Professor of Dramatic
Arts
Theatre of the Oppressed Joker and Speaker 
APOLOGIA!
For any who have looked for this web site the past year, it has been on hiatus. My university changed its relationship to personal faculty web pages and as a result the Theatre Department, my home at UNO, opted to house our web sites on a separate server. So this web page is going up again in the fall of 2005.
Happily, I have been able to update it considerably since than!
Remember, the address is: www.theatreoftheoppressed.com
The Theatre of the Oppressed was developed by Brazilian theatre director Augusto Boal during the 1950's and 1960's. In an effort to transform theatre from the "monologue" of traditional performance into a "dialogue" between audience and stage, Boal experimented with many kinds of interactive theatre. His explorations were based on the assumption that dialogue is the common, healthy dynamic between all humans, that all human beings desire and are capable of dialogue, and, I would argue, that dialogue with sounds, gestures, and words was the central activity whereby pre-humans became human. In turn, we create ourselves and others help create us through dialogue. Given this one essential feature of human nature, all other natures being derived from dialogue, Boal asserted that when a dialogue becomes a monologue, that is oppression. Theatre, in which dialogue with sound, gesture, and words are essential, then becomes an extraordinary tool for transforming monologue into dialogue. While some people make theatre, says Boal, “we all are theatre."
From his work Boal evolved various forms of theatre workshops and performances which aimed to meet the needs of all people for interaction, dialogue, action, critical thinking, and fun. The performance modes of the Theatre of the Oppressed include Forum Theatre, Image Theatre, Cop-In-The-Head, Invisible Theatre, the vast array of the Rainbow of Desire, and the astonishing new form, Legislative Theatre. All are designed to bring the audience into active relationship with the performance. In turn, the workshops are virtually a training ground for action not only in these performance forms, but for action in life.
The typical workshop is comprised of three kinds of activity. The first is background information on TO and the various exercises provided by the workshop Joker, known in other theatre contexts as workshop leader or facilitator (difficultator, as Boal prefers to describe it, because the issues are difficult). Such information begins the workshop, but is also interspersed throughout the games and exercises. Moreover, the group is brought together periodically to discuss responses to games and to ask questions of the various processes.
To be clear, Boal has coined the word Joker for workshop and performance leaders so as to make the position a “wild card” – with the power de-centered and with allegiance in performance to both audience and actors. The Joker is not a comedian.
The second kind of activity is the games. These are invariably highly-physical and yet enjoyable interactions designed to challenge us to truly listen to what we hear, feel what we touch, and see what we are looking at. The Arsenal of the Theatre of the Oppressed is extensive with over two hundred games and exercises listed in Boal's Games for Actors and Non-Actors alone. (Some years ago Boal's Center for the Theatre of the Oppressed in Paris -- CTO – Paris -- proceeded methodically through all the TO activities; the inventory took two years to cover.) Ultimately, these games serve to heighten our senses and de-mechanize the body, to get us out of habitual behavior as a prelude to moving beyond habitual thinking and interacting. We also become actively engaged with other participants, developing relationships and trust, and having a very good time.
Finally, the third area of activity involves the structured exercises. Although there is a kind of gray area at times when one might call an activity a game or an exercise, the exercises are formulated so as to infuse a given structure with genuine content. These activities are designed to highlight a particular area of TO practice such as Image Theatre, Forum Theatre, Rainbow of Desire, etc.
Image Theatre uses the human body as a tool of representing feelings, ideas, and relationships. Through sculpting others or using our own body to demonstrate a body position (and thus an emotional/intellectual content), participants create anything from one-person to large-group image sculptures that reflect the sculptor's impression of a situation or oppression. An example of Image activity might begin with the group selecting a subject involving an oppression they want to explore. The participants then stand in a large circle around three volunteer participants (now spect-actors). One person in the circle comes in and sculpts the three into an image of that chosen oppression as it seems to them, and returns to their place in the circle. The image should remain for perhaps 5 - 10 seconds, and then another person enters and creates a new three-person image. A pause, then another, and another, and another. No words are used or spoken. This is done for as long as the Joker senses there is vital, strong energy going into the activity. At close, the group talks about what they have seen, and the activity can branch into many other configurations.
