A Boal Companion Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) is often referred to as a body of theatrical techniques. Yet this does not do justice to the rich contribution of Brazilian theatre director Augusto Boal, TO’s founder and innovator of over 40 years. A Boal Companion explores performative and cultural ideas and practices that inform Boal’s work by putting them alongside those from related disciplines. Contributors in this anthology put TO into dialogue with complexity theory, Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Levinas, race theory, feminist performance art, Deleuze and Guattari, and liberation psy- chology to name just a few. In this way, kinship between Boal’s project and multiple fields including social psychology, ethics, biology, comedy, trauma studies, and political science is made visible. This collection not only expands the knowledge of TO practitioners and scholars but invites into TO those readers unfamiliar with Boal’s work whose primary interests lie in one of the related disciplines addressed in these chapters. The ideas generated throughout the collection will: • expand readers’ understanding of TO as a complex, interdisciplinary, multivocal body of philosophical discourses; • provide a variety of lenses through which to practice and critique TO; • make explicit the relationships between TO and other bodies of work. Jan Cohen-Cruz and Mady Schutzman hosted Boal at NYU in 1987–88, brought a group of 20 cultural practitioners to Rio de Janeiro for three weeks to study with Boal in 1989, and co-edited Playing Boal: Theatre, therapy, activism in 1994. Jan Cohen-Cruz wrote Local Acts: Community-based performance in the US (Rutgers Uni- versity Press: 2005) and is the editor of Radical Street Performance. She is an associate professor at New York University where she teaches in the Drama and the Art and Public Policy Departments. Mady Schutzman is author of The Real Thing: Performance, hysteria, and advertising (Wesleyan University Press: 1999). She teaches at California Institute of the Arts and is an advisory board member of the Los Angeles Center for Theatre of the Oppressed. A Boal Companion Dialogues on theatre and cultural politics Edited by Jan Cohen-Cruz and Mady Schutzman First published 2006 in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York,NY 10016 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park,Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 2006 Jan Cohen-Cruz and Mady Schutzman; individual chapters, the contributors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN10: 0–415–32293–6 ISBN13: 9–78–0–415–32293–5 (hbk) ISBN10: 0–415–32294–4 ISBN13: 9–78–0–415–32294–2 (pbk) Contents List of contributors vii Acknowledgments x Introduction 1 MADY SCHUTZMAN AND JAN COHEN-CRUZ Politics and performance(s) of identity: 25 years of Brazilian theatre (1954–79) 10 CAMPBELL BRITTON SECTION I Sites 21 POLITICAL THEATRE Staging the political: Boal and the horizons of theatrical commitment 23 RANDY MARTIN PEDAGOGY Critical interventions: the meaning of praxis 33 DEBORAH MUTNICK ACTIVISM Tactical carnival: social movements, demonstrations, and dialogical performance 46 L.M. BOGAD THERAPY Social healing and liberatory politics: a round-table discussion 59 MADY SCHUTZMAN WITH BRENT BLAIR, LORI S. KATZ, HELENE S. LORENZ, AND MARC D. RICH LEGISLATION Performing democracy in the streets: Participatory Budgeting and Legislative Theatre in Brazil 78 GIANPAOLO BAIOCCHI vi Contents SECTION 2 Tropes 89 ART AND EVERYDAY LIFE Activism in feminist performance art 91 SUZANNE LACY STORYTELLING Redefining the private: from personal storytelling to political act 103 JAN COHEN-CRUZ METAXIS Metaxis: dancing (in) the in-between 114 WARREN LINDS AESTHETIC SPACE Aesthetic spaces/imaginative geographies 125 SHARI POPEN JOK(ER)ING Joker runs wild 133 MADY SCHUTZMAN WITNESSING Witnessing subjects: a fool’s help 146 JULIE SALVERSON SECTION 3 Ideologies 159 POSTCOLONIAL THEORY Reenvisioning theatre, activism, and citizenship in neocolonial contexts 161 AWAM AMKPA FEMINIST THEORY Negotiating feminist identities and Theatre of the Oppressed 173 ANN ELIZABETH ARMSTRONG RACE THEORY Unperforming “race”: strategies for reimagining identity 185 DANIEL BANKS Index 199 Contributors Awam Amkpa is Associate Professor of Drama at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. He has also taught at King Alfred’s University College and Mount Holyoke