Sadness: Augusto Boal – Passing of a Legend

I am very sad that this year, yet another brave, important and incredibly inspiring legend of the theatre has passed away yesterday on 2nd May 2009. Augusto Boal died from respiratory failure after a long fight with leukemia. He had been tortured by the repressive government in his home country of Brazil and after the fall of the oppressive regime, he returned and used drama tools to help people all across the world to understand the Freirean concept of a ‘dialogue’ with the oppressor. In oppressive regimes, Boal believed that people were forced to mouth someone else’s monologue. Only through dialogue could the oppressed liberate themselves and their oppressor from that monologue.

I was introduced to the work of Augusto Boal while I was an undergrad at the University of Kent at Canterbury. Professor Alison Oddey taught an introduction to performance class: one of those democratised uni performance classes aimed at allowing everyone to ‘have a go’ and feel like a performer, but nothing to do with actual acting (although I believe I did a presentation with some others on Stanislavski) – the mainstay of the British drama degree for ten years and around the birth of Performance Studies as a credible field in itself. However during the early weeks of the course, we play some games and did some exercises that really connected with me. I later found that they came from Augusto Boal’s book ‘Games for Actors and Non-Actors’. It was in this class that I fell in love with teaching people to act, because it was in this class that I saw how someone could be taught to act through very simple exercises. They’re exactly the kind of games you can play with anyone to get them started in drama, which was their precise aim. Yet they all offer some basic insights into the craft, without overloading the learner with too much at once.

The importance of Boal’s Forum Theatre, perhaps his major contribution to the world of drama didn’t do much for me, although I had many chances to experience it. It wasn’t until I was a postgrad at the University of Nottingham, getting my adult training certificate, that I rediscovered Boal and the NEED for Forum Theatre became clear. I was writing an extended essay on the work of educationalist Paolo Freire. Without previously connecting the pair, I saw the influence of Freire on Boal and through later research saw that Boal was greatly inspired by Freire.

While I taught acting at the University of Ulster, one of my colleagues told me how when Boal came to Belfast, he sat in the very seat where I sat in the car. Unimpressed, I imagined Boal’s delight upon leaving the airport to be faced with the ‘BOAL CAR PARK’ just outside the airport, almost like it was named after the great man himself, but a mere coincidence. I was upset to hear how much this legend of democracy charged to give workshops, but… why not? He earned that right and many charlatan acting teachers in the UK and US charge more and deliver much, much less back for their money.

Boal didn’t direct shows that toured the world’s top venues. Boal didn’t write Pulitzer prize winning plays, (although he did direct and he was a playwright). He lived life with an ambitious aim: to use theatre (or I would call it ‘drama’ in this case) as a tool for social betterment. I think in all ways he succeeded.

Augusto Boal died Saturday aged 78. As my grandfather would have said, “he had a good innings – and the world is better for him.”