Forum Theatre works from rehearsal improvisation to create a scene of specific oppression. Using the Greek terms "protagonist" and "antagonist," Forum Theatre seeks to show a person (the protagonist) who is trying to deal with an oppression and failing because of the resistance of one or more obstacles (the antagonists). Forum scenes can be virtual one-act plays or more often short scenes (1 - 5 minutes). In either case, a full presentation is offered to the audience, and at the end the protagonist fails. The joker (difficultator) then asks the audience, “Can this happen?” It is important for the spect-actors to affirm that yes, what is represented is true. If an audience says no, then there is no choice but to go onto another scene. We can’t intervene in a situation we believe has no validity. Given the scene’s validity, the joker asks the audience to talk among themselves. “What would you do if you were the protagonist who in our scene fails? Meet new people, form small groups, imagine what each of you would do.” After some minutes the Joker then says to the audience, “We will perform the scene again, and if you would do something different than what the protagonist (not the antagonist/(s)/) is doing, stand up and yell stop. We then invite you to come into the scene. The protagonist actor steps aside and the audience member replaces her him, the scene begins at the interruption, and the spect-actor whos their solution to the moment. Once the intervention is performed, the audience invariably applauds, and the joker invites the audience to discuss the proposed solution, and to offer even more solutions.
The Rainbow of Desire is Boal's extraordinary effort to apply TO approaches, especially Image Theatre, as a way of offering a systematic psycho-therapeutic technique (not therapy). Here TO addresses specific, individual oppression (mother/child, spouses, personal fears, etc.) rather than the social oppressions (race, gender, class, etc.) more at home in Forum and Image Theatre. Although too extensive both in theory and practice to summarize adequately here, suffice it to say that the Rainbow work seeks to exteriorize interior feelings and relationships, but to use a collaborative process. That is, for example, I might demonstrate a difficulty/oppression I am encountering in dealing with a sibling. I choose a person from the group to play the sibling, tell them what they must do and say in the demonstration, and then enact a key moment when my internal oppression might be at play. Those in the workshop (or even performance) watching my demonstration then come forward to demonstrate physical images of slices of my behavior -- my weaknesses and strengths. Those images are kept which the audience/other participants agree are fair representations of activity going on underneath my demonstration. Images are then added which externalize what the audience sees in the sibling. I eventually get to step out and watch the ongoing process, and even step back in to assume the images created by the spect-actors, images both myself and of my sibling.
Through an extended series of substitutions and parallel actions, the various images weave in and out of re-enactments of the initial scene. At the conclusion of this one exercise -- which could take as long as 2 - 3 hours -- the original scene is replayed with the intention that the protagonist will have learned more about some (perceived) strengths and weaknesses as well as (perceived) strengths and weaknesses of the antagonist.
Lectures/Presentations
The active work of Augusto Boal is supported by extensive theory and his own personal history. It is often useful in a residency situation for the workshops to be accompanied by public lecture/demonstrations and presentations on the theory and background of the Theatre of the Oppressed. These presentations also include analysis of the role of the work of Paulo Freire and the Pedagogy of the Oppressed canon. Particularly in focus here include the entire area of active learning, critical pedagogy, and the role Boal's theatre plays in generating such learning environments. Doug is particularly interested in visiting classes and communities outside of theatre in which a brief (or even extended) on-the-feet exploration of TO practice is desired.
To contact Doug Paterson for further possible dates and cost of work and other information, e.mail is most effective:
E. mail : dpaterson@mail.unomaha.edu
Fax: o: 402-554-3436
Contact Doug by e.mail for a quotation of costs: dpaterson@mail.unomaha.edu
Fees are generally lower for workshops in Omaha proper and in the immediate Omaha vicinity. Doug can reduce fees for non-profit organizations working with marginalized, disadvantaged populations, especially young people. In Omaha it is possible occasionally to offer pro-bono 1-to-2 day workshops for such organizations. If travel and/or lodging are required, the host organization is responsible for these costs regardless of fee arrangements. There are simple but important room requirements for the workshops and performances. Please inquire about these specific needs.
