Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed through Carnivalesque Perspective

초록

The Theatre of the Oppressed(TO) was originated from particular political and social contexts of Brazil in the 1960s. Brazilians experienced political coercion because of dictatorship and Augusto Boal had a faith in potentials of theatre for the oppressed. Boal envisions the objectives of his ideal theatre, of which traditionally had been both to teach and to entertain people, such as to return theatre to the people; to make passive spectators active spect-actors with actions; to collectively seek and rehearse diverse solutions/options to problems. Boal's TO shares some similarities with Brazilian carnival where people suspend both in different time and space now that carnival enables people safely to mimic or mock the dominant and the social systems that oppress people. Through carnival participation, people transgress the border of what they are not supposed to do in ordinary reality regarding their races, genders, classes, or ages. Wearing fanciful costume and make-up, people transform into social "others." This kind of becoming social others also is found in TO when a spectator physically steps into a problematic scene, spontaneously coming to be a spect-actor. The spect-actor rehearses all the possibilities to solve a problem, by doing so transgresses the border of what s/he does not carry out in reality. The transformative feature in both carnival and TO is considered as subversive because people ought to invert or subvert their existing social relationships. Furthermore, despite temporality, carnival and TO create a liminal stage for the oppressed to experience equality and communality. The realm of carnival and TO is neither here nor not-here in terms of reality. In this ambiguous realm, by participating freely and safely in carnival and TO, people perform different social others and have opportunities to engender collective opinions.

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