Augusto Boal, City Councillor: Legislative Theatre … Boal, City Councillor: Legislative Theatre and the Chamber in the Streets: An Interview Author(s): Richard Schechner, Sudipto

Augusto Boal, City Councillor: Legislative Theatre and the Chamber in the Streets: AnInterviewAuthor(s): Richard Schechner, Sudipto Chatterjee, Augusto BoalSource: TDR (1988-), Vol. 42, No. 4 (Winter, 1998), pp. 75-90Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1146719 .Accessed: 27/01/2011 11:38

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Augusto Boal, City Councillor

Legislative Theatre and the Chamber in the Streets

an interview by Richard Schechner and Sudipto Chatteree

Interviewers' note: In late 1996, when we met with Boal, rather than aformal interview, we had an extended conversation. What is published below begins and ends in the midst of that talking.

-Richard Schechner

BOAL: [...] Just to take care of your family, or friends, your mafia-

SCHECHNER: Still, that's what most people do, they look out for their own. They think, "There's no chance for all these people I see in the streets to have a good life because there are too many people, not enough jobs, not enough room, not enough doctors, schools, livable housing, etc., etc." The very few get richer and the very many get poorer. There's no way to imagine all of the people now alive-not to mention the billions more coming-hav- ing access to what is needed for a full and dignified life. It seems hopeless. A hundred million are helped, but next year there are 200 million more, always more. The pressures on the planet are overwhelming. Plagues once thought possible to control or even eradicate are returning-tuberculosis, malaria; new plagues like AIDS continue to spread. In other words, nature, or whatever you want to call it, is taking its revenge.

BOAL: But what is the question? Is it, "What should you do to help others?" or "What should you do to work with others to help themselves?"

SCHECHNER: Tell me.

BOAL: Okay, charity is good. But we can be charitable only to a small number of people, not to the whole world. But if we are together with other people in changing something, the effects multiply. In our experience with "Legislative Theatre" we have 19 groups working now [1996]. We encourage dialogue among TO [Theatre of the Oppressed] groups. One group meets another to exchange information, to participate in each other's work. We try to

The Drama Review 42, 4 (Ti6o), Winter 1998. Copyright ? 1998 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

75

76 Schechner/Chatterjee

1. A Theatre of the Op- pressed group performs 0 Trabalhador, a Forum create a net of solidarity. Not my family, my race, my sex for itself, but my Theatre piece, in Favela family, my race, my sex with the other ones. And this, I think, is necessary if

Julio Otoni, Rio de we are to produce change. Janero. (Photo courtesy of

SCHECHNER: When did you get elected and how do you define Legislative Theatre? How did your work as a member of the City Council [of Rio de Janeiro from 1992 to 1996] connect to your TO work?

BOAL: I belong to the Workers' Party [PT]. But I also work through the Center of the Theatre of the Oppressed [CTO] where we do workshops for whoever wants to come. But in addition I am the President of the Human Rights Commission for the city of Rio. Anyone has the right to come to the Human Rights Commission and say, "Oh, look! The police beat me"; or, "I was kidnapped by someone in the government"; or, "My wife disappeared!"- all kinds of problems. "I have a child who is into drug dealing." Last year the head of Amnesty International asked me to organize public audiences for him so he could hear from all the human rights organizations in Rio.

SCHECHNER: This is part of your work as a City Councillor?

BOAL: Yes.

SCHECHNER: How many Councillors are there?

BOAL: Forty-two.

SCHECHNER: For the whole city of Rio? How many people live in Rio?

BOAL: Yes, 42 for the whole city. Officially the population of Rio is seven or eight million, but in reality it is I4 million because of the favelas [slum settlements surrounding the central city]. It is a very very big city, an enor- mous city.

Augusto Boal 77

The Council has general sessions, but also we divide into smaller groups. Often Councillors don't go to the general sessions which are full of stupidi- ties. There is someone who is paid to listen and he calls me when it is neces-

sary that I go there to vote, or something like that. My office has close relations with the other Councillors, their secretaries, their drivers. And we have what I call the Chamber in the Street to help me determine how to vote on certain questions. Sometimes it's obvious how to vote, but at other times it's complicated. For instance, the mayor wanted to have a Municipal Guard, a kind of military police. In Rio, the ordinary city police aren't police in your sense. They are "Guards" taking care of traffic, safety in the schools, that kind of thing. These persons are not armed. The Mayor wanted to arm them. I didn't agree with that. I thought it would be dangerous for the people if the

city Guards had guns. But I wasn't absolutely sure. So we went to the schools, we went into the streets, held many meetings. At each of these meetings I said, "Okay. I have to vote in favor or against. What do you say?" The people who came gave their opinions. We made a Chamber in the Street, listening to the people. It was very beautiful. Some Guards came to speak and they said, "We don't want to be armed because if we have guns, the narco-traffickers, knowing we are armed, will shoot us. If they know we don't have guns, they don't care about us. So we are much safer if we don't have guns." You see, the narco-traffickers have better guns, machine guns.

