A Boal Companion, Dialogues on Theatre and Cultural Politics

Edited by Jan Cohen-Cruz and Mady Schutzman
(Routledge 2006)

Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) is often referred to as a body of theatrical techniques, yet this does not do justice to the rich contribution of Brazilian theater director Augusto Boal, TO’s founder and innovator of over 40 years.

A Boal Companion explores performative and cultural ideas and practices that inform Boal’s work by putting them alongside those from related disciplines. Contributors to this anthology put TO into dialogue with complexity theory, Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Levinas, race theory, feminist performance art, Deleuze and Guattari, and liberation psychology to name just a few. In this way, kinship between Boal’s project and multiple fields including social psychology, ethics, biology, comedy, trauma studies, and political science is made visible.

Cohen-Cruz is an associate professor of drama in the Tisch School of the Arts