theatre research international · vol. 40 | no.

2 | pp156–169
 Federation for Theatre Research 2015 · doi:10.1017/S0307883315000036
C International

Theatre for the Less Oppressed than I:

Reconsidering Augusto Boal’s Concept
of Spect-actor1
yonghee lee

Grounded on personal experience in Augusto Boal’s workshop, this article explores his essential and
radical concept of the spect-actor and its limitation. When he conceptualized the term, Boal seemed
to ignore diversities and differences of subject in the grid of power relations such as class, gender,
ethnicity, sexual preference and race. Furthermore, a silence that most of the workshop participants
maintained needs to be examined critically, instead of unquestioningly, regarding their ‘democratic’
choices. In order to effectively discuss the limitations of the spect-actor concept, as well as the silence
that was ignored in the workshop space, I speculate on similar relationships that occurr both in theatre
workshop and classroom settings. Drawing the conclusion that both educators and theatre practitioners
require self-reflexive attitudes, I expect a greater contribution of Theatre of the Oppressed to globalized
societies.

We cannot enter the struggle as objects in order later to become subjects.2

Well-known Brazilian theatre director Augusto Boal led two workshops at the 2002
Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed (PTO) Conference in Toledo, Ohio.3 These
were three-day workshops; the Joker workshop took ten hours over two days, and the
Invisible theatre workshop took five hours on a single day.4 As an educator and theatre
enthusiast myself, it was with great pleasure that I attended his workshop. Despite
his well-established international popularity, I did not expect the homogeneity of the
participants, in terms of race and ethnicity. I was the only Asian participant, and felt
marginalized and remained on the periphery while Boal and the other participants
seemed to feel comfortable using English as the medium.
When commenting on the intrinsic ‘democratic’ qualities of the Theatre of the
Oppressed (TO), Boal stated, ‘True democracy lets people choose what they do or what
they do not do’. This comment, as well as his democratic attitude, which was reflected
throughout the workshop, influenced me to reconsider his approaches. The basis of
Boal’s methods involved the spectators’ voluntary participation in the forum theatre
scene, where they would replace the protagonist, thereby transforming themselves into
‘spect-actors’. Though never imposing upon the participants, his method relied purely
upon the spect-actors’ self-motivation and willingness to join in themselves. As a result
of this experience, I started to reconsider the meaning of democracy that Boal used in
his TO.

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 lee Theatre for the Less Oppressed 157

Forum theatre is the principle technique of Boal’s TO. In forum theatre, Boal or
the Joker figure facilitates the workshop as the master of the ceremony. When I attended
the Joker workshop, the participants were divided into several groups and were asked
to create an oppressive situation with both a protagonist and an antagonist. Each group
then acted out their dilemma twice in front of all the workshop participants. For the
first performance, the spectators quietly observed the other group. However, during the
second session, any spectator could interrupt the scene, replace the oppressed protagonist
and perform their own resolution. Meanwhile, as the Joker, Boal encouraged the audience
to take part. Despite his enthusiasm, the same participants would repeatedly volunteer
as spect-actors, leaving most of the audience quiet spectators. The lack of participation
by the majority of the audience was a detail impossible to ignore, for I, too, lingered on
the sidelines. What could have been the cause of our inhibition to partake in the exercise,
thus impeding our transformation to become empowered spect-actors? Personally, it
was due to neither lack of desire nor lack of motivation, for we were all there to learn
Boal’s techniques first-hand. Was I transformed? If I had participated in the scene, would
I have felt empowered after replacing the protagonist? Why did I choose to remain silent?
Is remaining silent safe? The questions that I posed to myself were beyond count.
After much reflection, I concluded that the most important factor in my inhibition –
despite my eagerness – was my insecurity in speaking English. As a Korean living in the
United States, I felt that the cultural and linguistic barriers overwhelmed my desire to
undergo a self-transformation into a spect-actor. Boal frequently stressed the importance
of physicality, which is supposed to overcome spoken language barriers. Yet since forum
theatre is led by dialogues between a spect-actor and professional TO actors, I could not
disregard the inequality of the language between the participants. During the workshops,
I found myself feeling somewhat out of place. I could not bring myself to interrupt the
scene and play the role of the protagonist. Culturally specific resolutions to the dilemmas
I encountered were bound tightly by my language insecurities. First of all, if I became the
spect-actor, playing my role with the rest of the participants in the scene, and my partner
did not understand what I said to him/her, might it be embarrassing to me as well as to
the others? Moreover, if I suggested something for the problematic scene, what would
happen? I might have looked at the problematic scene differently and my suggestion
might have appeared inappropriate to the others at the workshop. Finally, I realized
that I could not enter into a scene on an equal footing with the native English-speakers
already involved. It was very possible that the entire context of the scene would shift and
suddenly, rather than being about the protagonist role, it would mutate into a situation
about me: the non-native speaker trying to interact with native speakers. Since I was
not the same as most of the participants in terms of race and ethnicity, why would they
have cared for my suggestion? These were just a few of the concerns that plagued my
participation as a spect-actor. I regretted the fact that Boal and/or his techniques did
not help empower me to become a spect-actor; I reluctantly sat back and played the
stereotypical quiet Asian girl.
As a ‘democratic’ educator, I linked my reflections about this TO experience to
classroom settings. Should I encourage my students to stand up and become the spect-
actor? How can I urge or assist them to stand up? Did Boal give possible answers or