Another issue we took to the Chamber in the Street was about sterilizing women. I had to vote in favor or against if municipal hospitals could perform that procedure openly and for free for women who wanted it done. I think a woman has the right to sterilization, but at the same time I know the authorities used to sterilize poor women massively. So I said, "I want and I don't want it. Let's make a Chamber in the Street and see how the people feel." And they said, "Vote yes, but with lots of amendments." The amendments included that a woman has to ask for her tubes to be tied at least a month before delivery-if she is going to have a baby-because at the moment of hav-

ing the baby, she's suffering, and maybe she'll say, "Yes, I want it," and then

regret what she had agreed to. Also that any agreement for sterilization has to be witnessed. And that every woman has to be informed about all methods of

contraception and given the means and access to them. Every woman has to know that there are alternatives to sterilization. So I modified the law, putting

2. Augusto Boal with the

B

' 1

_;i Jokers of CTO-Rio. Left i i ~jS , 3~ B~a~a~ 1 ~ 8 to right: Claudette Felix,

Olivar Bendelak, Helen

Sarapeck, Augusto Boal, Bdrbara Santos, and Ceo Britto. (Photo courtesy of Augusto Boal)

78 Schechner/Chattejee

Legislative Theatre Update

A Letter from Augusto Boal

I October I997

Dear Richard,

You asked me to update our experience of Legislative Theatre and I am happy to say that we are, slowly but steadily, advancing towards another stage.

At first, it was very hard to take it. We were absolutely convinced that we had done beautiful and important work during the four years of our Mandate at the Chamber of Vereadores, both in the legislative and in the theatrical fields.

We had formed I9 permanent theatre groups of "organized oppressed"; we had promulgated 13 laws that came directly from those

groups, from their dialogue with their own communities and with the

population in the streets; we had made, in 13 cases, desire become law!; we had intensely fought against all sorts of injustices-economic, social, political, sexual, etc. We were happy and proud of ourselves and our work. We were sure of ourselves and...we had failed.

In 1992, when I was elected, no one believed it could happen, in-

cluding myself. All we wanted was to help the Workers' Party and their

campaign. We had a project: to do theatre as politics and not merely political theatre-but no one understood very well what that might be or mean. Surprise: I was elected!

In 1996, everyone was sure I would win again. Many people even asked me for whom they should vote, since it was certain I would be reelected. Inside the party, I was considered to be one out of three or four vereadores that would obviously be reinducted. In the public opinion, everyone knew now what we meant by theatre as politics. Sur- prise: I was out!

At first, we were very sad, discouraged, disappointed, melancholic. Ungrateful population!!! Inattentive voters!!! We had offered our work, our sacrifice, and we were rejected! Better stop.

But we are not used to giving up. We decided to go on, to go further! The new stage was-and still is-difficult to structure. Beginning in March, after finishing at the Chamber, all the "Jokers"

(the cultural and theatrical animators of the Center of the Theatre of the Oppressed, the CTO-Rio) had lost their jobs. The Chamber had paid their salaries for four years. They worked for free for the 19 stable communities, and other aleatory ones, all of them very poor. Many lived in slums. The Mandate was even obliged, in many cases, to put its own money to finance theatre activities: settings, transportation, and even food.

The Mandate lost and everyone had to get their subsistence elsewhere and could no longer work for free for so many groups. Sadly, we saw them being dismantled, one by one: only a few are still at work- the peasants' group, some others related to the church, some in poor communities... Slowing down.

Augusto Boal 79

The Center of the Theatre of the Oppressed was then legally consti- tuted with only five members (Barbara Santos, Claudette Felix, Helen

Sarapeck, Geo Britto, Olivar Bandelek) and became a non-governmental organization, to try to get funding. Some groups have already promised to help. We will see. Contacts were made with governments of other cities, with the doctors' union, the state university, and some others.

We entered the new phase: Legislative Theatre without the Legislator!