Professor Of Theatre, UNO
Practitioner of Community-Based Theatre Approaches
January, 1997
Doug Paterson is Professor of Dramatic Arts at the University of Nebraska at Omaha . He is co-founder of three theatres -- in 1977 the Dakota Theatre Caravan of South Dakota (TDR 98), in 1984 the Circle/Diner Theatre of Omaha, a neighborhood theatre where plays written about diners are performed in the environment of an actual diner, and the Omaha Public Theatre in Our Neighborhood in 1995 (OPTION, now in hibernation).
He received his BA degree from Yankton College (South Dakota) in 1968, and his Master's and Ph. D. from Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, in 1970 and 1972. Before coming to the University of Nebraska at Omaha, he taught at both Yankton College and at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, and committed two years of full-time work to the Dakota Theatre Caravan from 1979 - 1981.
Appointed to UNO's faculty in the College of Fine Arts in 1981, Doug served as Chair of the Dramatic Arts Department from 1984 – 1993, and for a year from 2000 - 2001. He continues to hold the rank of Professor at UNO and teaches full-time in the Department of Theatre. He also served as 1992 Vice-President for Conferences of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), during which year he organized the 1992 National ATHE Conference in Atlanta. It was at this conference that Doug introduced the ATHE membership to Augusto Boal. Boal conducted three major workshops at the Conference and was the Keynote speaker.
In the summer of 1993 Doug was privileged to attend the Seventh International Festival of the Theatre of the Oppressed sponsored by Augusto Boal in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
In 1994, he was elected national Vice-President for Planning and Projects of ATHE, an activity which has taken him into the area of advocacy for the arts, and especially for community-based theatre practice. In August, 1995, ATHE adopted the comprehensive Strategic Plan created by the very first ATHE Strategic Planning Committee which he led. Extensive implementation of the plan marked the culmination of his term, which expired in August, 1996. The Strategic Planning process itself continues.
In February 1995 he brought Augusto Boal to Omaha as Keynote Speaker of the First Annual Pedagogy of the Oppressed Conference and as workshop leader. The conference was so successful that the Second Annual Pedagogy Conference was held in Omaha in March, 1996, and featured both Boal and Pedagogy of the Oppressed author, Paulo Freire. The conference was, with Freire's participation, the largest academic conference ever held in Nebraska and attracted over 800 participants from 48 US states and 20 foreign countries. The 97 Conference, at which Dr. Freire was not present, attracted nearly 500 participants, making it among the largest of Nebraska's ongoing academic conferences.
Doug accompanied CTO - Omaha (Camillah Fairchild, Miguel Gutierrez, Karen Levin, and Laura Partridge, with assistance from Mark Weinberg) to Toronto in June, 1997, to attend and perform at the 8th International Festival of the Theatre of the Oppressed sponsored by Mixed Company. There they debuted their production of D'Liberate Blues and offered workshops for participants.
In May of 1997, Paulo Freire, one of the world's most passionate advocates for freedom and education for the oppresses and by the oppressed, passed away, barely a year after his appearance at the Second Annual Conference. He is sorely missed by his many friends and colleagues around the world. But in his work and writings, Paulo Freire is still among us, helping to effect the extraordinary changes for which we all yearn.
Doug's contact with Boal has led him to take up Forum and Image Theatre as tools for addressing issues of race, gender, class, disability, sexual orientation, and general privilege in education, social services, and the workplace. The Centers for the Theatre of the Oppressed, organized out of Rio de Janeiro, have been established in a half-dozen European capitals including London, Paris, Berlin, and Rome; related organizations have developed in India, Africa, Puerto Rico, and Canada.
Because of his work on the conference and the educational activities related to it during his sabbatical year, Doug was designated as Faculty Member of the Year by the College of Continuing Studies for 1994 - 1995.
