Theatre of the Opressed

The Theatre of The Oppressed originated in Brazil in 1971. In its birth it started as News paper theatre, dealing with local problems and shortly after spread all across the country. The Theatre of the Oppressed was created to tackle political problems and oppressive social standards. The Theatre Of The Oppressed was originated by Augusto Boal whom was a director, writer and a politician

Image Theatre- Spect-Actors make a group of statues which shows in a visual form on a given theme. For example, in France the subject of Image Theatre was unemployment and in Sweden it was Male and Female sexual oppression.

Spect-Actors are very stagnant on conveying their images, if a spectator does not agree with the image shown the actors will re-arrange the image until it's shown correctly. When the image represents is it called "real Image because it properly represents oppression.

Examples of Image theatre

1. Love-Making

In Sweden, a young girl of 18 showed as a representation of oppression a lady ling on her back, legs apart, with a man on top for her, in a basic love-making position. The image was not Ideal so the two spect-actors, with legs intertwined, faced each other making love.

There are also Images that outline Immigrants reaching out for help but we do not help, although we want to. Old age was a more insiring image of helping the elderly with acts of kindness that outlined feeding them and walking an old lady across the street or bathing one. These seem uplifting but truly they were outlining how dependent the elderly are on others, successfully oppressing them with ageism. In the end it was shown in transition and the attitude change when the elderly were shown taking care of children and doing various other activities.

Image theatre seems to oppress minorities or those of old age, even attack the oppression of genders in sex but a common theme in these games are equality displayed in the end, or at least progression to a situation where there is less oppression.

Invisible Theatre was directly developed by Augusto Boal and the concept is more like traditional theatre because it has a constructed script and real actors but it is not preformed in a theatre. Invisible Theatre