Augusto Boal

(1931 - 2009) Brazilian theatre director, writer and politician. He was the founder of Theatre of the Oppressed, a theatrical form originally used in radical popular education movements. Boal served one term as a vereador (the Brazilian equivalent of a city councillor) in Rio de Janeiro from 1993 to 1997, where he developed legislative theatre. Closely associated with the work and theories of cultural activist Paolo Freire, this South American revolutionary figure has been of cardinal importance in South African theatre. In particular his work on conscientization through theatre, and his ideas for the utilization of theatre for socio-political purposes have been enormously influential in the shaping of the protest theatre movement of the 1970s and 1980s, as well as the more socially conscious community work of the 1990s. The English version of his first, polemical book (Theatre of the Oppressed -1979) in particular influenced many local theatre practitioners and theorists during the cultural struggle, while his later handbook (Games for Actors and Non-Actors - 1992), became an important tool in the post-apartheid period.