Brechts Impact on the Work of Boal

Brecht’s Influence on Boal: An Examination
Attempting to trace the influence on a particular artist can always pose a host of problems, given the fact that in the lifetime of an artist, they have been impacted by a host of artistic influences. However, the work of Boal has a very evident debt to Bertolt Brecht, most notably in Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed (Babbage, 6). This work make constant reference to Brecht’s thoughts on Epic Theatre, and orbits around many of Brecht’s motifs on politics and anti-illusionism, along with a critical production aesthetic (Babbage, 6). This paper will examine how the work of Augusto Boal via his Theatre of the Oppressed, was undeniably influenced by the work of Bertolt Brecht.
One aspect of Brecht’s profound influence on the work of Boal, and arguably on so many artists of the era, was that he encouraged a new means of thinking about theatre and about the world at large. “Brecht was revolutionary in that he drew the audience into his works and encouraged them to think in a whole new way -- about theater but also about the society they were living in” (Bowen). This goal meant that Brecht’s entire approach to theatre was innovative, in order to match his subversive goals. This was not a playwright who believed in art for art’s sake, rather he believed that there was change that needed to occur in the world, and art was a way for this change to occur. “Brecht wanted his audiences' critical stance toward the theater to translate into a critical stance toward society itself” (Bowen). Thus, with the work of Brecht, there are two levels of enjoyment: one can enjoy it on purely the aesthetic level, and one can enjoy it as a signal for change as it needs to happen, in places such as third world countries. This influence is readily seen in the work of Boal. Boal’s plays would often revolve around a pervasive social issue, except that he would portray it in such a manner that the audience would understand the underlying message that he was getting out. He would demonstrate the relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed in a manner that would resonate with the audience.
Brecht appeared to value the more practical aspect of theatre and the work of transferring a message to the audience. His primary objective was to “unwrap the packing” so that the audience would not be so swept away by the performance but rather by struck by the essence of the play in its entirety. Brecht’s influence on Boal is demonstrated via Boal’s mirrored belief that the goal of theatre would be to provide a message, but to even go further and assist people in understanding the answer to their oppression. Boal in certain respects goes one step further than Brecht, in that he provides a forum so that the audience can express what they feel and gives them a medium to communicate those feelings.
Brecht’s Spartan approach to theatre was one of his trademark approaches. In some of the plays of Brecht, he would not even have a backdrop on the stage and would not even permit the lights in the theatre to be turned off. In this manner the spectator felt more removed from the process of theatre, and felt more as though he was bearing witness to an overall message. This unraveling of the norms of the theatre no doubt influenced Boal. After a performance of one of his plays, he would ask the audience to complete it or suggest different endings to it. This is a clear deconstruction of the typical and established norms of theatre, something that was no doubt inspired by Brecht’s heavy legacy of constantly subverting the rules and expectations of theatre. Brecht was a strong socially minded playwright and an aspect that impacted Boal.

Boal did give credit to Brecht as being one of his main influencers, largely crediting Brecht as the first playwright to shatter the traditional Aristotelian conventions of theatre. So many of the ways in which Brecht would deconstruct theatre were done specifically to raise the consciousness of the audience, sometimes referred to agitprop or agitation propaganda theatre (Robinson). “Like Boal, Brecht opposed the use of empathy. Instead, he tried to make spectators watch plays in a detached, estranged way. He does this through a distancing effect which makes the social relations underlying theatrical stories visible” (Robinson). In order to understand Brecht’s influence on Boal, one needs to truly understand how Aristotle’s method had such a profound influence on theatre, actors, plays and presentation: Aristotle treated individuals as actors and theater as an objective smash between a host of subjective factors with actions originating in personal character (Robinson). Brecht’s plays exist in direct opposition to this notion, denying the freedom of the characters, rendering them as mere objects of socio-economic forces under the influence of objective forces that cause them to act (Robinson). Hence, Brecht ensures that none of the people on stage have actual character traits that are their own or which can be found in human nature. Rather, the characters that he puts on stage are extensions of socially constructed roles (Robinson).
Boal, in his own way, opposes the main factors of the Aristotelian/Idealist theatre and Brechtian theatre: “…among others, human nature vs social construction or alteration, emotion vs reason, action vs. narration, empathy vs. the historicisation of action, and maladaptation vs. social problems as the cause of dramatic action. The replacement of empathy with historicisation is particularly important, in that it allows the spectator to act” (Robinson). Thus, Brecht’s influence on Boal is clear and apparent, particularly in the manner that Boal attempts to move beyond the parameters set by Brecht. Boal has what one might argue is a hyper-awareness of Brecht’s division between the actor and the spectator and that Boal wanted to transcend the act of passively telling a story to the audience, something that was still present in the work of Brecht, despite Brecht’s many deconstructions of the art form. Boal saw that speech is power and that as long as the spectator didn’t have the power to speak, they would remind alienated. This is in part why he would have audiences suggest an ending for his plays, in order to create a more transformative experience where the spectator was not only part of the play, but had a hand in shaping the direction of the narrative. However, many see this approach of Boal as a heavily influenced by Brecht’s Lehrstück experiments in the 1930s. Many argue that Boal’s attempts to engage the audience are just new manifestations of what Brecht had already been doing for years. Furthermore, Boal’s rejection that popular art should have an emotive quality is something that Brecht had already long established as a practitioner of theatre.
In conclusion, the influence of Bertolt Brecht was widely felt on the art world on a number of artists, one of which was Augusto Boal. Boal’s work shows the undeniable impact of Brecht in that there’s an attentive adherence to social issues and there’s a deconstruction of many of the more traditional norms of theatre. Boal appeared to imitate Brecht’s austere aesthetics, his belief that actors should have a non-emotive quality, and his attempt to deconstruct the role of the audience, giving them more agency in the story-telling of the play.



Works Cited
Babbage, F. Augusto Boal. Routledge, 2004.
Bowen, Kate. "?Bertolt Brecht?s Influence Cannot Be Overestimated? | Culture | DW | 11.08.2006." DW.COM, 8 Nov. 2006, www.dw.com/en/bertolt-brechts-influence- cannot-be-overestimated/a-2127719. Accessed 8 Oct. 2017.
Robinson, Andrew. "Augusto Boal: Brecht and Beyond – The Boal Method." Ceasefire Magazine, 20 Aug. 2016, ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/augusto-boal-brecht-boal- method/. Accessed 8 Oct. 2017.