Looking back at last week’s readings in light of Boal, Brecht and Taylor’s text for this week, is possible to draw a line of thought connecting political participation and spectatorial participation. The question would then be: Does contemporary art still have the potential for “turning society upside down” (Brecht 185) and redistributing the sensible? If spectators are “taught to refrain from intervening or resisting the hegemonic vision of persuasive drama” (Taylor 77), what happens when the situation staged demands for the active participation of its spectators? Brecht’s Marxist theater is one that invites the spectator to participate in a critical way – more intellectual than sensorial, also resisting the “alienation effect” – where “the rules emerging from this life in society are treated as imperfect and provisional” (Brecht 205), “impermanent” (Brecht 190) and where all “actions [are] performed as experiments” (Brecht 195).
Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed follows similar guidelines, believing that “todo teatro é necessariamente político” (Boal 13), for all human activity is – potentially – political. However, while Brecht’s dialetical approach is based on the role of the actors as responsible to employ and encourage “thoughts and feelings which help transform the field [of human relations] itself” (Brecht 190), Boal invests the spectators with the power to transform the “scene”, and to interfere actively and critically – thus the use of the term “spect-actors” – in order to change what was previously staged. It is important to note that both texts were written during oppressive historical circumstances, Brecht in response to the European fascisms of the 1930s and ’40s; and Boal in the context of the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964-1985). Arguably, harsh political circumstances call for new artistic interventions, expanding the horizon of the visible, audible and sayable, the distribution of the sensible.
To finish, I would like to highlight the pedagogical strategy in this week’s books. The three of them seem to have not the expert, but the common folk in mind, making their points (and political views) clear and accessible, as well as practical, in the sense that they can be performed and acted out in the real world, and not only as theory.