College. He is the author of Theatre and Postcolonial Desires (Routledge: 2003) and two forth- coming books: Postcolonial Drama and Theatres of the Black Atlantic. Awam has facilitated numerous community-based projects in Africa, Europe, and North America. He is also a playwright, theatre director, and director of documentaries, as well as a film scholar. Ann Elizabeth Armstrong is an Assistant Professor at Miami University of Oxford, Ohio. She has created community-based performances in Williamsburg, VA and published an article about that experience in Theatre Topics. She is currently editing an anthology about feminist pedagogies of theatre and also directing an interdisciplinary project that will culminate in an original play about Freedom Summer 1964. The play will document the experiences of college students who volunteered to go down to Mississippi and engage in civil rights activism. Gianpaolo Baiocchi is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He researches and writes about cities, inequalities, politics, and social theory. His book Militants and Citizens: The Politics of Participation in Porto Alegre has recently been published (Stanford University Press: 2005). Daniel Banks is Associate Teacher in the Undergraduate Drama Department at New York University, where he has created the Hip Hop Theatre Initiative. He has directed and choreographed extensively in the US and abroad and holds a PhD from the Performance Studies Department at NYU. Brent Blair is a designated Linklater voice instructor and Senior Lecturer at the University of Southern California’s School of Theatre where he founded a program in Applied Theatre Arts. He teaches Liberation Arts and Community Engagement, Theatre and Therapy, and Theatre in Education. Blair is co-founder of the Center for Theatre of the Oppressed in Los Angeles, works part time as a therapist with high-risk teens in central Los Angeles, and is completing his PhD in Depth Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute. L.M. Bogad, Assistant Professor of Theatre and Dance at the University of California, Davis, is author of Electoral Guerrilla Theatre: Radical ridicule and social movements (Rout- ledge: 2005). His articles appear in TDR, Contemporary Theatre Review, and numerous other journals and anthologies. He has worked as a performer, writer, and organizer across the US and the UK. His play, Haymarket, was the first full-length drama/tragedy about viii Contributors the Haymarket Square Riot. He is a veteran of the Lincoln Center Theatre Director’s Lab and the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army. Campbell Britton is currently Theatre Arts Visiting Assistant Professor at Loyola Mary- mount University. She has created seminars in South American Theatre and Theatres of the Avant-Garde and also teaches theatre history and acting techniques. Recipient of a 2001 Fulbright Fellowship to Brazil and a University of California at Los Angeles Dis- tinguished Teaching award, she has lectured abroad on a wide range of international theatre traditions. Her PhD dissertation, “Prismatic dialogues: Antunes Filho, Nelson Rodrigues, and Brazilian cultural identity,” is due for completion this year. Jan Cohen-Cruz, an Associate Professor of Drama and director of the New York Uni- versity Tisch School of the Arts’ Office of Community Connections, wrote Local Acts: Community-based performance in the US (Rutgers University Press: 2005), edited Radical Street Performance (Routledge: 1998), and, with Mady Schutzman, coedited Playing Boal: Theatre, therapy, activism (Routledge: 1994). Past projects include coconception with Sabrina Peck, of a play with community gardeners and students. Current projects include an arts-based exploration of the impact of war on youth and the development of a train- ing program in community-based performance. Lori S. Katz, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and the Director of the Long Beach Sexual Trauma Center. She has testified before the US Congress and worked with the Depart- ment of Defense as an expert on the treatment of victims of sexual assault. She is the author of Holographic Reprocessing: A cognitive-experiential psychotherapy for the treatment of trauma (Routledge: 2005). She is a national and international speaker and educator on treating trauma. Suzanne Lacy is a conceptual/performance artist and writer. Her complex performances address significant social issues and