With the doctors' union, we made a play about women at hospitals in all aspects related to sex: sexual relations, contraception, abortion, giving birth, etc.-how women are treated in Rio de Janeiro's hospitals, and what should be done to better their situation. With the students, we made a play about cruelty against freshmen at the universities. In Juiz de Fora, we made a play about garbage in the streets, hygiene. In other cities we made workshops.

These plays and shows did not lead to the creation of any laws. In this aspect, the most interesting experience we are doing is in the city of Santo Andre, which is a very important city close to Sio Paulo, with more than 9oo,ooo-a great number of workers and traditionally a very combative population-it was in that region that the Workers' Party was founded some 18 years ago. Also, it was the birthplace of the CUT (Workers Central Federation).

Here the experience, extremely fruitful and rich, has followed these steps:

I. In May, two Jokers of the CTO-Rio conducted a Io-day workshop about the essential techniques of the Theatre of the Oppressed; 50 people participated, most of them working for the government in the areas of education, public health, and culture. This group produced a Forum Theatre play about complaints of the citizens, and we presented that play in the streets, with intense popular participation: more than 20 Spectactors entered the scene. I was the Joker of the first presentation.

2. These 50 participants divided themselves into small teams and re- produced the first workshop for about 15 different communities. These communities, in most but not all cases, produced their own plays about their own problems and discussed them in their own communities.

3. The city government started a project called "Participatory Bud- get," which was the exclusive trademark of the Workers' Party and is now also being used by other political parties in power. Basically, the government proposes a division of the budget according to the regions of the city and according to the different activities that in- volve the whole city, like health, education, transportation, etc. Each region and each section of society that will handle a certain amount of money organizes itself in assemblies and decides how that money shall be spent and which are their priorities.

4. Here, the two processes merged: all public sessions, in which the population was invited to give their opinions and vote, always started with the presentation of a Forum Theatre play depicting problems and inviting everyone to find out solutions. After the play and the Forum, the normal assembly discussions followed, stimulated by the theatre presentation. In this aspect, it was differ-


ent from the experience in Rio, when the texts of the law were produced by the Forum itself.

5. At the end of this process, the government collected all suggestions and produced the budget of the city (by law, the budget has to be delivered to the Chamber before the last day of September).

So it was: last 30 September [1997], at 6:00 P.M., according to the law, the CTO-Rio organized, together with Santo Andre's population, a "school of samba," or parade, or procession, in which all sections of society that had contributed to the budget were represented in "wings" (like in a school of samba). The budget, in the form of a theatre prop book, was carried on an altar (like in a procession) and the whole was animated by a "battery" of drums and percussion (like in a parade).

This group crossed the town announcing the first budget made with

popular participation, and inviting the population to go to the City Hall where the mayor was waiting, where he received the Book of the Bud- get, crossed the square, and entered the Chamber of Vereadores to de- liver it to the President of the House.

It is true that this process was not entirely theatrical, or mainly theatrical; it is true that some important elements of Legislative Theatre were not used-like the "Interactive Mailing List"-but it is also true that we have already begun this new stage of the experience of democratizing politics through theatre: Legislative Theatre without the Legislator.

We can do more and better next year!

Next time...where? When? Of course, in Brazil where we intensely believe in this method, and

intensely work for it to happen. But this should not be a Brazilian experience. It should spread out into other countries. We want democracy; theatre can help in this process-why not?

When I started the Theatre of the Oppressed movement, many people used to say: "Yes, it is very nice for Latin America, but in other countries it will not work..."

Today the TO is practiced all over Europe, North America, Africa... At least 12 books have been written by other people about their own experience with TO, in politics, psychotherapy, education, social work... TO is not Brazilian, not Latin American. It is a process that can be used-and further developed!-in all societies where a minimum of freedom exists.

Before the end of this year of 1997, I'll try two other experiences outside Brazil. The first one in Munich, during a workshop organized by the Paulo Freire Association, at the end of October. The second one, beginning in December, with my own Center of Theatre of the Oppressed in Paris. In this one, sponsored by the French government, 15 children with difficulties will follow a three-month workshop and will be joined by another group of 20 adults and, together, they will try to propose projects of law, using Forum Theatre and other theatrical means.

Perhaps, dear Richard, if you want, I will write some more about these French and German events, in one of your future editions of TDR.

And...perhaps...about something similar that we can try in the United States...I would love it!!!

All my best wishes.

-Augusto Boal Rio deJaneiro

Augusto Boal 8I

in all the suggestions that came directly from the people. I wouldn't have

thought about all these things myself. It came from the Chamber in the Street.

SCHECHNER: Do you always vote the way people say to vote?