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 158 lee Theatre for the Less Oppressed

suggestions for how to do this? Also, what makes students choose to be silent? Will
my teaching, informed as I believe it will be by Boal, create the same demoralizing
dynamic that I experienced in that disappointing workshop? Just let-them-be does not
sound like a responsible strategy for a radical educator. Post-structural educational
theorist Elizabeth Ellsworth proposes that individuals are situated in various kinds of
social positioning and association, in which variable power dynamics govern.5 Every
TO participant was situated in different positionalities and associations. What inhibited
them from transforming into spect-actors?
By analysing my personal experience and reflection on Boal’s workshop, this article
examines how Boal’s democratic methods ignore the process of ‘becoming’ and how
this omission can create isolation among participants. Furthermore, I would like to
offer some suggestions to TO practitioners by underscoring the significance of silencing
among spect-actors. Before discussing Boal’s methods, particularly forum theatre and
rainbow of desire, it is crucial to address how he began to conceive the idea of the TO.
The political and social environment in which Boal found himself at the time of the
development of TO will explain explicitly how he perceived the transformation and
social change resulting from TO.
Augusto Boal started his theatre career during the 1960s in Brazil, when that country
was ruled by a military junta and suffering from the effects of long-term colonization.
Using theatre as a weapon for social change, Boal attempted to decolonize people’s
perceived inner inferiority as the colonized and to challenge the junta’s oppressive rule.
At that time most theatre companies in Brazil modelled themselves after European
traditions. The prevalent European tradition fed off a Brazilian society ‘whose values were
founded on a colonialist mentality that regarded anything from within an indigenous or
local background as automatically inferior to anything of foreign or, better still, European
origin’.6 Moreover, because of the influence of Catholicism, Brazilian people believed
that the conditions of their lives were predestined by God’s will. According to Boal,
the primary obstacle that he faced when engaging his theatre techniques was people’s
mindset that they were inferior human beings and were destined to live as they did.
While looking for a solution, Boal encountered Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the
Oppressed (1968) and was heavily influenced by that text. Freire tried to help people,
particularly peasants, see that they could control their own lives and not be passive
recipients of either God’s will or the whims of their human oppressors. Freire coined
the term conscientizacao (‘conscientization’), which goes beyond the literal meaning of
consciousness-raising
to signify the process of ‘learning to perceive social, political, and economic
contradictions, and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality.’
Emphasizing dialogue between teachers and learners, conscientization aims to teach
people not just to learn, but to learn that they can learn – that they can become ‘owners’
of knowledge.7

In short, Freire claimed that the people (the oppressed) were the subject in the world
rather than the object controlled and created by the oppressors.8 According to bell hooks,
Freire’s concept of conscientization in decolonization movements such as Boal’s work is

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 lee Theatre for the Less Oppressed 159

significant in that ‘this is the important initial stage of transformation – that historical
moment when one begins to think critically about the self and identity in relation to
one’s political circumstance’.9
Boal directly used Freire’s radical concept and engaged it in the theatrical format.
That was when TO was born:
The Theatre of the Oppressed is a system of physical exercises, aesthetic games, image
techniques and special improvisations whose goal is to safeguard, develop and reshape
this human vocation,[10 ] by turning the practice of theatre into an effective tool for the
comprehension of social and personal problems and the search for their solutions[11 ]
. . . We tried to show in practice how the theater can be placed at the service of the
oppressed, so that they can express themselves and so that, by using this new language,
they can also discover new concepts.12

Much like Freire, Boal saw the oppressed as subjects who have the power to change
the world; however, due to external and internal oppression, they appear to others and
believe themselves to be objects. Boal made a concerted effort to help people reimagine
themselves as subjects, and as he engaged his beliefs about human beings with his TO he
consequently shaped the concept of ‘spect-actor’.
Before discussing Boal’s essential term, ‘spect-actor’, I will link Boal’s perception
of the human being to the philosophical study of subjectivity. I am hoping that when
Boal’s perception is placed in this context, it will become clear why I felt left out and
isolated at Boal’s workshop. Primarily based on the book Subjectivity by cultural-studies
scholar Nick Mansfield, I use bipolar frames to re-examine Boal’s conception of the
human being. Mansfield designates two big streams of the subject – one is subjectivity
and the other is anti-subjectivity.13 Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud is the representative
of the former group while philosopher and literary critic Michel Foucault belongs to the
latter group.
Freud and his followers see the subject as a thing quantifiable and knowable.14 To
post-structuralist eyes, Freud is an essentialist in that he defined the nature and structure
of the subject, which assumes that there are some levels of innate natures and essences in
human beings. The subject is influenced by its surrounding. So one’s nature is changed
by nurture. Freud argues that a subject has a ‘knowable content, and an analysable
structure’.15 Meanwhile, to Foucault, subjectivity does not really exist. Rather it is the
invention of power/knowledge. The subject is ‘the primary workroom of power, making
us turn in on ourselves, trapping us in the illusion that we have a fixed and stable selfhood
that science can know, institutions can organize and experts can correct’.16 Although
these two frames look wholly incompatible, Mansfield points out their common ground:
both positions ‘reject the idea of the subject as a completely self-contained being that
develops in the world as an expression of its own unique essence’.17 How, then, did Boal
see the human being?
I believe that Boal positioned himself in the former group with Freud. Boal
demonstrated an essentialist tendency to suppose that the human being is knowable.
Boal remarked in his book The Rainbow of Desire, ‘The human being is – to a limited
extent and with a large margin of error – a knowable entity; we know more about its body

