Theatre of the Oppressed

I found the approaches taken by Augusto’s Boal’s theatre to be very interesting.  One of the points that really caught my attention, was how we, the physical people have adapted our bodies, unknowingly to the jobs we perform everyday.  In a way it’s like a constant form of method acting.  It makes sense though, because as stated in the text, we adjust our personalities to the jobs we have or our personalities change because of the work we participate in.  The games and approaches he took to unwind people from these habits, seemed to be ones that would also spark a good deal of emotion, mostly positive unless the particular tasks cause unneeded stress. 

I think the collaboration he chooses to have with his artists are admirable and respective.  He seems to listen to what they want as well as the actors to the audience, just like with the women who couldn’t read, finding out her husband was cheating on her.  They had a great respect for themselves as well as the audience to incorporate them in their process.  Another example was the factory worker.  There couldn’t be a decisive decision made on what to do (to benefit the employee) no solution could be greatly agreed upon, so they took audience suggestions and attempted to work through it as best as possible, but it’s this conclusions that is sometimes needed to help create and figure out work.  As we all know, if we don’t have some kind of collaboration then we won’t have art.  If the actor doesn’t decide to collaborate with the director there is no show, if the actors can’t collaborate amongst each other there is no show, and if the audience can not collaborate by bringing themselves to watch there performance, then again, there is no show.