BOAL: Up to now, yes. I go to the people only when I am not sure. When I am sure, I don't even ask. They elected me and they have to bear it. But of course most of the time we agree. Also we have different mailing lists that we use to gather opinions. I can write to 500 to I,ooo people saying, "Boal has to vote on this or that question, what's your opinion? Explain your position." What we found was very nice: Many times when a person receives a letter

asking their opinion she or he makes a meeting with other people so that I do not get one person's opinion alone. We get letters back that tell us, "We discussed the question and we think that you should vote this way because of.."

But this is not all. We have formed about 5o TO groups of about 12 people each. They have their own repertories. For instance, health in Rio, or the violence of Rio police, or candidates who bribe or cheat voters. A candidate will give a voter a check without signing it or give them money for the dentist-but the dentist will supply dentures of the upper jaw only. This kind of

thing. We tell people not to vote for these kinds of people. We tell the

people, "These candidates will give you money now but later they will vote to raise bus fares..." or something like that.

Each active TO group has Jokers at the nucleus. The Jokers are black students, domestic employees, peasants from outlying regions, and so on. The Jok- ers work in the rehearsals where they discuss the problems with the people. We don't dictate to them. We ask them, "What do you want to talk about?" Then we make Image Theatre with them. Then when they are ready, we do Forum Theatre with them for the community. This way the community sees and dis- cusses their own problems. The different TO groups visit one another. Plays from different communities are shared. And sometimes beautiful things happen.

Once there was a community hospital that needed money from the government which was dispensed by a philanthropic society [like a foundation in the

USA]. But after a few years, the philanthropic society refused to give anymore money. "We lose time, we lose money, we don't get anything back." But the

government could not give the money directly because that's illegal, it has to come through a philanthropic society. The people made a Forum Theatre where the Protagonist was replaced in order to find a way to convince the

philanthropic society to accept the intermediate role. Things were getting desperate. No one could come up with anything that could convince the

philanthropic society. When some students working with us in TO came, they showed them the play and said, "Look, we did not find any solution." One student tried, but was not successful. Then a second, a third, until finally one student became a Protagonist who said, "Let's not try to convince them, because it is impossible. But other neighborhoods, other slums have the same problem. So why don't we get together with all the other ones and create our own philanthropic society?" So my lawyer helped them to draw up the right papers. Now they have a philanthropic society that receives the money not only for this one hospital but for several.

And once every half-year we do festivals. We invite Io or I2 groups who come from Io:oo in the morning until 5:00 in the afternoon and perform nonstop Forum Theatre. Many people from different neighborhoods come to participate. Many problems are explored. While the Forum Theatre is going on, I have people write up reports about what is suggested. These reports are then brought to what I call a metabolizing cell-a group of people under my general coordination, including lawyers-who read all the reports. The metabolizing cell finds out what the people say, what they suggest, what they


protest. All that material is metabolized into several forms: protest, suggestion for legislation, legal action, and so on.

SCHECHNER: And if it's legislation, you introduce it into the Chamber?

BOAL: Yes.

SCHECHNER: How may allies do you have in the Chamber?

BOAL: Only my own party. And a few others.

SCHECHNER: If there are 42 in the Chamber, how many are there in your party?

BOAL: In my party, only seven. So we are a minority. But sometimes we can force a debate. The bill about sterilization in the hospitals was approved in the first and second reading, but the mayor vetoed it. When the veto came we had to convince the other Councillors to override the veto. We mobilized people to pressure the Council, and the veto was overturned. But the Mayor went to court about it. A judge will decide-but this can take one to three years.

SCHECHNER: At elections does the whole city vote for the Councillors, or do you get elected in districts?

BOAL: There were 200 candidates for the whole of Rio.

SCHECHNER: The top 42 get in?

BOAL: More or less. You vote for a person but at the same time for the party and then you divide the number of votes by 42. If that number is, say, I00,000, then for each oo00,000 votes your party gets, you win one Council seat. My party got 600,000 votes so we have six Councillors. I was among the

top six on my party's list, so I got in.

SCHECHNER: That's what's called "proportionate representation."

BOAL: But individual candidates don't get much of a chance to speak via the media. When I ran I had io seconds to speak on TV. And this statement appeared, let's say, five times. In the next election, I will have 12 seconds.

SCHECHNER: What can you say in Io or 12 seconds?

BOAL: I said, "My name is Augusto Boal. I want all of you to vote for me.