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 160 lee Theatre for the Less Oppressed

than its psyche’.18 In one sense, Boal took a Freudian stand on human beings. Ironically,
Boal did not seem to put as much stress on the psyche while carrying out his TO.
To Boal, the human being first and foremost is a body that has five main features: it
is sensitive, it is emotive, it is rational, it has a sex and it can move.19 I have a hard time
believing Boal’s argument that the body itself has emotive and rational features. Among
these five features, I focus on emotive and rational, which Boal simply addressed in five
lines, because they are perhaps least familiar to us when thinking in terms of a body. As
for the emotive feature of the body, Boal states, ‘the sensations of pleasure or pain can
lead us to emotions of love, hate or fear, or any other emotion’.20 The sensation of the
body causes the emotion; the body itself does not have the emotion. Additionally, when
elucidating the rational feature, Boal plainly remarked, ‘The human being is a rational
creature, it knows things, it is capable of thinking, of understanding, and of making
mistakes’.21 This is a leap in logic from the (presumably physical) body’s features to the
human being. Does the human being equal the body? Certainly the body makes up a big
portion of the human being, but the body is not the sum total of what a human is and,
to me, rationality and emotion are not physical. Boal missed the clarification of an inner
aspect of a human being as a constituent and to some extent blended these two elements.
Boal placed great emphasis on ‘doing’ through the body in his theatre rather than
talking and talking. He stressed the presence of the material body onstage, which he
thought has more power to challenge oppression than simply talking. This emphasis on
the body kept me silent and in my place because it did not touch either my emotional
or my rational nature. Essentially, I did not feel safe in front of the other, native English-
speaking participants. This shocked me because I fully expected to be swept up in the
activity, but I found myself unable to participate and untouched by the ‘democratic’
invitation to step into the action.
Boal believed that human beings contain a number of possibilities within themselves
that can change an oppressive situation. Specifically he used the word ‘person’ rather
than ‘human beings’ at this time, saying,
Within us, we have everything, we are a person. But this person is so rich and so powerful,
so intense, with such a multiplicity of forms and faces, that we are constrained to reduce
it. This suppression of our freedom of expression and action results from two causes:
external, social coercion and/or internal, ethical choice (conditioned by habits) . . .
[The hegemonies or norms of the oppressive] tell us what is permitted and what is
forbidden. And, for the most part, we accept it. Or equally, we define ourselves and
oblige ourselves to be what we are, to do what we do, not to do what we think is wrong
. . . We always remain the person we are, but we only transform a tiny portion of our
potentiality into acts. I shall call this reduction personality.22

Boal understood human beings as people who have the potential to change the world
and challenge their oppression. Yet, echoing Foucault’s concept of ‘discourse’, Boal also
acknowledged the socially structured rules that regulate our behavior. But Boal was not
entirely in agreement with Foucault. Standing with Freud on subjectivity, Boal believed
that human beings are ‘subjects’ who can control power structures. To Boal, the subject
has a considerable, innate autonomy, which has been, for the time being, oppressed by

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 lee Theatre for the Less Oppressed 161

