Research Review: Theatre of the Oppressed

Hey y’all, back again with another research review! 

Been doing a lot of reading lately that’s been deeply insightful, from Building a Character to The Shakespeare Riots to Metamodernism: The Future of Theory. Also, One Piece (almost done with Dressrosa~).

Still working my way through Riots and Metamodernism, but nonetheless all of them have been deeply insightful and useful for framing/building on a lot of thoughts I’ve had. That said, my reread of Theatre of the Oppressed has been wildly profound for me in a way that just need to share.

Marxist theatre practitioner Augusto Boal was born in 1931 in Rio de Jaeiro, Brazil. After studying at Columbia University and the Actors Studio, as well as being kidnapped off the streets, tortured, and exiled to Argentina after the 1964 Brazilian Military Coup, Boal founded the Theatre of the Oppressed, a theatrical form which sought to take the ideas presented by his close friend Paulo Freire within Pedagogy of the Oppressed and put them into practice on the stage.

Fun fact: Pedagogy of the Oppressed was the first Marxist theory text I personally ever read (or tried to; I was a bad student in my earliest college years)

This is not my first time reading Boal as he was required reading while I was in college. However, my original read was framed both my academic obligation and an incomplete understanding of politics as I was still but a wee baby leftist at the time. Reading it now though, both as someone with a much stronger investment in the subjects and ability to parse them as well as someone who's approaching to see what can be learned about gaming, it has been very enlightening to say the least.

Boal’s approach to theatre is fundamentally rooted in his view that the advent of classical Greek theatre, Greek tragedy in particular, was a result of the upper class seeking to control the natural impulse to play and create (What we would now often refer to as the ludic impulse). What was once an open forum of poets, musicians, orators, storytellers, and so on sharing their ideas freely was instead corralled onto the stage which was then tightly control by the finances and political power of the upper class.

To Boal, the theatre of the Greeks was created as a way to prevent those with imagination from sharing their vision of a better world, while reinforcing their own central importance in the world. It was a conduit by which the ruling class could control what speech was heard.

Here’s a quick question: What is the only kind of character that is absolutely essential within Greek Tragedy?

Someone with something great to lose, right?

And what kind of person might that be?

Certainly not someone who was already poor, vulnerable, downtrodden, and socially maligned. Quite to the contrary.

For a character to be truly tragic by the standards of Aristotle’s Poetics (the foundation of nearly all western theatrical forms), they need to fall, which requires them to be in a position of power - Kings, heroes, generals, the wealthy, the famous. The aristocracy. In this way, the aristocracy could justify using the medium to tell stories about itself, while demoting commoners to the position of a faceless chorus.

The general masses would then be further disempowered, their ability to add to or engage with these narratives stripped, disallowed from stepping on stage and contributing their own vision, left only to spectate with quiet, passive empathy as they pursue catharsis.

Pulling from Brecht, Boal uses this perspective to argue that empathy is used as a paradoxically defanging force. Make no mistake, Boal champions empathy as a vital tool for change and activism, but is still deeply skeptical of its deployment within political art and storytelling.

Empathy, by necessity, requires distancing: It demands you watch someone from the outside, RATHER than experience the feelings yourself. It is, inherently, feeling emotions by proxy. 

This empathy is why gives us catharsis, this purging of negative emotions which Aristotle views as the true point of theatre. We come in with unresolved feelings, watch a tragedy which makes us feel said emotions, and leave having purged them. But what emotions are we purging?

Fear and pity, so says Aristotle in Poetics. But is he right? And, moreover, why are those the emotions we seek to purge? What are we Fearing? What were we Pitying? Often we were fearing injustice, and piting those subject to it.

When you feel catharsis, you feel like whatever situation you were observing has been resolved; as though action has been taken. You are being purged of your desire to change what’s in front of you, as you’ve already experienced the definitive conclusion offered by tragedy.

You know that piece of advice that is given to people (particularly the neurodivergent) which effectively boils down to 'Don't tell anyone what productive thing you've decided to do, because once you do, your brain will give you the chemical reward as though you've already done it, thereby killing your motivation to actually do it'? This is basically the political art version of that.

This, according to Boal, is why theatre has historically been a less than ideal tool for instigating progressive social control: It was created with the purpose of preserving and reinforcing social norms, not challenging them.

It’s here I would push back against Boal slightly: Plays like Henrick Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and Clifford Odet’s Waiting for Lefty and their social impact prove he’s overstating the case a bit.

All the same though, I find the heart of his critique to be true. After all, as good as those plays were, they were only produced because someone, somewhere, who had a staggering amount of power and money decided that they were worth producing for their own purposes. Even now, within traditional theatre, those who with power decide what stories get told. It is a big part of why I’m here on YouTube and not out on a stage.

Thus we can begin to see why Boal sought not just a new form of tragedy, but to completely remake the theatrical medium from the ground up into something that would liberate those who are oppressed - A craft that would allow people to examine and discuss their own struggles with authority and, perhaps most importantly, what practical solutions might be done.

The full process by which he proposes this is of course dense and nuanced. I am leaving a great deal out for the sake of not making this hit novella length, so if this is sparking curiosity in you, I’d strongly recommend you check it out yourself. There’s a lot to be learned, especially for aspiring storytellers of any medium. To keep it simple and relevant to our purposes as a bunch of people who like video games:

First, they would run through a short play, 10-20 minutes in length. Then, after it was done, they’d go through it again, but this time granting the audience full permission to interrupt as they see fit and purpose different paths of action. The actors would then have to act out their suggestion to its logical conclusion, and occasionally be assisted by audience members who would come down to join them on stage, before then discussing with the audience how effective and practical that course of action was.

This is why Boal referred to his theatre as a dress rehearsal for the revolution.

The social control exerted by the fourth wall is removed, and replaced with an invitation to imagine the possibility for better. In this way, audiences were empowered not to empathize, but to take action as though what they were seeing in front of them were happening; to not experience catharsis, but leave them with a lingering desire to take action and the confidence to know what the right action might be. The character is changed from an object of action to an active subject of it.

This is here what initially drew me towards Boal and his writings again:

An approach that blurs the line between spectator and actor, which has the potential to eliminate distancing empathy and replace it with real, sincerely felt emotion. 

This sure sounds like narrative games, right?

Boal certainly seemed to think so - The book makes numerous references to using games as a starting point for waking people up to their material conditions, so much so that his next book was literally nothing but a series of improv games meant for non-actors. Boal was just as invested in games as a liberating force as he was in theatre. My man would have LOVED Pyre.

Oh hey, an integral relationship between how we play and how we interpret, I wonder if that will be relevant to the Haruspex video at all hmm.

As I said: I think there’s a lot to be learned here. Much of the analysis in the latter half of the Haruspex video is going to be trying to apply these ideas to games and considering their potential to eliminate that divide between empathy and action. Helps that it also feeds exceptionally well into the discussion of roleplaying we had at the end of the Bachelor’s video. This is unsurprising, as much of Boal’s own work was effectively seeking to blend Brecht’s theories on Epic Theatre, Stanislavski’s fixation on character analysis and role immersion, and a wholeeeeeee lotta Hegel.

I believe this could be a valuable framework for viewing the relationship between player and character, as well as the developer's place in facilitating that relationship. If our goal with single-player narrative games is ultimately to immerse a player within an assigned role, then we’d do well to look at the dramatic practitioners of the past who have already dedicated a lifetime of work to answering that question, even if they were doing so through the lens of a different medium.

That will be something to unpack at length in the final video, so I don’t wanna fixate on it too much here. If you’re curious though, the script for the Haruspex video is still available for review.

Rather, I’d like to wrap up with an aspect of this theory that really jumped out at me for non-video game reasons.

Within Boal’s theatre, he developed an ever-present role which he called ‘the joker’, named after the wild card in your normal deck of playing cards. Much like there, Boal’s joker is many potential things - A director, facilitator, debate moderator, actor, chorus, all within the same show.

The joker was an actor tasked with directing performances while keeping it on topic, and keeping the source material intact as they occasionally interrupt to offer analysis and historical context for the play. During a production of Antigone, for instance, a joker could interrupt to explain the historical norms of how women were treated as the property of their husbands and fathers in ancient Greece, or prompt the audience to discuss whether Creon or Antigone are in the right, and why they feel that way, before continuing on with the story.

They’re never so blunt as to tell the audience what they should think, indeed getting the audience to think and feel on their own is the point. Nonetheless, they do have an agenda and never really deny it, and their agenda is that of the entire theatre company’s. This was done largely because they felt that, otherwise, people would be prone to take away the most comforting reading which would disincentivize them from challenging their own preconceptions.

Critically though, the joker does not hide that they are doing this. Their agenda is never camouflaged even as it remains open to debate, because Boal ultimately trusted his audience to be able to come to their own conclusions, or at least to debate amongst themselves in a way which promoted understanding.

Now, I don’t wanna paint too broadly because I am oversimplifying here and leaving out a lot, there are a great number of roles and responsibilities to be maintained by the Joker which are not practically transferable to other mediums such as leading the chorus and engaging with the audience.

Yet it does not escape my notice that the heart of the approach - injecting an actor into a pre-existing story to give context while gilding the audience towards one specific interpretation of the text- is uhhhh… kinda what I do, right? And a lot of other video essayists too, to be clear, I am not that unique.

But also definitely me, right??

If nothing else, it does give me pause. I have a lot of goals with this channel, but one of those in recent times has increasingly been to inspire people to take action in a way that doesn’t feel condescending or hypocritical. It’s so easy for these things to feel hollow and preachy, it’s part of why it’s actually kinda rare for these things to have a substantial material impact. So if I know I’m already largely preaching to the choir, I wanna do my best to make that sermon useful.

In the update at the beginning of May, I half-joked that I realized my current approach to content means that I am now effectively making machinima. I still believe this for practical entertainment purposes and my own personal creativity, but this has forced me to reconsider a bit: Yes, the craft, the surface level elements, have tripped and fallen into being machinima, but this is still a far cry from Red vs Blue in its intentions.

I'm sure I'm not surprising anyone by saying that I don’t just want to entertain with the things I make (all of this would be much easier if that was all I wanted). My goal has always been to entertain while offering unique perspectives, educating people, and, yes, often having political goals. I never have and never will want to make strictly political content, but I still strive to consistently make work that is at heart both political and philosophical.

For that same reason though, while I love what I make, let’s also be blunt:

Much of it is me being dramatic while playing video games. It is, inherently, rather silly, especially in the context of trying to even distantly convey political ideas, and there are moments where it’s hard for me not to feel a little sheepish about it (even as I remain incredibly proud of it’s creative merits).

However, framing what I do as part of its own kind of theatrical history within a context of political art does a lot to make me believe in its own respectability, as well as its potential. I think there’s still a lot that can be done with this format I've found, and video essays more broadly, even silly gaming-focused ones.

The genre as we now know it is only around a decade old and still consistency shows maturing voices; new ways to approach the medium. At this point in the timeline of the development of games, we hadn't even gotten Super Mario Bros. In the grand scheme, we're still in the early days of a new form. I believe this vocabulary is only just fully developing, and there’s still a lot of room for growth.

In that same vein, this offers me a lot of tools as Ruby, the actual video maker. Ways to think about how to talk to the audience - talk to you - in ways that can make you feel not empathy, but direct emotion. Feeds in quite well with what I’m planning on for the ending of the Haruspex as well, so may give that bit another brief pass purely because of this. Ways to treat you as a subject to interact and engage with rather than a static object to plan my reactions to and, in that, treat you more as an equal rather than a faceless member of an audience.

When I tell you better things are still possible even now, I don’t want you to believe that I believe it because you empathize. I want you to believe it because you’ve felt that conclusion before I even said it.

I think it can be done. It’s just a matter of developing how. Ideally in time for the Changeling’s Route.

I guess all this also means I really do need to start streaming more. God damn it.

In time, once I’ve got a leash on these current projects again.

Anyways, I think that’s a good enough place to leave this for now. Again, I strongly recommend you check this out yourself if you strive to be any kind of political storyteller yourself. Even if none of these ideas clicked with you, something I didn’t mention will. Boal has a profound grasp on political art and there’s good reason he remains one of the most influential names in modern theatre to this day.

If you wanna know more otherwise, give me a few months to finish Haruspex and you’ll know more about how his theories apply to games than you ever could have wanted to know.

As ever, be sure to leave a like if you read this all the way through. Putting these together is quite fun and useful for me in it’s own way, but is also a decent chunk of time to write up. Knowing people read these all the way through does a lot to keep me motivated to make more.

I also may turn this into, like, a vlog thing next time. Might be better suited for both our purposes.

Anyways, thank you again as always for your support, and hope you enjoyed the nerdy ramble!

See ya again soon,
Ruby ~