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What A Riot! response by Ruben Rubio

In Mady Schutzman’s, "What a Riot!," there are examples of Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed techniques.  She introduces Boal’s concept of newspaper theater to L.A. youth in developing Upset!  In Upset! two historical figures are introduced, and students have an opportunity to learn about Rodney King “the unfortunate African-American man brutally beaten by four white LAPD officers in 1991” and “Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old African-American girl who in Montgomery, Alabama, 1955, refused to give up her seat to a white passenger nine months before Rosa Parks did the same.”  Schutzman also practices the Joker System play where she uses the character of Chorus to give youth an opportunity to express their “different ideas and feelings about an historical character or event.”  Boal uses simultaneous dramaturgy to allow the spectator to take action and become the actor by telling the story as they see it.  In Upset! there is a scene where I think best shows Boal’s idea of forum theater.  Claudette enters a bus and sits in the middle where she isn’t supposed to and Chorus answers by asking:

“Claudette, are you blind?”
“Claudette, why don’t you listen?”
“Claudette, are you going to let them walk all over you?”


Chorus represents the voice of audience members giving advice to Claudette after she ignores local law and is defiant after she is told by the bus driver to move to the back.  Ultimately, Claudette does not let segregation walk all over her, and she pays the consequence by being hit in the stomach by a police officer.  Schutzman, like Boal allow for a group to see their interpretation of a problem unravel through theater and not that only of an individual's interpretation.

I wonder if every youth's reaction to Claudette's bus scene was played out in rehearsals?

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