various reasons and surroundings. Thus the subject precedes power or environment or
the oppressors. Meanwhile, Foucault argues that ‘the “individual” – and all the things we
identify as making up our individuality (our separate body, its idiosyncratic gestures, its
specific way of using language, its secret desires) – are really effects of power, designed for
us rather than by us’.23 I find Boal’s idea of the subject more optimistic than Foucault’s,
which makes human beings the object ‘contrived by the double work of power and
knowledge to maximize the operation of both’.24
Boal’s positive image of the human being connects with his creation of the ‘spect-
actor’. He coined this term in opposition to the concept of a passive watcher, a spectator
in a theatre space. Traditionally the audience in the theatre is expected to calmly occupy
their seats and watch the show. However, Boal challenged this idea. To him, this idea
had been imposed on people by the oppressive class since the time of ancient Greece
in order to repress any revolt against society. Boal argued that Greek tragedy made the
people obey their destiny chosen by gods, and so by watching the hero’s failure and
pain, the people experienced catharsis, harmlessly defusing their pent-up energy. In the
times before ancient Greece, all ranks got together at festivals, had fun and everyone was
equal.25 Boal argued that his Theatre of the Oppressed helps people return to prehistoric
eras and become one of the participants, as they did in those days.
In the chapter titled ‘Poetics of the Oppressed’, Boal strongly claimed that ‘spectator’
is a bad word.26 And it is always ‘less than a man and it is necessary to humanize him, to
restore to him his capacity of action in all its fullness. He too must be a subject, an actor
on an equal plane with those generally accepted as actors, who must also be spectators’.27
A spectator is ‘less than a man’ and to become a human being to the full – in other
words, to awake his/her autonomy – s/he should take actions. To Boal, a ‘true’ person,
namely a subject, has the ability to take action for one’s liberation from the oppressive
situation. Therefore, a spectator in a forum theatre space should stand up and act out an
idea, which Boal calls becoming a spect-actor. Boal’s manifesto is as follows:
To change the people – ‘spectators,’ passive beings in the theatrical phenomenon –
into subjects, into actors, transformers of the dramatic action . . . But the poetics of the
oppressed focuses on the action itself: the spectator delegates no power to the character
(or actor) either to act or to think in his place; on the contrary, he himself assumes the
protagonistic role, changes the dramatic action, tries out solutions, discusses plans for
change – in short, trains himself for real action . . . The liberated spectator, as a whole
person, launches into action.28

These passages are extremely powerful and have greatly influenced many social activists
and theatre practitioners. They were forerunners of the radical and transformative
techniques that Boal later introduced. At first glance, becoming a spect-actor seems
to function as the essential step toward solving the problem of oppression.
There is, however, no detailed discussion about how a person becomes ‘true’ or
mobilizes the ability to launch into action. In other words, the process of how I am
becoming a ‘true’ person who has the ability to take action – or even spending time
to consider why people chose not to take action – was not dealt with at the workshop.
As an educator, I was anxious to learn how to help a student become a ‘true’ person.

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 162 lee Theatre for the Less Oppressed

I wanted to know how to motivate students to recognize their ability to create action
for their respective liberation from any kind of oppressive situation. As the Joker, Boal
did not touch this issue; rather, I felt that during the workshop Boal tended to take
this capability of action for granted. By focusing on action, he seemed to disregard the
significance of critical thinking and the step of generating the impetus. In my case, I had
an impetus to become a spect-actor with some responses to the forum scene. I wished
that the workshop space had been a safer place for me given my concerns about language
and cultural differences. If that was my case for silencing, I wondered about other native
speakers’ silence. Nobody knows what and how the most silent participants had thought;
yet I, as an educator, ought to mull over students’ various silencings. His disregard
for various silencings among the participants made me reconsider my unquestioning
attitude to Boal’s fascinating techniques and eventually deromantized TO.
According to a scholar of Boal, Hernan Flores, the process – from spectator to
spec-actor – is based on ‘transitive learning and collective empowerment developed
through theatrical investigation’.29 First, I did not feel any collective empowerment at
the workshop. Since Boal restrained activities of discussion with other participants, I only
had my own response to the problematic scene to work with. Therefore there was no kind
of collective consensus, nor any shared opinions, among the participants. Second, I did
feel a strong desire to step into the scene, but in the end felt unable. My status as spectator
did not feel like my ‘democratic’ choice and I was most certainly not empowered by my
physical silence. His method did not account for my situation. Third, it is worth noting
that many other workshop participants did not take part, and I started to doubt Boal’s
definition of democracy and the importance of becoming the spect-actor.
Boal stressed that the process of becoming a spect-actor is a revolutionary power
for the oppressed. While he pointed out the importance of becoming one, he seemed
not to address how to do it. That is to say, the process of transforming from a spectator
into a spect-actor is not addressed from a practical point of view. There is no mention
about exactly how the spectator stands up and steps into the scene. Ellsworth admits,
‘I could not unproblematically “help” a student of color to find her/his authentic voice
as a student of color’.30 She continues, ‘Educational researchers attempting to construct
meaningful discourses about the politics of classroom practices must begin to theorize
the consequences for education of the ways in which knowledge, power, and desire
are mutually implicated in each other’s formations and deployments’.31 Likewise, TO
practitioners endeavouring to create meaningful discourse and consequences must be
sensitively aware of diverse implications in an individual’s formation, and consider what
may be causing the underlying reasons for silencing among the participants.
Boal’s techniques should have explained the process of how TO helps a human
being as a subject – a multilayered self – decide to step into the scene. Or, at least, he
ought to appear to acknowledge the fact that people are situated in diverse kinds of
positioning. If he simply came to me as I struggled with my ‘democratic’ choice whether
or not to participate, and said, ‘Stop talking and just do it’, I would have perceived this
to be insensitive and unempathic. I would have lost faith in TO. TO scholar Kelly Britt
Howe seems to agree with my concerns. Boal suggested, ‘it is in the Forum that everyone
is able to act democratically . . . [E]veryone can participate and has the space to say what

