A Dog's Obeyed in Office: Beyond the Boalian Binary

This essay explores some of the contradictions and paradoxes in the relation between performance and domination. In particular, it offers a consideration of some ways in which Applied Theatre succumbs to the dominant, despite its rhetoric of resistance, and how it might be co-opted afresh into the service of social and political transformation. The essay follows Paulo Freire’s dialectical method of “denouncing” and “announcing” in order to pursue its own utopia of performance strategies that might take us beyond the neoliberal impasse. The conceptual framework for these explorations is the classical Marxist analysis of dialectical materialism, revisited in order to supply a critique of current practices of domination. The core of the essay invites a reconsideration of Augusto Boal’s binary of “oppressed” and “oppressor” in order that an adaptation of Forum Theatre can be used to invite office-holders, traditionally where the oppressors are located, to examine their relationship to the bankrupt system they serve. To assist this process, the author argues that facilitators of theatre workshops need to reinvent the ancient arts of the fool so that their working space becomes a place where truth can be told to power without resort to the unreal separation of self from other. Instead, a dialogical relationship between self and other is proposed as a means of taking us beyond the bourgeois binaries of good and bad people into an analysis of our own roles within the systems we purport to excoriate. Whilst the essay constitutes a plea for applied theatre to apply itself to those who have made the world and who might be in a position to change it, it recognizes simultaneously the requirement incumbent upon each one of us to enter into a dialectical relationship with our foolish other

Joking A Part:The Social Performance of Folly

This article explores the relationship between folly, theatre and social change by proposing that folly is a core ingredient of social health. Ever since humans first formed social groups, their values and purposes have been questioned by those who play the fool. Over the last thousand years, the space for folly has often been the theatre, where relationships are rehearsed and replayed, sacred values tested and, if necessary, ridiculed, and social contradictions highlighted. Today the global dominance of neoliberalism, with its focus on relationships as business transactions and people as commodities, has resulted in the loss of playfulness from civic and civil society, a loss mirrored in the design and delivery of educational experiences that are focused on preparing young people for (un)employment, rather than acting as a playful space where the potentialities of being human are uncovered. There are, however, beacons of foolish performance flickering in the neoliberal darkness

Acabou a brincadeira: o teatro pode salvar o planeta?

Relações humanas em muitas sociedades têm se deteriorado como resultado da perda de nossa capacidade de brincar, derivando de mudanças nos padrões de vida que deixam as crianças sem oportunidades para brincar de forma não estruturada, não supervisionada onde elas descobrem os elementos centrais das relações: solidariedade; empatia; humanidade. O artigo explora o potencial do Teatro para o Desenvolvimento (TFD) para agir como um antídoto aos discursos anti-sociais do neoliberalismo. Apenas um encontro coletivo e brincalhão com a realidade pode restaurar a autoconfiança e criar a coesão da comunidade através do qual poderemos redescobrir nossa humanidade comum

Workshopping the revolution? On the phenomenon of joker training in the Theatre of the Oppressed

The article brings together observations and insights on the emerging phenomenon of training the trainers, also known as joker training in the Theatre of the Oppressed (TO). The concerns raised in this article are twofold: first, how does the modularised, workshop format of joker training affect the core principles of TO? Second, what are the implications of professionalising the work of the joker? These questions relate to the critique of ‘creative industries’ and debates around precarisation that profoundly impact arts and humanities education in contemporary Europe. They also serve as a call to interrogate concepts central to TO, such as participation, empowerment and community, in terms of how these concepts are appropriated and made docile in the increasingly neoliberal environment of European cultural and educational policies. The article proposes that a training in TO must view the dissemination of techniques and methods of joker practice as inseparable from a deep commitment to a ‘conscientised’ understanding of the complex social problems that the theatre seeks to address. The focus on a technical training alone bears the danger of reinforcing Freire's ‘banking method’ of pedagogy, which is counterproductive to the political objectives of TO. The article observes that professional jokers work in precarious conditions far removed from the promises of the economic rewards of creative enterprise. The proliferation of project-based freelance work creates a situation where jokers tend to become de-territorialised and alienated from actual problems, thus propagating biographic and short-term approaches to systemic contradictions. The study aims to problematise these issues and contribute to a debate that might lead to politically and professionally viable paths for the future of TO