Recent workshops Doug has developed are ideal for youth at risk as well as for a wide range of educational, training, community and business groups. In addition to addressing urgent social issues in a unique, playful, and yet compelling theatrical process, the workshops develop in participants greater confidence, enhanced communication skills, and a sense of perspective on their lives and the lives of those with whom they work and live. A nearly-immediate sense of community is developed and relationships or friendship established during workshops often last long after the activities are completed. Doug has given over a hundred major workshops since 1991. In September and early Octobers 1996 Doug presented workshops for students and faculty at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, for ninety youth leaders gathered in Minneapolis from the nation's small Lutheran colleges, forty administrators of the Accent Services Corporation (Omaha), and thirty participants at the HISPA Conference (Omaha), a national gathering of Hispanic employees of AT&T. In December 1996 he and colleague Mark Weinberg conducted a major workshop for the Austral-Asian Drama Society's national conference in Canberra, Australia, while he and the CTO Center in Omaha conducted an extensive training workshop for diversity trainers at First Data Resources, Omaha's largest corporation and employer. In June of 1997 CTO-Omaha attended the 8th International Festival of the Theatre of the Oppressed in Toronto, Canada, offered workshops, and presented their new Forum play, D'Liberate Blues.
In September and October 2001, Doug was a resident artist at the Acco Theatre Festival in Israel. His wife Margi joined him on this project and was instrumental in bringing unique points of view concerning US policy in the region. Over three weeks Doug worked with Israeli Arabs and Jews using Forum Theatre from the Theatre of the Oppressed techniques and developing scenarios for presentation and intervention as one of the Festival's featured performances.
In the fall of 2002 Doug Paterson was the Green Party candidate for US Congress from Nebraska’s Second Congressional District. He waged a spirited campaign and managed to garner over 2 1/2 % of the popular vote in Omaha’s large Douglas County. Aside from not “winning”, he and his team considered this a complete victory.
Doug was one of thirty-five American academics to visit Baghdad, Iraq, for an international Peace Symposium January 13 – 17, 2003. While there, he offered to twenty Iraqi university students a spontaneous workshop on techniques of Theatre of the Oppressed. He returned to the US to warn all he could that an Iraq invasion would prove at the best very difficult if not become a doomed policy in the long run.
In February 2004, Doug traveled to Monrovia, Liberia, Africa, to give 2 weeks of TO workshops for community activists with the intention of equipping them to be able to use the TO techniques more broadly in Monrovia and the country as part of exercises in democratization. His residency resulted in four scenes being performed in two Liberian villages and subsequently in the creation of an ongoing Center for the Theatre of the Oppressed in Monrovia.
May 2004 saw Doug and his wife Margi take a ten-day educational and cultural tour of Cuba with the UNO annual springtime Cuba class offered by Dr. Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado.
In the spring of 2005, Doug was designated the Teacher of the Year in the UNO College of Fine Arts.
Doug returned to Monrovia, Liberia, in May 2005, this time accompanied by Margi, to teach TO in such a way as to educate a number of Liberian Jokers. The project was enormously successful and there are currently 23 Liberians in Monrovia who are able to do the work of TO.
The future remains open and hopeful.
Schedule permitting, Doug is available year round to do workshops on the Theatre of the Oppressed.Back to top
Applied and Interactive Theater Guide, a resource for those who use theater techniques for other or more than arts or entertainment purposes, and for those whose theater styles incorporate other than traditional presentation styles: http://csep.sunyit.edu/~joel/guide.html
"Staging Areas: Inquiries into Community-Based Theater and Social Change", The mission of "Staging Areas" is to promote an ongoing inquiry into the process of change which happens when communities of people use theater, drama, and performance as a means for reflection, communication and empowerment. "Staging Areas" aims to help fill the need for a sustained, public documentation and analysis of community-based theater and drama activities by all who participate in them, and to promote information sharing among those who have been involved in the development of such activities. Many different types of communities and theater will be examined here by a variety of voices. "Staging Areas" welcomes submissions which deal thoughtfully with cultural, political, social or personal transformations through community-based performance. http://csep.sunyit.edu/~joel/STAGING/MISSIONS.HTM
Other Resources C.T.O. - BOAL 
For information by snail mail, please send a self-addressed envelope and two international reply coupons.
Michael Rohd
Mixed Company
THEATER OF THE
OPPRESSED LABORATORY (TOPLAB) 
Seattle Public
Theatre
12/17/97
This page designed on Microsoft Frontpage by A. Eikenberry. mailto:aeikenbe@cwis.unomaha.edu, 1997.
This Activist
Art Webring site owned by the Center for the
Theatre of the Oppressed-Omaha.
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