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 lee Theatre for the Less Oppressed 163

they want’.32 Howe points out that his remark may be heard thus: ‘“Everyone here is
welcome to speak or act. Why don’t you feel comfortable doing so?” It neglects the
multiple vectors of power and oppression that structure a theatre workshop space even
when everyone is supposedly invited to participate freely and without self-censoring’.33
Democratic participation means more than equal access and free choice. Somehow I
experienced a simplified definition of democracy at the workshop.
Leading the horse to water and letting it drink are the most important factors
in radical theatres as well as educational spaces. Despite a democratic context,
students/participants need to be guided to water. Whether to take an action or not
depends on students/participants’ decision, a ‘democratic’ decision; however, I believe
that as an educator or facilitator, the action to lead the horse to water is inevitable. To some
extent, I could assume that Boal intentionally did not impose power over the participants,
which demonstrated an aspect of a democratic atmosphere. However, I do believe the
decision either to drink water or not is mine (or that of the students/participants) and I
needed to be ‘safely’ guided to the water. Creating a desire to take a step is by far the most
essential thing to do for educators/practitioners. Theatre scholar Ken McCoy shares this
concern, noting, ‘it may be that the desire to engage in a dialogue is more important as
a liberation strategy than the dialogue itself’.34 On the ground, Boal’s method did not
provide for the nurturing of these individual desires and choices to become a spect-actor
at the Joker workshop.
According to Jan Cohen-Cruz, renowned scholar of community-based
performance, Boal showed ‘how theatre is not necessarily a closed system – and not
something reserved for experts’.35 But TO can easily become the property of some specific
participants who have the guts to step into the scene. This feels like elitism especially when
the same people participate over and over. Without an explanation of how TO helps a
spectator become the spect-actor, TO may only reproduce the hierarchical relationship. In
addition to my experience, some TO practitioners share concerns regarding this matter.
Theatre scholar Steve Ball notes, ‘Similarly, some of those that do participate regard
Forum Theatre as an exercise in theatrical virtuosity and seize the opportunity to show
off their acting abilities at the expense of focusing on the nature of the problem under
examination’.36 At the Joker workshop I attended, the majority of participants appeared
to be theatre practitioners who had ample theatre experience and skills. When some of
them acted out as spect-actors in a problematic scene, their performances were generally
impressive. It could be my presumption, but a particular spect-actor who repeatedly
came up onstage seemed to enjoy performing in front of all the participants. Somehow,
the rest of us became an audience watching this particular spect-actor’s scenes. There, a
hierarchy was suddenly formed between him and the rest of us – he was the actor, we
were the spectators.
Furthermore, McCoy points out that in reality TO produces hierarchical relations,
saying that ‘Boal’s forum theatre is not completely non-hierarchical. The Joker[37 ] is a
figure of control; the course of the action rests on his authority over the actors’.38 Maybe
that was the reason Boal attempted not to impose his authority over the spectators who
took silent positions at the workshop. Instead, he respected their ‘democratic’ decision
of non-participation. But he emphasized the significance of becoming a spect-actor.

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 164 lee Theatre for the Less Oppressed

At the workshop, most of the participants did not experience the role of spect-actor,
much like myself. As an educator, I am wondering what is more important – helping
spectators/students become a spect-actor or respecting their ‘democratic’ decision in
both TO and educational settings.
Since Boal focused on the point that action is important for revolution and social
change, the silence of the majority of the observers was ignored. However, we need
to examine how silence and indifference are produced in Boal’s TO. Boal’s remark on
democracy on the first day of the workshop, ‘True democracy lets people choose what
they do or what they do not do’, needs to be examined in relation to the issue of being
silent. The non-participation of the majority of the spectators at the workshop cannot
be simply viewed as a democratic gesture. I wanted to join the spect-actors, but my
insufficient English prevented me. Even though I chose not to join the spect-actors, I did
not feel empowered. Rather I felt oppressed, not liberated. Gradually, I compromised
my expectations in order to be in a safe zone as a silent observer. My attitude was not
democratic or revolutionary. I consciously ignored the situation and kept silent. That
was my limited ‘democratic’ decision in that a desire for becoming a spect-actor was
repressed by my concerns about language.
I strongly believe that TO practitioners should consider why people are not standing
up and speaking for themselves, as well as how TO may transform indifference and
silence in a more active way of confronting outer or inner oppression.39 Boal’s focus
on doing instead of talking did not address the problem of getting the oppressed to
think and discuss. The emphasis on doing may replicate oppression. Scholar of feminist
pedagogy Bernice Fisher asserts that ‘TO also assumes that someone – the group using
the techniques or the person introducing it – has a fairly developed consciousness.
Without such consciousness, TO runs the risk of reproducing rather than representing
oppression’.40 For instance, at our workshop, a scene where an African-American waitress
is abused by some racists ran the risk of just portraying oppression by stereotyping people.
Unless all participants in the workshop were of the same ethnic group, the scene could just
be representations of solutions. Since Boal asked the spectator who identified with the
oppressed protagonist to come forward, his request exempted most of the people at the
workshop. Some non-African-American spectators stepped into the scene and replaced
the protagonist. To me, these spect-actors looked brave, because my own racial difference
from the African-American waitress led me not to participate. However, despite racial
differences, these participants stopped the scene and took the place of the oppressed. One
spect-actor made an effort to converse with those racist customers logically and gently,
but their conversation did not go well and instead the racists in the scene sneered at this
particular spect-actor. Another spect-actor tried ignoring the racist customer’s remark,
yet that attitude had no impact on the workshop participants. Their enactments were
appreciated on the spot, but Boal and other participants agreed that their suggestions
were not realistic. These two particular suggestions enacted by non-African-American
spect-actors furthered my questions about TO in light of a spect-actor’s identification
with the protagonist in an oppressive scene.
Regarding the spect-actor’s identification with the protagonist, Fisher says, ‘Boal’s
theatre forum works best with a high degree of homogeneity among the people
using it . . . members of the audience do not always identify with the protagonist

