InExActArt - The Autopoietic Theatre of Augusto Boal: A Handbook of Theatre of the Oppressed Practice by Birgit Fritz

InExActArt - The Autopoietic Theatre of Augusto Boal: A Handbook of Theatre of the Oppressed Practice by Birgit Fritz

Author:Birgit Fritz [Fritz, Birgit]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, Civics & Citizenship
Publisher: ibidem Press
Published: 2015-04-09T16:00:00+00:00


C. The Invisible Touch or Touching the Invisible

Themes Part C

Perception exercises, touch, gaze, introduction to vocal work, interacting with objects, the topic of identity, polarisations, art and its importance in peace work, the Aesthetics of the Oppressed.

The subjects discussed in this book so far are all connected, some latently, others overtly. That is the case with the various levels of awareness people have, everything that surrounds us and our knowledge of it. It is beyond my ability to name everything, and it is also unnecessary. Our friend and teacher Carlos Zatizabal, the Columbian theatre-maker, always says: ‘Leave some space! Don’t tell the audience everything! You won’t be able to anyway.’ It is the audience’s task, just as the reader must do here, to take meaning from it all, or rather to give it his or her own meaning. This is an exercise in activation, but most importantly the memories, experiences and imagination of the recipients make the puzzle complete. It is through them that something new can develop, and the unimaginable becomes imaginable.

The exercises and games in this chapter touch upon awareness and creativity in the most diverse ways. For some they will be more useful than for others, offering a variety of resources that I have gathered over the years, and adopted (with permission) from my many colleagues, whom I value greatly. Who knows where they themselves ‘found’ them! The vast majority of them however, originate from the pool, the ‘arsenal’, of the Theatre of the Oppressed.

Augusto Boal’s last book is about the ‘Aesthetics of the Oppressed’. This aesthetic[60] represents the earth and the roots of the Theatre of the Oppressed tree. Latin American popular theatre has drawn its power from this since the very beginning. Everything has more than just one meaning: words, sounds, tones, images. They are channels of aesthetic understanding. And that is a double-edged sword. Because, on the one hand they offer a means of emancipation and creative conception, but are also used as a means of manipulation. Think of Noam Chomsky and his studies of the manipulation of people by the media. And you don’t need to go (back) so far.

‘Who indoctrinates the imagination of our society’s children?’, ‘Who indoctrinates that of the adults?’, ‘Where does this nasty business begin?’, ‘Where does it end?’, ‘The words and images in the newspapers and on the billboards, the sound on the television channel, the radio, the mainstream movie industry’, ‘Who decides what is beautiful, healthy, and desirable, or classified as intelligent?’, ‘Who gives meaning to all the concepts – which often could not be further from what they mean originally?’, ‘Who decides what is considered violence, and what must still be tolerated?’, ‘What is normality?’ When you think about these questions long enough, you come to a point at which nothing can be considered self-evident, no meaning taken for granted.

If you are interested in the concrete and straightforward analysis of the influence of comic books on children and youth in the past century – from which



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