeed outside ourselves, the engaged reader will take in that character's experience, compare those experiences with their own, and discover a blueprint of how he or she can participate in the same kind of journey, whether it's changing the world or learning to fly.
That is exactly Boal's point--that values are transmitted through our cultural narratives. He traces the beginning of the passive audience in theater to Aristotle. Prior to that theater was more interactive and the audience participated in the drama.
As a literature teacher, it's difficult for me to get behind Boal's theories wholeheartedly. I think, however, it will be fun to have some interactive exercises in some of our classes next year. For instance, I just finished Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and I question where Safran leaves the reader. I love his writing, but he posits us in a world of horror with little control over our fate or destiny. How might our students like to change this worldview? How could they participate in re-shaping their imaginative worlds? And, of course, their real worlds?
Isn't this great? I love that you and I are having an online dialogue. I'm wondering where I students are. I hope they show up on the first day of school!
PS: I'm reading Eating Animals by Safran now and also have Everything is Illuminated in the que.
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