Snapshot

Legislative theatre, a tool for proposing and enacting legislative and policy changes at any level of government, takes Augusto Boal’s interactive forum theatre exercises from the stage into the real world.

Theatre can help us build our future, rather than just waiting for it.

— Augusto Boal

In 1992, Augusto Boal, the creator of Theatre of the Oppressed, was faced with a dilemma. His theatre work was an international sensation. Centres for the Theatre of the Oppressed were up and running in both France and Brazil, and people all over the world were practicing his ideas. At the same time, he was facing pressure at home in Brazil to run for city council in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Faced with a choice between the two, Boal decided not to choose. Instead, he combined the two possibilities and passions into one — and legislative theatre was born.

Theatre is political and politics is theatre.

To those who say that theatre is nice but has no tangible outcomes, legislative theatre may be the answer.

Legislative theatre is essentially a forum theatre performance — a short play about a particular issue or set of issues that ends in a crisis, which the audience is then invited to help solve by taking the place of one of the characters on stage — but with a key difference. The difference is that the audience interventions are followed by a brainstorm and discussion of policies or laws that could help solve some of the problems that came up in the performance, or that could help bring about some of the solutions “spect-actors” (the engaged audience) had offered during the performance. In some iterations of legislative theatre, a later step involves mock legislatures being created to debate bills drafted based on the laws or policies previously suggested in the theatre exercise.

Boal’s election campaign literature explained his rationale:

“I want to make politics but I don’t want to change my profession — I am a man of the theatre! For me, this was always possible and now it is necessary: Theatre is political and politics is theatre.”

Boal was one of 42 city councilors elected from a field of 1,000 candidates. Over the next four years, he developed the methods of legislative theatre, forming 19 permanent Theatre of the Oppressed companies in Rio, and from that work, introducing 30 pieces of legislation. In 13 of these 30 cases, as Boal put it, “desire became law” and laws were changed based on the proposals that emerged from the exercises.

Key theory

Theatre of the Oppressed

Like all Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed practices, legislative theatre trusts the wisdom of the audience, and provides them an opportunity to try out their ideas on stage to see how they might work in real life. Legislative theatre simply takes that process one step further, making a direct connection between the ideas generated in the theatre and the legislative process, which so desperately needs creative approaches to problem solving.