Overview
Legislative theater is a participatory, community- based tool for proposing and enacting legislative and policy changes at any level of government.
Theater 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—a set of practices that empower people to change society using theater techniques and games—was faced with a dilemma. His theater work was an international sensation. Centers 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 theater was born.
To those who say that theater is nice but has no tangible outcomes, legislative theater may be the answer.
Legislative theater involves a short play about a particular issue or set of issues that ends in a crisis that the audience is invited to help solve by taking the place of one of the characters on stage. Audience interventions are followed by a brainstorm and discussion of policies or laws that could solve 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 theater, mock legislatures debate bills drafted based on the laws or policies previously suggested in the theater 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 theater! For me, this was always possible and now it is necessary: Theater is political and politics is theater.”
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 theater, forming 19 permanent Theatre of the Oppressed companies in Rio, which led to the introduction of 30 pieces of legislation, 13 of which resulted in legal changes.
The version of legislative theater Boal developed while he was a city councilor was an ideal arrangement that has proven difficult to match since. In his case, the elected official was the main convenor of the process, and was therefore in a position to act on the recommendations that emerged. In other cases, without one or more elected officials directly involved in the project, or without a firm and genuine commitment to the project from elected officials, it may be harder to achieve such results. Therefore, it is advisable to seek out legislators who are willing to play a role throughout the process, including fighting for the resulting recommendations in the actual legislature.
Like all Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed practices, legislative theater 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 theater simply takes that process one step further, making a direct connection between the ideas generated in the theater and the legislative process, which so desperately needs creative approaches to problem solving.
