The works of Taylor, Brecht, and Boal converge in their insistence of performance as a tool (or to echo Boal a ‘weapon’) in which knowledge production can be used to destabilize ruling powers and facilitate political transformation. Crucial to this process is the idea of alienation which both Brecht and Boal insist upon in their texts. Brecht insists upon a degree of artifice which is so clear to the audience that it allows reflection and avoids the passiveness the hyper-real theatre expects from their viewers. It seems that in order for the performance to affect the audience (or spect-actor) in a way that encourages them to critically question what they are experiencing, the performance theatrical tools must highlight artifice “…for character and all must not grow on the audience so much as strike it (Brecht, 197).” While in Brecht’s writing this process of disensuss, criticism, and alteration happens during a theatrical performance, and reverberates after the staging is over, in Boal we see tools that prepare the participants to act in staged and non-staged social situations. Boal, in the same way Brecht insists upon artifice, makes a case against empathy: a case against relinquishing power. In both of these theatre theorists, as well as in Taylor, we see an insistence on a mode of performance which trusts that all bodies present have an ability and possibility for action. These authors and their reflections on political performance invite, incite, and insist upon the potentiality of political action. They remind us that “disbelief can move mountains (Brecht, 189)”.