3. Grupo Beleza do Chape'u, one of the 19 permanent groups of the Man- date 1993-1996, performs in costumes made of news- papers and capsfrom beer cans, in Favela Chape'u Mangueira, Rio deJaneiro. (Photo courtesy of Augusto Boal)

Augusto Boal 83

But if you don't vote for me, I don't mind. Vote for whoever you want. But vote for the Workers' Party" [in the Brazilian system, a voter votes for both an individual candidate and a party]. I was the only candidate who said, "Vote for me, if you want, but if you don't, then no problem!" That statement got me a lot of votes. People appreciated my generosity.

SCHECHNER: How many times have you been elected?

BOAL: Only elected once, in I992.

SCHECHNER: And how many years was that for?

BOAL: Four. I am running again now [I996]. I don't know if I will be reelected or not [Boal was not]. It's very difficult to get reelected, because Rio people have the habit of voting for one person once. They say, "I've voted for him already. Now let's vote for somebody else."

This [takes out newsletter] is called the Broken Trombone, a kind of musical instrument. We publish this every three months. We give out bottle caps with my name on it. And we offer a map of Rio showing all the places where we have groups working. On the first page I say, "I want to be reelected because we're doing this work and if you want this work to go on, you have to vote for me again."

But my group said that this map gives the impression that there are very few groups. The map shows only the permanent TO groups. So we will make another including all the groups, permanent and temporary. Then you will see that TO is going on all over Rio.

SCHECHNER: Were these groups new since you were elected?

BOAL: Two were there before, I7 are new, and in total we have more than 50 permanent and temporary.

We try to make our publicity funny-and to the point. Once a plebiscite was proposed to see if Brazilians wanted a monarchy, republic [like the USA], or parliamentary system. I thought this was being ridiculous, going back to monarchy. So I made an apparently serious text poking fun at the plebiscite. What kind of monarchy do you want, what kind of republic? I put my caricature on it as King with some of my friends as candidates for Queen! And if it is to be parliamentary, what kind? We distributed about 5,ooo of these at first, then 20,000 more.

SCHECHNER: During the years you have been in the City Council, what pro- portion of time do you spend on Legislative Theatre and what on regular TO?

BOAL: Most of the time with Legislative Theatre. I can go away during the Brazilian summer-December, January, and February-when there are no sessions. Also in July there are no sessions, so I can go away.

SCHECHNER: But for seven months, you are there?

BOAL: Most of the time. Sometimes I have to leave, but never in June and November when we vote for the budget of the city.

SCHECHNER: How do the people, not the people in your party, but the people who are against you, take the fact that a theatre person is a City Councillor?

BOAL: They take me seriously. I have so many lawsuits against me. I was sued by the Council itself twice.

SCHECHNER: What for?

BOAL: The Rio Secretary of Culture told me that she wanted to help my work. The Mayor is of the extreme Right, she is not. She arranged for me to


get sound, lights, transportation, and things like that. We signed an agreement with the city. But no money was involved. You don't receive any money. I was denounced because, being a Councillor, I can't sign a contract. But I said, "It's not a contract, it's an agreement, there's no money changing hands." Even so, I was tried by the Council. I was acquitted. No problem. But a

newspaper was paid to mount a campaign against me. For three weeks my photo and that of the Secretary of Culture appeared on the first page with the caption, "Dangerous Relations!" And, you see, my friends and my family read

"Dangerous Relations" with a picture showing me cheek-to-cheek with this woman-it was read sexually.

SCHECHNER: Les Liaisons Dangereuses.

BOAL: Exactly. Finally I wrote a letter protesting and giving the right information. They published it, but in very small print on the seventh and ninth pages.

Next they audited my income taxes for the last five years, microfilming everything of mine, my bank account. There have been two trials. They did un- believable and stupid things. The person who examined my taxes put a zero at the end of a certain number, multiplying it by 10. It looked like I earned 10 times what I really earned. Then they said, of course, I owed lots of money to the government-based on an income multiplied by Io.

CHATTERJEE: They literally forged the document?

BOAL: Yes, they forged the document. But why do they do that when they know I can prove what I really earned? They are simply harassing me. They know it will take years to get it all untangled. I am faced with 20 lawsuits and two prosecutions for the same thing.

SCHECHNER: Who pays for your lawyers? Your party?

BOAL: I have to pay. My salary as Councillor goes to the lawyers and other things I have to do to defend myself. The lawyers are my friends and they charge me less, but still I lose money. I don't get any money from being on the Council, I lose it.

CHATTERJEE: Earlier you told us how Rio is controlled by druglords and criminals. How has this affected your work? Do you take on these druglords in Forum Theatre?

4. A peasants' group, Grupo Campones de Cultura Sol da Manha, Itaguai, performing Morn- ing Sun, 1993. (Photo courtesy of Augusto Boal)

Augusto Boal 85

BOAL: We cannot do that, we cannot be heroic. We work in dangerous conditions. Many times I have gone to Forum Theatre on a hillside-

SCHECHNER: -Rio is a city of many hills-

BOAL: -of many hills. And I look up and I see drug dealers with machine guns. The police do not go to the hills-except to invade and kill people. They don't do normal police work there. The druglords sometimes tell us to get out: "Go away, don't come back!" They have stolen our van twice. To show exactly who stole it, they sent us what was inside the van. So we received the ma- terials that were inside the van and then the van was used to rob a bank. Then they destroyed the van. The insurance pays, but not the whole [amount]. So, it is dangerous work. In I968, it was dangerous because of the state, the police. Now it's dangerous because of both the police and the crooks.

SCHECHNER: The current government, no matter how bad it is, is not as bad as the juntas, the generals? Or is it as bad?

BOAL: I know the President very well. He was a teacher of philosophy. He worked very close to my Arena Theatre in Sao Paulo [in the I96os]. We invited him and other teachers from the university to come. Sometimes he and the others would criticize me for not being sufficiently Marxist! These are the men who have made globalization. I would not say that this government is worse, but it's producing worse results because they are selling the whole country, the bases of our industry, for what? For "rotten papers," stock certifi- cates. They are opening Brazil for whatever comes from the outside, without any protection. The results? Factories are closing all over, unemployment is increasing. So the result, in my opinion, is worse than what the military did.

But these days I can say what I am saying here. There's no "free speech" problem. I can go into the streets, take a microphone and say what I want. The people who are selling the country retaliate through other means. It's war-again. The President belongs to a party on the extreme Right.

SCHECHNER: Right? Even though he was a Marxist once?

BOAL: "Was" is the effective term.

CHATTERJEE: I come from West Bengal, India, where it's exactly the same situation. The very party-the Communist Party of India [Marxist]-who would have burned io buses in protest against a two-paisa price hike-these same people are now welcoming Toyota, Suzuki, Coca-Cola. It's an absolute turnaround. Why do you think this is happening?

BOAL: Because the Nazis won the war. Not in the sense that Germany rules the world. But what they understood is that for them it would be better not to have one race, one country, homogenizing the world, but to have one class doing it. The rich. The Brazilian rich are happy with the situation in Brazil. The Indian rich, I am sure, are very happy. The rich call it "modernizing." I call it a kind of pax Romana, a postmoder neo-Roman imperialism. It is a kind of new feudalism. In Brazil there are places that you can go to where one man owns the region. He is the executive power, the legislative power, the judge, everything.

CHATTERJEE: But my question was a bit more specific. Why is it that erst- while Marxist parties or governments are turncoats? They radically change their position. Now, does that signify a failure of Marxism or is it a return to basic human instincts like greed?

BOAL: No, I did not say that the parties in Brazil changed their ideology. No, not the parties. I believe that the Communist Party in Brazil goes on with their ideology. They have not changed. They are still Stalinists. So, the


Symbolism in Munich Augusto Boal

The Paulo Freire Society, so named in honor of the great Brazilian educator, invited me to show some examples of Legislative Theatre in the city of Munich [in I997]. I explained that our experience in Rio had taken us four whole years to approve 13 new laws, and that the most we could do in only four days would be a pale and symbolic event, a hint of what might be that theatre form in the future, in the

city of Munich or elsewhere. We started our work and, over four days, prepared five small scenes

about situations of oppression revealed by the 35 participants of the

workshop. One of the scenes prepared by the group dealt with a very common problem in Germany-and, as far as I know, in many other

European countries: Some men choose a wife in matrimonial agencies, looking at their photos, CVs, and other information. Those women are recruited from countries like Romania, Thailand, and even in my own

country, Brazil. Once the bridegroom has chosen his wife, she is im-

ported by the agency with promises of marriage and a wonderful Euro-

pean-style princess life. Of course, those young women are very poor and full of hope-also very naive. Once the women arrive in the coun-

try, part of the agency's promise is fulfilled: they marry. Once married, the husbands-in most cases, not always-behave as though they bought a slave, and treat their wives as such, in the kitchen and in the bed. More often than not, those women don't speak a word of German and have difficulties learning the language. They don't have friends and sometimes are forbidden to go out without their men. The husbands keep strict control over them. If the wife decides to leave her husband-it is not

easy but it is possible-she automatically loses her German citizenship and is sent back to her country by the police. She is punished, not him!

