The Tree
The Tree of the Theatre of the Oppressed
"The objective of the whole tree is to bring forth fruits, seeds and flowers: this is our desired goal, in order that the Theatre of the Oppressed may seek not only to understand reality, but to transform it to our liking.
We, the oppressed." Augusto Boal, Aesthetics of the Oppressed
I think Augusto started drawing his beloved tree sometime in the early 2000s. He had a couple of drawings that he liked to do as part of his courses – I always enjoyed his cartoon of a face, showing conscious, pre-conscious and subconscious – or the boiling pressure cooker used to illustrate the trilogy of personne, pesonnage and personalite, all possible outcomes, heated by theatre.
The tree is of course a much more mythical and elemental representation than either of these. The scientist in Augusto (his first degree was in chemistry) liked to schematize things, and perhaps it was also important to demonstrate that all aspects of TO - including the Rainbow of Desires which attracted some criticism at first from the left as a bourgeois indulgence – are linked and part of a single system. He was after all a man who had experimented with so many forms and applications of theatre in a long theatre-making life – perhaps the tree also was a way for he himself to make sense of all these experiments and adventures.
As a drawing, it speaks for itself, and most aspects require little clarification. The firmness of the grounding in politics and economy could be seen as a reminder to dilettantes, to people who only used TO games and workshops to play or to dabble, without any real intention to change the world; or, worse, those from the corporate sector he so disliked who abrogated his techniques and turned them to other ends. The multiplication in the soil pointed to the imperative to pass on the work, and how much that in turn feeds one's own work. Solidarity he reminds us is also a critical element of participation in TO, solidarity with all the oppressed who may turn to these tools. Solidarity as he reminded us, severely quoting Che Guevara, means running the same risks – something few of us can live up to all the time.
The Image and sound in the soil remind us of the importance of the core elements of the TWO vocabulary, common to all the branches above. Image reappears in the trunk, such is its centrality to the work, along with the equally vital Games. Games are after all the trick to entice all into the world of theatre making, the playful tool through which so much understanding can be arrived at, through which so much work can be achieved on the creation of community and common purpose.
And also in the trunk is Forum theatre, a form which goes across the others, particularly Rainbow, using replacement of characters as a way to walk in others’ shoes, to rehearse change and test ideas. Forum is of course the best known of Boal’s inventions, and perhaps the most used, after Image Theatre. The form of Forum allows it to be used with great simplicity or great sophistication – it will work either way.
Legislative Theatre has come more and more into its own, inviting as it does the participation of the powerful as well as the oppressed in the creation of solutions. Perhaps its invention was also a recognition of some of the limitations of Forum Theatre, which in its purer forms restricts its participation to those most directly affected by the oppression, the oppressed. But perversely, it risks delegating the change process to the powerful – in the same way forum theatre risks giving the less powerful the sole responsibility to bring about change. Both potential errors are easily enough avoided by dint of careful application. But the connecting of the Legislative Theatre branch makes clear that this technique is best applied as part of a larger process of change and theatre-making.
The Rainbow of Desires deals with internalised oppression. Of course it is very connected with the more openly political sides of TO, since it recognises that the forces that torment us internally or restrict our fields of action, ideas and limitations in our heads – these things do not come from nowhere, they are the outgrowths of ingrowths of political systems and brainwashing, which have led us to be who we think we are.
Some branches are now less practised. Invisible Theatre, essentially the creation of theatre in real life contexts without being revealed as such – sometimes this can risk being exploitative or manipulative or even at odds with the open audience inclusion so important to Forum Theatre. But it is great fun to do, and very powerful in the right hands and at the right moment.
Newspaper theatre is also less seen these days, but is arguably more important than ever, especially if it tackles all forms of media representation. The adoption of other means of reporting news, other modes of delivery, is revealing and often hysterically funny. In our age of polarisation, of media ownership and fake news, the more we get to see that the medium is the message, and the truth is often subjective, the better.
And then of course Direct Action. Since stepping down from leading a very respectable organisation, a charity which theoretically was not to participate in political actions, I have had both more freedom and more time to Do things. A bit like Tony Benn who said when he left parliament he would have more time to do politics. One of these projects has involved one of Stop’s co-founders, Lil Woods, and her mother Sarah, the musician Boff Whalley, film maker Alex Metcalfe and others, in the creation of Artists in Exile, which has been working in a very concrete and down-to-earth way to help Ukrainian and other artists escape that conflict and find refuge and support here. I have been reminded how much this kind of direct action feeds back into my theatre making, both in content and practice. Looking at Boal’s tree, we see how TO can be a holistic experience, how faith in changing the world can harness the power of all these branches and this solid trunk. It's good to be reminded.