I have just finished writing a research essay for Pedro on Augusto Boal, focusing on his book 'Theatre of the Oppressed'. I feel like I have been drowning in Boal! Nevertheless, I'm sure when I recover from the pain of assignment-writing his theories will remain as appealing to me as they always have been.
Boal's work shows me that artistic fulfillment and helping others can be the same thing - his theatre is aimed at empowering people through theatre action - the spectators are also the actors and therefore participate in a "rehearsal for revolution". Obviously I have explained it all in horribly thorough detail in my actual essay. The reason I'm writing this is because there are some things that can't be put into essays, but which I still want to say.
As much as I loved reading about Boal's work and ideas, his writing was incredibly annoying! His main arguments were so strong and yet they felt weakened by the way he investigated them in such enormous and unnecessary detail. It was obvious that he was finding a route to justify his thoughts, rather than developing his thinking through the investigations he was writing about. As a result, there were a lot of logical fallacies in the writing, and a lot of jumping to not-so-conclusive conclusions. The sad thing is that I think the things he was trying to justify were true anyway, and he only undermined himself in his quest for academic integrity :-(
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