During the Forum that we did inside the group, the participants revealed their opinion: If a crime was committed-namely, a marriage of convenience for the purpose of getting German nationality for the woman and a slave for the man-both persons are responsible for that crime, and not only the woman.

The proposition of a Project of Law became clear: the woman should be punished with the loss of citizenship, yes, but not with deportation from Germany: most of those women had not only economic problems back home, but political ones; in some cases, their lives would be en- dangered should they be deported. And the husband, considering that he was also responsible for faking a marriage, should be punished with a short term in prison, to discourage this practice. Other short scenes were made about social security, marriage of gay partners, use of public space for private activities, etc.

On the fifth day, Fritz Letsch (from the Paulo Freire Society) obtained permission to do the Forum Theatre inside the city hall (the Rathaus), and invited many politicians, including the mayor of Munich, who did not come because it was his birthday but sent his vice-mayor. The vice-mayor attended the session at the side of the secretary of the Green Party for Bavaria: those two persons were the only authorities present. Of course, we had invited everybody else but, understandably, they had more urgent things to do.

The information released about the starting time for the session was wrong and some people came to the Rathaus at i in the morning when we were rehearsing for the presentation at I:30 P.M. Among those

Augusto Boal 87

persons came an old lady with totally white hair, using a cane to move around. She had been at the public lecture that I delivered on the first

day of the workshop, during which I explained the functioning of the

Legislative Theatre. I remember that, during the dialogue after my lecture, another

woman said that this process could have worked well in Brazil, because in Brazil we are Brazilians (meaning that we dance and sing, which is not necessarily true for some of us...) and that we are extroverted

people. But-according to her-this could not work at all in a country like Germany, where people are more introverted, less expansive. She

totally ignored the Oktoberfest! I replied that when I introduced the Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) in Europe, I frequently heard the same

opinion. And yet today, the TO is practiced very intensely in almost all

European countries. Of course, in each country, people have to adapt the method to their own culture, their own language, their own desires and needs. TO is not a Bible, not a recipe book: it is a method to be used by people, and people are more important than the method.

The same can happen with the Legislative Theatre: in each country, it has to find its own form for application to real situations in that coun-

try. But the woman that night held to her opinion. And the old lady with white hair and a beautiful cane at her side did not say anything. When we started the show at the Rathaus, I explained that what we were going to do had only a symbolic value: we had not done the whole procedure of the Legislative Theatre; we had not done many shows for many different kinds of audiences; we had not done the Chamber in the Street about the problems presented in the scenes; we had not done the Interactive Mailing List to consult people whose

opinions might be useful in preparing a law, and whose knowledge could enlighten us. On the contrary, we wrote the Projects of Law ourselves, which positively is not the right thing to do. So, if any, the presentation at the Rathaus would have only a symbolic value.

After my introduction, we did the scenes. The audience chose three of them, including the slave-wife scene, and we did a Forum Theatre session on those three. Many people intervened, even the secretary of the vice-mayor! On the slave scene, most of the interventions were similar to ours. To close the event, we delivered our Projects of Law- someone had painted beautiful letters on a beautiful paper, to make a good impression to the Secretary of the Bavarian Greens. She was very nice to us, and said that she understood the symbolic nature of the event but, even so, she would really take those Projects of Law to the Green Legislators for consideration.

We were very happy. On her way out, the old lady with the cane and white hair approached me-she was one of the first to come in, and one of the last to leave. She called me and said:

It is very entertaining what you have done. I agree with you and I know that this is just a symbolic action. But it was very important for me: you have shown that this is possible. And it had never crossed my mind to imagine that people, common people, people like us, could get together, make theatre about our own problems, discuss them on the stage, and then sit down and propose a new law. [...] I agree with you: we have to make our desire become law!

I must say: I was happy.


5. & 6. Santo Andre's City's Participatory Budget parade, 30 September 1997. (Photo courtesy of Augusto Boal)

party has not changed. But people sometimes give up their so-called "ideals." Take the mayor of Rio: he was a Communist. Then he went to the Populist Party [PDT] and then changed again and went to the PFL, which is more populist still, and on the extreme Right wing. The mayor changed, but each of the parties remained faithful to themselves, whatever their faiths were.

