Augusto Boal

Augusto Boal was a Brazlian interactive artist/performer, who knows first hand what oppression is. The Brazilian military government murdered his colleagues. He was spared, but before that point was tortured and then left the country to Argentina, and then Chile.

Boal played with the notion of the “cop in the street” and the “cop in his head,” as a way to highlight and tease out oppression and injustices where they existed. After many years, Boal managed to return to Brazil, and was actually elected to public office. Almost to make fun of his enemies, Boal brought his theatre/performance colleagues with him to serve as his political staff.

Much of Boal’s work deals with the notion of “embodiment,” which is to say how the people involved in the public art become the art themselves. Some of these ideas can be seen in the methods of GH, which we saw in class last week, in which he creates situations that are specifically designed to create anticipated responses, teasing out flaws in our society.