Augusto Boal 2005 interview on 2005 DemocracyNow

Interviewer: -February.

This is Democracy Now and now we're going
to go to, go to, near by Brazil.

Uh, and we are joined, uh, in our studio
and off our house studio here,

by one of the extraordinary people's
artists, of-of, Latin America.

Uh, we go to Brazilian artist
and activist, Augusto Boal.

Who sees theatre as a dialogue and an
opportunity to act out social change.

Drawing on Paulo Freire's
Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Boal developed Theatre of the Oppressed,

out of his experimental work at the
Arena Theatre in São Paulo,

during the 1950's and 60's.

Boal took the theatre to factories and
farms throughout Brazil,

and developed plays around the experiences

around people silenced
by poverty and oppression.

Boal's plays were increasingly censored
by the government,

and in 1971, the military dictatorship
imprisoned him for four months,

where he was-when he was released he was
forced into exile and spent 15 years

in Argentina, Portugal, and France,

before returning to Rio.

Theatre of the Oppressed techniques from
quote "invisible theatre on the streets

to solution orientated form theatre
spread around the world."

Boal was in New York this week running a
theatre workshop at the Brecht Forum,

and he joins us now in our studio.

Welcome to Democracy Now.

Boal: Thank you very much.

Interviewer: It's a pleasure to have you.

Uh, talk to us about how you got started
in the 1950's, uh-uh, in using

theatre, and art to-to, open up, and
explain and-and help folks in-in Brazil

be able to deal with their social conditions.

Boal: Yeah, uh, in the 50's I did not
do Theatre of the Oppressed,

I did theatre like everybody else.

And I cho-called to spectate to come.

You charge a price, for the-the ticket
and then you do plays.

The best that you can.

But soon I understood that as I was
doing good plays, wonderful plays

for people that were good writers, for an
audience that came just to look at it,

and say "okay it's nice."

and then they went away,
and nothing else happens.

And always for me, play should
be more than that.

Shakespeare used to say-not used to say,
but he said in Hamlet,

that the theatre should be, and is,
like a mirror.

In which you look at the mirror and
see our vices and our virtues.

I think that's very nice.

But I'd like to have a mirror, uh, with
some magic properties in which we

could-uh, if we don't like the image
that we have in front of us,

to allow us to penetrate into that mirror,

and then transform our image.

And then come back with our image transformed.

The act of transform, you always say,
transform she or he who acts.

So, to use the theatre as a rehearsal
for transformation of reality.

This was my idea but not my practice,
until the dictatorship was, uh,

every time more severe on us.

And started, uh, forbidding our plays
and not allowing us to do our plays,

to do nothing.

So when we lost our theatre, we lost
everything, we found theatre.

Interviewer: So-so this would've been
the military dictatorship of the late 60's-

Boal: Yeah, it started from the 50-uh,
64, uh, and then it lasted till 80 and something.

And some structures are still there.

Uh, we talk about now we have democracy.

What kind of democracy?

Democracy is a word you can
fill in with whatever you want.

I believe that words, they are like trucks,
they are like means of transportation.

You can put inside what you want.

And democracy we call democracy many
countries in which you have to choose

between two people that are very rich,
and buy time on the television,

while democracy Greece in which the women
did not vote.

We call democracy anything.

We say in Brazil we have democracy,
but that's not true.

Half of the population cannot read or write.

Half of the population live under
the poverty limit of life.

So that's not democracy.

Interviewer: Uh, Paulo Freire