The Theatre of the Oppressed is a participatory form of theatre developed by Brazilian drama theorist, political activist and theatre practitioner Augusto Boal. Originally developed to give poor and disenfranchised communities a more powerful voice, it soon grew into an international theatre movement. Importantly, it is a form of rehearsed theatre for non-actors. Multiple subsets…
Arguably all theatre is political, as playwrights compose from a particular point of view and the theatre they create depicts a time, place and society affected by given circumstances. Western theatre that is notably political began with the satires of Aristophanes in Ancient Greece. The modern movement was forged in Germany from the 1920s by…
Guerrilla theatre is a form of theatrical protest popularised in America in the 1960s by the San Fransisco Mime Troupe. Commedia dell’Arte and satire were actually the group’s principal modes of performance, not mime. At its purest, guerrilla theatre was left-wing political activism in the form of avant-garde performance in non-traditional spaces such as public parks and sidewalks.