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 lee Theatre for the Less Oppressed 165

or protagonist-substitutes’.41 Reflecting on my experience at the workshop, I noticed

my non-participation resulted primarily from the language barrier and less from
identification with the protagonist, which had generated stereotypical suggestions to
the problematic scenes. I could not identify with anyone at the workshop in terms of
the intersection of identity factors such as race, ethnicity, religion, class, gender, sexual
preference and physical ability. In fact, it is hard for one person to ‘literally’ identify with
someone due to intersectionality. If Boal’s TO – especially forum theatre – works only
in a homogeneous society, then obviously the US is not the ‘right’ place to practise it
because it is a heterogeneous and multicultural society. Furthermore, there is no place
for forum theatre practices in the world. People are never in the same positions even
when they have much in common. Therefore I believe that TO practitioners require more
awareness of various identities in cultures that are more heterogeneous, and need more
dialogue about crossing identity in interventions.42 Also, it will be helpful not to utilize
TO alone and to engage TO with other theatre techniques that can enable practitioners
to become more sensitive about participants’ multiple identity factors.
Alternatively, Marc Weinblatt, a longtime TO practitioner and now director of the
Mandala Center for Change in Port Townsend, Washington, thinks that Rainbow of
Desire (RD) techniques are better applied in US contexts because RD focuses on internal
oppression and ‘explore[s] the conflicting forces that impinge on both our desires and
our decisions’.43 RD techniques move away from the bipolar dynamic of one oppressor
(antagonist) and one oppressed (protagonist), as often seen in forum theatre, to ‘explore
the multitude of voices, personae, and forces that act together to create oppressive
conditions’.44 I assume that integration of forum theatre and RD techniques may work
out efficiently in most contemporary societies.45
Even if the workshop members are homogeneous in terms of race or ethnicity, it
does not mean that they all agree on who the oppressor and the oppressed are. In the
classroom setting, the teacher is often depicted and chosen as the antagonist; however,
Weinblatt explains that in his TO workshop some of the participants think the teacher
to be oppressed by students and school systems. He continues, ‘Within heterogeneous
communities, among people with divergent political views, disagreements can erupt
over how to read the power dynamics – in Boal’s terms, whom to define as oppressed
or oppressor’.46 How Boal’s TO engages ‘such diamentrically opposed perspectives in a
dialogue’ is an essential critique that TO practitioners have to deal with today.47
Boal resisted globalization as another form of colonization, destroying difference
and homogenizing the people of differences into the dominant discourse in terms of
cultural, economic, political and intellectual aspects. On a small scale, how did he respect
the differences of people in his workshop? In reality, he generalized the specificities of
individuals’ identity formations when he engaged his TO. Due to the focus on doing
onstage rather than talking, he seemed not to care about the factors of an individual’s
historical achievements such as why a certain person performs in that way or not. He
facilitated the problematic scene with the few limited spect-actors, asking, ‘Do you think
this approach will work?’ If someone said no, Boal immediately asked him/her to show
his/her own solution as a spect-actor.
There was one spectator who responded to Boal’s question. He was asked to become
a spect-actor and to demonstrate his solution for the scene; however, he refused to be

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 166 lee Theatre for the Less Oppressed

onstage. So we could not hear his approach. I was wondering what he would have
suggested for the scene. Why did he refuse to become a spect-actor despite having a
suggestion for the scene? Were there any other ways for him to share his thoughts with
the other participants? ‘Stop talking, just show us’ did not work for this particular case
either. Since this workshop was intended for future Jokers, we needed to discuss more
deeply diverse responses and reactions of participants that could be encountered some
day and should have had time to consider the ways in which Jokers might deal with
silencing/non-physical participation. If a student resists becoming a spect-actor, or in
other words withdraws from ‘going to water’, what should I do? I am acutely aware that
not all students are willing to become spect-actors. I questioned how TO, which resulted
from the movement of decolonization, did not appear to deal sensitively with tricky
factors of identity. Maybe it was because Boal was a white male and the colonizers of
Brazil were European people. At least to me, he did not seem to recognize such sensitive
issues as ethnicity, gender and sexual preference.48 Unlike race, ethnicity is considered
changeable, yet it is an essential element for an individual’s identity formation, which is
more than one’s cultural inclination. Regarding the importance of ethnicity in the study
of subjectivity, Mansfield argues,
Culture and ethnicity are part of the flux, change and development of history, in
a way that race is not. Cultures change and adapt; race is usually seen as a part
of the unchangeable logic of nature. Culture and ethnicity also help to explain the
way individuals’ responses are not merely a reflection of their individuality, but are
conditioned by established beliefs and practices that form the context in which they
live.49

