A Boal Companion

by M. Schutzman (Editor), Jan Cohen-Cruz (Editor)

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 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, and in doing so, the kinship between Boal’s project and multiple fields of social psychology, ethics, biology, comedy, trauma studies and political science is made visible. The ideas generated throughout A Boal Companion will: This collection is ideal for TO practitioners and scholars who want to expand their knowledge, but it also provides unfamiliar readers and new students to the discipline with an excellent study resource.

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006