Theatre makes a special contribution in enabling dialogue. For Boal, all human relations, especially those across difference, should be dialogues. Real dialogue is not simply a set of overlapping monologues. It requires listening, and respect for difference. Boal also draws a recurring contrast between really seeing or hearing, and simply watching or being silent. This is exemplified in his critique of mass media. Television encourages watching, but not seeing. In contrast, art and science help us to see or hear. Boal shows what he means by this distinction with various examples. Newton really saw the apple fall to earth, where others had simply watched it. Beethoven makes us hear silence, a psychoanalyst hears what is not said. The implication in each case is that to really see or hear is to perceive or intuit an underlying, inner or qualitative dimension which is obscured in the surface appearance. Too often, we only watch or absorb sounds, without really seeing and hearing in this sense. If there is a problem with the book it may come right at the very beginning. Our skeleton hero introduces herself and from there you would expect her to jump right in to Human Body Theater with the bones. Instead, the storyline comes to a near screeching halt from the get go with a laborious explanation of cells, elements, and molecules. It’s not that these things aren’t important or interesting. Indeed, you can more than understand why they come at the beginning the way that they do. But as the book currently stands, this section feels like it was added in at the last minute. If it was going to preface the actual “show” then couldn’t it have been truly separate from the main event and act as a kind of pre-show entertainment? Multi-award winning writer Lucy Kirkwood’s current projects include writing the book and lyrics for new musical The Witches, based on Roald Dahl’s classic book, now playing at the National Theatre. The idea that people rarely see or hear reality – but simply watch it or are silent – has political implications. In one of his essays, Boal writes of three social problems common in Brazil – begging, child sex work, and inhuman prison conditions. Of all three, he writes, the problem has become so familiar that people cannot see or hear it. In other words, the outrage at inhumanity which the problem should evoke has been dulled by familiarity. On the other hand, it is a ‘lie’, albeit a ‘truthful lie’, to say that the majority support a proposal, when they do not fully understand it. There cannot be effective democracy without genuine “hearing”.

Culture of all forms (not only theatre) emerges from this aesthetic nature. We are all cultural producers, in that we produce our own lives, and produce things we need to live. Culture is necessarily diverse, because it is a set of ‘ways of doing’, which in turn are ways to reach different dreams. Hence, while the essence is in a sense common, it manifests in ways which produce diversity and difference. This is because the essence is a creative force, rather than a fixed type of being. In The Aesthetics of the Oppressed, Boal extends his theory beyond his usual domain of theatre. He explores the broader role of the arts. For Boal, art is a form of sensory dialogue. It is a means to pursue truth through the senses. It expands the range of one’s ability to detect signals of a special type, in which signifiers are the same as signifieds. Boal gives emotional expression, such as smiling, as an example of this type of signal. Boal’s coinage for this kind of signal is a ‘unicity’. Art helps us to experience and perceive unicities. Design will be by Fly Davis, with Lighting design by Joshua Pharo, Sound design by Ben and Max Ringham, the Fight director is Kate Waters, and Casting is by Anna Cooper CDG. The Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) was developed by Brazilian theatre director Augusto Boal during the 1950’ps and 1960’s. His explorations were based on the assumption that dialogue is the common, healthy dynamic between all humans, that all human beings desire and are capable of dialogue, and that when a dialogue becomes a monologue, oppression ensues. Theatre then becomes an extraordinary tool for transforming monologue into dialogue. “While some people make theatre,” says Boal, “we all are theatre.” Librarians will find a broad readership for this engaging work of nonfiction. This book would be an excellent addition to a growing collection of graphic nonfiction options for middle school youth. Consider developing a display to feature works of STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) graphic nonfiction.This theory of hearing/seeing is central to the concept of oppression. Oppression entails an absence of dialogue. It involves a monological relation in which only one of the terms can speak. It also implies a basically conflictual relation in which both sides, but especially the oppressed, are victims. Dialogue is impossible until people recognise each other as different. Another important aspect of art is metaphor. Boal sees metaphor as a kind of translation. It is central to language, and all the arts which represent realities. Metaphor is one of the things which distinguishes humans from animals. The modern media are criticised for destroying the power of metaphor.

This deeper form of seeing/hearing is crucial to Boal’s view of dialogue. Effective dialogue really listens, whereas overlapping monologues simply switch between speech and silence. This is similar to the idea of ‘active listening’. Dialogue, like in theatre, is fundamental to democracy. Dictatorial systems are monological. Atomisation is also a threat to dialogue. People cannot live in isolation. Each self can learn by recognising itself in otherness, or by incorporating and absorbing others.What I thought was done exceptionally well, however, were the bits on reproductive organs. It wasn't super cutesy or too clinical--just perfect, in my opinion, for not being too embarrassing for the younger reader to read or see. This chapter discusses the different ways in which female and male bodies grow through puberty, what to expect when you're older, how a fetus is made, and how that fetus is born. Brazilian playwright and radical activist Augusto Boal is the founder of a number of experiments in radical theatre. The most widely known terms for his overlapping contributions are Forum Theatre and Theatre of the Oppressed. These approaches were originally designed for use in Brazil during the era of the struggle against the dictatorship. They went hand-in-hand with radical organising in this period. Boal’s methods have also been used in diverse settings marked by oppression, and today, Theatre of the Oppressed is performed all over the world. An International Festival of Theatre of the Oppressed was held in Palestine in 2013, and there are groups in the UK too.

There are different phases to Boal’s work. In his own writings, Boal suggests that his early work is mostly about theatre in the conventional sense. His later work is more focused on ‘human beings as theatre’, or theatre as the ‘true nature of humanity’. He increasingly sees social life, in itself, as theatrical. Theatre is a microcosm – a reproduction on a smaller scale – of the whole of social life. Aesthetics of the oppressed is fundamentally about problem-posing. The focus of Boal’s method is thus on the question “what if?” Traditional theatre usually uses the indicative mood – “I do”. Adverts use the imperative mood – “Do!” Theatre of the Oppressed uses the subjunctive mood, either past – “what if I were doing that?” or future – “what if I were to do this?” Its questions are also accompanied by corresponding acts.The "host" is Bones, a skeleton, who deftly leads us through several "acts" of the human body systems, introducing us to all kinds of interesting characters, from a chorus line of germs to the five oversized senses, to the poor "finger" who has to serve as an example of many different body problems. Despite these characterizations, most things are drawn realistically, and lots of scientific words are introduced. Forum Theatre works from rehearsal improvisation to create a scene of a specific oppression. Using the Greek terms “protagonist” and “antagonist,” Forum Theatre seeks to show a person (the protagonist) who is trying to deal with an oppression and failing because of the resistance of one or more obstacles (the antagonists). In particular, theatre expresses the human capacity for creativity. There are many different “languages”, or forms of expression. All of these are irreplaceable and valuable. They are different ways of knowing the world. The multiplication of languages, or learning of new languages, help us get closer to the real, because they give more and more perspectives on it. The particular “language” of theatre is the human body. To act is to know and control one’s body, to make it expressive. The body, not theatrical technique, is the proper focus of learning. In his later works, Boal claims that ‘theatre is the human language par excellence’. Humans are most human when doing theatre. This is because theatre emphasises the capacity to observe oneself in action. This reflexive structure of self-observation is for Boal central to humanity. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2021-07-02 18:01:03 Boxid IA40164423 Camera Sony Alpha-A6300 (Control) Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier

The most important part of the Aesthetics of the Oppressed is the Aesthetic Process. The process develops the ability to experience things in a sensory way. It expands people’s expressive and perceptual potential. The main role of artistic products (or works of art) is to amplify this process socially. A participant in Theatre of the Oppressed is said, paradoxically, to become her or himself. What Boal seems to mean here is that the participant is formerly submerged in an alien culture. By forming her/his own perspective, s/he becomes an autonomous subject. Welcome to the Human Body Theater, where your master of ceremonies is going to lead you through a theatrical revue of each and every biological system of the human body! Starting out as a skeleton, the MC puts on a new layer of her costume (her body) with each "act." By turns goofy and intensely informative, the Human Body Theateris always accessible and always entertaining.Forum scenes can be virtual one-act plays or more often short scenes. In either case, a full presentation is offered to the audience. The joker (difficultator) then says to the audience we will do this again, and if you would do something different than what the protagonist (not the antagonists) is doing, stand up and yell stop. The protagonist will then sit down and the audience member is invited forward to show their solution of the moment. Once the intervention is performed, the audience invariably applauds, and the joker invites the audience to discuss the proposed solution, and to offer even more solutions. The world is diverse, composed of billions of unique entities, and constantly in flux. In other words, everything is ultimately a unicity – something unique which signifies only itself. People use habits and categories to survive the resultant vertigo of sensory input. Naming, for instance, is a way of fixing things in time and space. Although Boal sees such categorising processes as necessary (its absence leads to madness), he also sees them as dangerous, and implies that they are over-used in existing societies. Language is alleged to have a role in the degradation of the senses. Words can even over-ride senses, making people imagine the world is different from what they experience. All culture is involved in aesthetic production. However, theatre has a special significance, in that it embodies the capacity for self-observation. Theatre stems from humans’ ability to observe ourselves – not only to see, but to see ourselves seeing. At root, theatre is the uniquely human capacity to observe oneself in action. By seeing ourselves seeing, we can see ourselves in situ – in the situations we’re in. And we can imagine what we can become. We can split ourselves into the person in situ; the observer; and the “not-I”, the person we are not. The doubling or splitting of the self into observer and observed is crucial here. It allows reflexivity. The role of theatre is to enact this split. Hence, theatre is change and creation. It does not simply represent realities. All topics were handled gracefully and educationally, making this a graphic novel that even the most strict parents can't say no to!