Mansfield continues his argument that ethnicity seems to only exist in the minority
groups who have ‘visible markers of difference’.50 Therefore, based on this logic, white
people do not belong to any ethnic group and Boal might not consider this ethnic
issue important. I believe that this is a crucial omission of TO. TO overlooks how
individuals perform in a certain way according to their historical formations constituted
by differences of identity factors. Postcolonial theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
remarks on the differences among the oppressed groups. Often these groups are treated
as a single collective group, so the problem is that ‘the internal differences are suppressed
in the name of a single program of action which automatically ranks participants as
more or less loyal, or more or less attuned to the collective project’.51 At the workshop
I attended, Boal appeared to ignore the differences among the oppressed groups by not
sensitively addressing different responses to the problematic scene of forum theatre. I
hope that TO practitioners do not overlook the silence, and instead endeavour to pay
further attention to their silencing; if possible, this may prompt silent participants to
become spect-actors.
Moreover, through postcolonialists’ perspectives, Boal appeared to disregard the
constitution of the subjectivity of the colonized and the oppressed. When inventing
TO techniques, Boal examined less the colonized subjectivity, which was imposed
by the colonizers’ discourse, than the way out of the imminent, external oppression
of Brazil. This trend continues in TO. Philosopher of postcolonialism and critical

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 lee Theatre for the Less Oppressed 167

theorist Frantz Fanon regards ‘the subjectivity of the colonized as a direct product
of the colonial system: “it is the settler who has brought the native into existence and
perpetuates his existence”’.52 Henceforth, like Foucault’s subjectivity, the subjectivity
of the colonized is ‘not a pre-existing thing that encounters the colonizer with an
underdeveloped consciousness and an undercivilized emotionalism, that must adapt
or submit to a more advanced European civilization’.53 Standing onstage and rehearsing
the role of protagonist sounds somewhat naive in the face of such big issues of the
interior consciousness. I am also aware that there are some countries facing imminent,
external oppression rather than internal oppression. Yet hooks quotes Freire in order to
stress the significance of raising critical consciousness, saying that ‘we cannot enter the
struggle as objects in order to later to become subjects’.54 In Boal’s term, it could be that
we cannot enter the struggle of life as spectators in order to become spect-actors. My
question and the point I have discussed in this article is how we, spectators, become the
spect-actors of our lives. My desire to step into the scene was repressed and Boal’s TO did
not address this issue. At the workshop, I experienced oppression despite the TO goals
to ‘safeguard, develop, and reshape’ human nature in doing theatre. My human nature
did not feel safeguarded or developed; rather, I felt frustrated with myself as well as
with TO.
I do not want to conclude negatively about Boal and his practices. As theatre scholar
Sharon Green points out, TO ‘is a simple yet radical idea that has captivated artists and
activists across the globe and offered numerous people opportunities to reclaim the role
of protagonist in their own lives, albeit momentarily’.55 As long as TO’s emphasis is
on how people face their oppression more actively and critically, and find a solution
to the oppressive situation, I do not doubt that TO will play the role of ‘a rehearsal
of revolution’ in people’s lives, communities, societies and the world.56 Meanwhile I
ardently hope that TO practitioners do not disregard people’s silencing, but pay close
attention to an individual’s identity differences in the grid of power dynamics. I also hope
that they strive to find complementary techniques with TO and share those successes
with the rest of us.

notes
1 This study was supported by a 2012 Research Grant from Kangwon National University.
2 Paulo Freire quoted in bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (New
York and London: Routledge, 1994), p. 46.
3 Participation in Boal’s workshop initiated my doctoral dissertation in 2005. I attended his workshops
twice in both 2002 and 2004. In 2003 at a PTO conference he did not run the workshops, thus I did not
participate. Once again reminiscing about that impressive experience, I cannot ignore the important
issue of the complexity of participants’ subjectivity. Thus I developed this article from post-structural
perspectives.
4 Joker is a term Boal created for his TO. A Joker is like a facilitator, although Boal himself said it is more
like a difficultator, or a master of ceremonies who mediates both spectators and actors. According to
Frances Babbage in her book, Augusto Boal (London and New York: Routledge, 2004) the Joker is a
‘wild-card figure who could meditate between characters and audiences, comment critically on the
narrative and, at certain points, intervene directly in the action’ (p. 14).

