1st Edition

A Boal Companion Dialogues on Theatre and Cultural Politics

Edited By Jan Cohen-Cruz, Mady Schutzman Copyright 2006
224 Pages
by Routledge

224 Pages
by Routledge

224 Pages
by Routledge

This carefully constructed and thorough collection of theoretical engagements with Augusto Boal’s work is the first to look ’beyond Boal’ and critically assesses the Theatre of the Opressed (TO) movement in context. A Boal Companion looks at the cultural practices which inform TO and explore them within a larger frame of cultural politics and performance theory. The contributors put TO... Read more

Introduction

Mady Schutzman and Jan Cohen-Cruz

Politics and Performance(s) of Identity: Twenty-five Years of Brazilian Theatre (1954-79)

Campbell Briton

SECTION I: SITES

POLITICAL THEATRE: Staging the Political: Boal and the Horizons of Theatrical Commitment

Randy Martin

PEDAGOGY: Critical Interventions: The Meaning of Praxis

Deborah Muntnick

ACTIVISM: Tactical Carnival: Social Movement, Demonstrations, and Dialogical Performance

L.M. Bogad

THERAPY: Social Healing and Liberatory Politics: A Roundtable Discussion

Mady Schutzman with Brent Blair, Lori S. Katz, Helen Lorenz, and Marc D. Rich

LEGISLATING: Performing Democracy in the Streets: Participatory Budgeting and Legislative Theatre in Brazil

Gianpaolo Baiocchi

SECTION II: TROPES

ART AND EVERYDAY LIFE: Action in Feminist Performance Art

Suzanne Lacy

STORYTELLING: Redefining the Private: From Personal Storytelling to Political Act

Jan Cohen-Cruz

METAXIS: Metaxis: Dancing (in) the In-Between

Warren Linds

AESTHETIC SPACE: Aesthetics Space/Imaginative Geographies

Shari Popen

JOK(ER)ING: Joker Runs Wild

Mady Schutzman

WITNESSING: Witnessing Subjects: A Fool’s Help

Julie Salverson

SECTION III: IDEOLOGIES

POSTCOLONIAL THEORY: Re-envisioning Theatre, Activism, and Citizenship in Neocolonial Contexts

Awam Amkpa

FEMINIST THEORY: Negotiating Feminist Identities and Theatre of the Oppressed

Ann Elizabeth Armstrong

RACE THEORY: Unperforming "Race": Strategies for Re-Imagining Identity

Daniel Banks

Notes on Contributors

Index

Biography

Jan Cohen-Cruz wrote Local Acts: Community-based Performance in the US, edited Radical Street Performance, and, with Mady Schutzman, co-edited Playing Boal: Theatre, Therapy, Activism. She is an associate professor at NYU where she teaches in the Drama and the Art and Public Policy Departments.

Mady Schutzman is author of The Real Thing: Performance, hysteria, and advertising, and co-editor, with Jan Cohen-Cruz, of Playing Boal: Theatre, therapy, activism. She teaches at California Institute of the Arts and is an advisory board member of L.A. Center for Theatre of the Oppressed.

 

Jan Cohen-Cruz and Mady Schutzman hosted Boal at NYU in 1987-88, brought a group of 20 cultural practitioners to Rio de Janeiro for 3 weeks to study with Boal in 1989, and co-edited Playing Boal: Theatre, therapy, activism in 1994.

'[An] engaging collection of essays ... a fine contribution.' – Contemporary Theatre Review