SCHECHNER: My interpretation is slightly different. I think that with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Marxism was finished as a "real project." It may re- main as an academic interpretation of historical process. The collapse of Marxism left a lot of people who wanted power without a sustainable ideology. Many of these people always were opportunists-so they gravitated quickly to whatever ideological position they believed would bring them to, or keep them in, power. In the I99os and for the foreseeable future, that ideology is capitalism-or even more nakedly, the absence of an articulated ideology altogether. Capitalism as now practiced-from Wall Street to Beijing-is hardly a worked-out ideology. It is "market-based," which means pragmatism and speculation are rampant.

BOAL: Yeah, we don't disagree. I totally agree with what you're saying. Many people in the Communist Party in Brazil, they were in the Communist Party because they were aiming at getting the power by being in the government. And when they lost that possibility they changed. They said, "Well, if it's not with the Communist Party, let it be it with another party."

When the Berlin Wall fell, it created many more walls than before. I think that Communism was bad for the countries it was in. But for some other countries, it created its own ghost, the "red danger." The fear of Commu- nism, in Brazil at least, made capitalism act less cruel, less brutal than it really was. Once Communism was no longer an obstacle, the capitalists revealed their true cruelty. They want more and more. They want to concentrate all riches in as few hands, pockets really, as possible.

Augusto Boal 89

SCHECHNER: I want to shift the conversation a bit. Theatre of the Op- pressed, obviously, is a title parallel to Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Op- pressed. What is the relationship between your work and Freire's? [Freire died in 1997, shortly after this interview.]

BOAL: At the base of both is truth that you cannot teach if you don't learn from those you are teaching. An Argentine teacher uttered a phrase I love

very much. He said, "I taught a peasant how to write the word 'plough,' and he taught me how to use the plough."

When I teach, sometimes people tell me, "But you teach the same tech-

niques!" It's not true. I am inventing new techniques. But it's true also that I teach the old techniques that I learned many many years ago. I keep doing them with much enthusiasm. And then people say, "But don't you get tired

go Schechner/Chatterjee

of teaching the same technique?" I say, "No! Because it's not the same

people! Theatre is a language for me. I am talking in English. I cannot get tired of talking in English, because I am talking with you, I am talking with you. You are giving me things, and I am giving to you. Whether it is English or Portuguese or whatever: we meet people. So I never get tired of doing the Theatre of the Oppressed.

SCHECHNER: His book came out before yours, right? You made your title from his?

BOAL: Ah, yes, totally.

SCHECHNER: He was empowering students and you were empowering theatre?

BOAL: What I found interesting in Freire was that he emerged at a moment when we could really do something in Brazil. We met the other day. We were in Omaha together. It was the first time I had seen him since Ig6o-something.

SCHECHNER: You never worked together?

BOAL: Never worked together. The first time that we sat together at the same table, to talk about the same things was in Omaha. We had never done that before. We tried to remember when we first met each other. We did not exactly know the moment, but it was around '6o/'6i. At that time he was doing his Pedagogy of the Oppressed but I was not yet doing Theatre of the Oppressed. I was much inspired by his idea that a teacher is someone who learns, which is fantastic.

It is the same in all relations. The idea of the Oppressed for me was exactly that moment when dialogue becomes a monologue. In dialogue two people talk. One talks, the other listens; then the other talks and the first listens. It is the same in all relations-between men and women, race and race, country and country. The ideal is dialogue. But in too many cases very soon one part begins to monologue and the other part is reduced to listener-only. One commands, the other obeys. Both Freire and I share this common root. He wrote his book, and I was so fascinated by his way of working that I began working in a similar way.

SCHECHNER: He's older than you, right?

BOAL: Nine years older, he's 74 now and I am 65.

SCHECHNER: Freire also had to leave Brazil, right?

BOAL: He left before me. He did everything before me! He went to Europe and Africa. He went all over Latin America, too.

Richard Schechner is TDR's Editor. He is University Professor and Professor of Per- formance Studies at Tisch School of the Arts/NYU, and Artistic Director of East Coast Artists. His most recent book is The Grotowski Sourcebook (Routledge, 1997), which he coedited with Lisa Wolford.

Sudipto Chatterjee received his PhDfrom the Department of Peformance Studies at Tisch School of the Arts/NYU. He is a scholar, translator, writer, performer, andfilm- maker. His research areas include Indian and Asian performance, colonialism and theatre, political and popular performance in the Third World, and music.

Documents

Augusto Boal, City Councillor: Legislative Theatre … Boal, City Councillor: Legislative Theatre and the Chamber in the Streets: An Interview Author(s): Richard Schechner, Sudipto