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 168 lee Theatre for the Less Oppressed

5 Elizabeth Ellsworth, ‘Why Doesn’t This Feel Empowering? Working through the Repressive Myths of
Critical Pedagogy’, Harvard Educational Review, 59, 3 (August 1989), pp. 297–324, here p. 315.
6 Hernan Flores, ‘From Freire to Boal’, Education Links, 61–2 (Summer 2000), pp. 41–2.
7 Ken McCoy, ‘Liberating the Latin American Audience: The Conscientizacao of Enrique Buenaventura
and Augusto Boal’, Theatre Insight, 14 (Summer 1995), pp. 10–16, here p. 11.
8 hooks, Teaching to Transgress, p. 46.
9 Ibid., p. 47.
10 Boal believes that theatre originally belongs to the people, as opposed to the selected oppressive class.
So here the human vocation means the human nature of doing theatre.
11 Augusto Boal, The Rainbow of Desire (New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 14–15.
12 Augusto Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1985),
p. 121.
13 Mansfield categorizes Foucault’s works as the polar opposite of anti-subjectivity because ‘Foucault’s
ideas encourage a rigorously skeptical attitude towards subjectivity . . . [B]ecause it will always see any
statement that claims to speak the truth about our subjectivity as an imposition, a technique of power
and social administration’. Nick Mansfield, Subjectivity: Theories of the Self from Freud to Haraway
(New York: New York University Press, 2000), p. 64.
14 Ibid., p. 51.
15 Ibid., p. 36.
16 Ibid., p. 10.
17 Ibid., p. 13.
18 Boal, The Rainbow of Desire, p. 35.
19 Ibid., pp. 29–30.
20 Ibid., p. 30.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid., p. 35. Emphasis in original.
23 Mansfield, Subjectivity, p. 55.
24 Ibid., p. 59.
25 By ‘the times before ancient Greece’ Boal means the religious ceremony in prehistoric eras. Regarding
this argument, some critics faulted Boal’s abstract, incorrect idea about this period. Here I am not
concerned whether Boal’s argument was incorrect or not. My concern is that it demonstrates how he
conceived TO.
26 Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed, p. 154.
27 Ibid., p. 155.
28 Ibid., p. 122. Emphasis in original.
29 Flores, ‘From Freire to Boal’, p. 41.
30 Ellsworth, ‘Why Doesn’t This Feel Empowering?’, p. 309.
31 Ibid., p. 316.
32 Kelly Britt Howe, ‘Adapting Boal’s Legislative Theatre: Producing Democracies, Casting Citizens as
Policy Experts’, PhD dissertation, the University of Texas at Austin, 2010, p. 17.
33 Ibid.
34 McCoy, ‘Liberating the Latin American Audience’, p. 15.
35 Jan Cohen-Cruz, ‘Boal at NYU: A Workshop and Its Aftermath’, TDR, 34 (Fall 1990), pp. 43–9, here
p. 48.
36 Steve Ball, ‘The Influence of Boal on Theatre in Education in Britain’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 3,
1 (1995), pp. 79–85, here p. 84.
37 Boal prefers the Difficultator to the Joker.
38 McCoy, ‘Liberating the Latin American Audience’, p. 15.

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 lee Theatre for the Less Oppressed 169

39 Augusto Boal died in 2009. We can no longer see his brilliant and revolutionary ideas and practices, but
I hope that his followers will re-examine the limitations that TO possesses and make it more powerful
and useful for many oppressed people in the world.
40 Berenice Fisher, ‘Feminist Acts: Women, Pedagogy, and Theatre of the Oppressed’, in Mady Schutzman
and Jan Cohen-Cruz, eds., Playing Boal: Theatre, Therapy, Activism (New York: Routledge, 1994), pp.
185–97, here p. 190. Emphasis in original.
41 Ibid.
42 This sentence came from an anonymous reviewer who gave me excellent insight and helpful feedback
on this article.
43 Sharon Green, ‘Boal and Beyond: Strategies for Creating Community Dialogue’, Theater, 31, 3 (2001),
pp. 47–54, here p. 52.
44 Ibid., p. 53.
45 Since I have not experienced RD in person, I am not going to further explain RD techniques in this
article.
46 Ibid., p. 50.
47 Ibid., p. 52.
48 I am aware that Boal’s first language was not English; there was something that caused
misunderstanding of Boal’s intention like I used to be misunderstood due to the language barrier.
49 Mansfield, Subjectivity, p. 121.
50 Ibid., p. 119.
51 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak quoted in Mansfield, Subjectivity, p. 126.
52 Frantz Fanon quoted in Mansfield, Subjectivity, p. 124.
53 Ibid.
54 hooks, Teaching to Transgress, p. 46.
55 Green, ‘Boal and Beyond’, p. 53.
56 Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed, p. 155.

yonghee lee (joyinknu@kangwon.ac.kr) is an associate professor of English Language and Literature at

Kangwon National University, South Korea. She received her PhD from Bowling Green State University, Ohio,
and her dissertation is titled ‘Rehearsals of Democracy: Exploration of Deweyean Concept of Democracy in
Community-Based Theatre’. She is interested in the educational aspects of theatre as well as post-structural
feminist pedagogy. Currently she is working on an article about the feminist directorship of Megan Terry and
Maria Irene Fornes.

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