Theatre of the Oppressed and its times: A talk by Julian Boal.

What was political yesterday is not necessarily political today. Theatre of the Oppressed was born in a specific context and evolved to be the first theatre technique from the global south to be used all over the world. Change of scales that were also bringing new problems: how a theatre technique that was created to fight against dictatorships and extremely centralized political parties does evolve in a world of so-called participatory democracies and Facebook? From this perspective, the talk will try to understand what Theatre of the Oppressed can do in front of the problem of the hour: the rise of authoritarianism all over the world and more specifically in Brazil.

Julian Boal, son of the founder of the Theatre of the Oppressed Augusto Boal, is a founding member of Ambata, GTO-Paris (Theatre of the Oppressed Group–Paris), and Féminisme Enjeux. He has run workshops and projects in more than 20 countries, and he helped in the development of TO festivals in India with Jana Sanskriti, in Europe with Pa’tothom, and in South America with CTO-Rio. Julian is the author of Images of a Popular Theatre (Imagens de um Teatro Popular, Hucitec, 2000), co-editor of Theatre of the Oppressed in Actions (Routledge, 2015) and The Routledge Companion to Theatre of the Oppressed (Routledge, 2019), and has recently completed a PhD in Brazil exploring the use of Theatre of the Oppressed around the world today.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Paterson’s Land, PL LG34, Moray House School of Education, Edinburgh, United Kingdom