Augusto Boal > Quotes

“It is forbidden to walk on the grass. It is not forbidden to fly over the grass.”
― Augusto Boal

“Theatre is the most perfect artistic form of coercion.”
― Augusto Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed

“The theater itself is not revolutionary: it is a rehearsal for the revolution." ~ Augusto Boal”
― Augusto Boal

“It is not the place of the theatre to show the correct path, but only to offer the means by which all possible paths may be examined.”
― Augusto Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed

“Empathy is the most powerful weapon [...]" ~ Augusto Boal”
― Augusto Boal

“The smallest incidents of our social life contain all the moral and political values of society, all its structures of domination and power, all its mechanisms of oppression.”
― Augusto Boal

“The Theatre of the Oppressed is theatre in this most archaic application of the word. In this usage, all human beings are Actors (they act!) and Spectators (they observe!)." ~ Augusto Boal”
― Augusto Boal

“Theatre is a form of knowledge; it should and can also be a means of transforming society. Theatre can help us build our future, rather than just waiting for it." ~”
― Augusto Boal

“Motion, according to him, is an illusion, because we can demonstrate that it does not actually exist; the same for the multiplicity of existing things, which are in his logic, a single being, infinite, eternal, unchangeable. Like Heraclitus, Parmenides too, had his radical disciple, named Zeno. The latter had the habit of telling two stories to prove the inexistence of motion.”
― Augusto Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed

“The poetics of the oppressed is essentially the poetics of liberation: the spectator no longer delegates power to the characters either to think or to act in his place. The spectator frees himself; he thinks and acts for himself! Theatre is action!" ~ Augusto Boal”
― Augusto Boal

“Gente como essa (...) não pode ser absolvida com o argumento de que é produto de uma sociedade, pois foram criados em sociedades que também produziram pessoas éticas. Nenhuma sociedade fabrica, "em série", os seus cidadãos — somos todos responsáveis por nossos atos.
Já algumas vezes ouvi o argumento vergonhoso de que até "Hitler não nasceu monstro, foi a sociedade que o tornou assim". Penso, ao contrário, que não podemos fingir ignorar que temos livre-arbítrio e somos responsáveis pelas escolhas que fazemos, cada um de nós, é claro, dentro de uma situação social e política concreta, que é poderosa e determinante, mas não exclusiva. A história dos povos e a biografia dos indivíduos não são obra da fatalidade. Construímos nossas vidas que não estão escritas nas linhas de nossas mãos, lidas por uma cigana.”
― Augusto Boal, Teatro do Oprimido e outras poéticas políticas

“A person to whom the oracles had said that he was going to marry his own mother and kill his own father would have to be a little careful and abstain from killing men old enough to be his father or marrying women old enough to be his mother.”
― Augusto Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed