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“Theatre for change has a powerful and empowering impact on its audience/percipients only when there is a significant amount of interactivity and the audience/percipients directly impact on the dramatic action in some way.”

It is important to begin first by taking a look on the plot for the ‘Dramatic’ theatre then we are able to see why theatre for change can have a powerful and empowering impact on its audience with or without any interactivity between the actors and the audience.

The ‘Dramatic’ theatre has a beginning, middle and end; and finally issues raised in the play are eventually resolved. The audience is drawn into the plot and made to identify himself with the characters, the means by which this is achieved misrepresent the picture of reality, and the audience is too contentedly spellbind to see that it is not real. John Willett, the author of Brecht on Theatre: The Development on Aesthetic points that however brilliant the production, its effect is to put the audience in an uncritical frame of mind.

Bertolt Brecht, the poet and a playwright, develops his theory of the ‘epic drama’ has made a clear distinction between what he called the ‘Dramatic’ theatre and the ‘Epic’.

He sees the ‘Dramatic’ theatre as a theatre of illusion; that it makes the audience identifies with the hero to the point of self-oblivion. He thinks that the resulting feelings of terror and pity ultimately lead to an emotional catharsis will prevent the audience from thinking; sucking the audience into a dream world where all problems are carefully resolved at the conclusion of the play, so that the audience could leave those problems behind on leaving the theatre. Brecht’s argument suggest that such emotion presented on the audience will only makes it harder for them to understand the world in which they really lives.

The key to Brecht’s theatre is the changing of the world. He defines his ‘Epic’ theatre as challenging this dream world; he wants a spectator to stay awake and alert throughout the play. His goal is to turn his audience into an observer, forcing them to distance themselves from the stage and contemplate on the action takes place on stage. It is designed to provoke the audience into not only thinking about the play, but to leave the theatre with a task to be accomplished in the real world. By this what Brecht mean is the social overhaul of the society, such as the productive strength of individual; the working out of individual differences in terms of needs, abilities, and pleasures.

The play will have to communicate to the audience an insight into human and social processes in an enjoyable way at the same time derive pleasure from taking up a critical attitude towards the stories being enacted. To accomplish his goal, Brecht sought to prevent illusion but focuses on cruel action, harsh and realistic scenes. Perhaps appealing less to the feelings of the audience instead he or she must come to grip and reason with things. The actor in the ‘Epic’ theatre adopts a particular style of acting called ‘gestus’. ‘Gestus’ is the combination of gesture and facial expression and body language deliberately used to create meaning and communicate a message to the audience. The actor will express his knowledge of the fact that he is being looked at; and consequently the awareness of being on display will save the actor from the temptation of excessive intensity of emotion. The actor will remain detach from the character he is playing and clearly inviting criticism of him. He will use this style of acting to provoke debate and educate the audience.

As far as acting is about this is what Brecht’s ‘verfremdungseffekt’ is all about; and Brecht’s ‘verfremdungseffekt’ is not only regarded as a destruction of habits, but also that new habits be created through ‘alienation’. It is simply a matter of detachment involves the use of techniques design to distance the audience from emotional involvement in the play through jolting reminders of the artificiality of the theatrical performance. The actor will demonstrate like a bystander describing an accident; he must remember his first reactions to the character whom he represents, and keep them fresh; must view him from a socially critical angle; must show his own point of view; must treat the story not as ‘broadly human’ but as historical, unique (Willett, 179). Only through this ‘verfremdungseffekt’ mode of presentation, accounting for things in specific historical and social terms rather than in general human terms, could a critical approach to the things presented be cultivated in the audience (Kleber, Pia and Visser, Colin, 43). The audience will then identifies himself with the actor as being an observer, and accordingly develop his attitude of observing or looking on. This style of acting should lead the audience to see the possibility for action in the world outside the theatre.

In He Who Says Yes by Brecht and Weill, a school opera about a teacher and three older students plan on an arduous mountain pilgrimage to obtain medicine and instruction in the city beyond the mountains where there are great doctors. One of the teacher’s younger students wants to join in order to obtain medicine for his ailing mother. The teacher tries to dissuade the boy but he persists and even agrees to abide by the group's every custom. This includes one that decrees that anyone who becomes ill is asked if the group should turn back and face disgrace or move on even if that means he will be left behind in the mountain. True enough mid way through the journey, the boy is not equal to the exertion; he falls sick. He must decide between his own welfare and the general good. The young boy has finally given the consent to be left behind and even beg the group not to let him lie alone in the mountain but to hurl him into the valley, for he is afraid to die alone.

The play opens with The Great Chorus: ‘What we must learn above all is consent. Many say yes, and yet there is no consent. Many are not asked, and many consent to wrong things. There fore: what we must learn all is consent.’

This beginning chorus acts like an introduction to the play and its intention. The intention is a typical Brechtian call to action to try and make a social and political change on what we must learn about the meaning of giving consent. With this introduction by the Great Chorus it has already begin to propel the audience to think critically about the play.

In another scene, when the Three Students, to the teacher: ‘We hear this boy is tired from climbing. What is the matter with him? Are you anxious about him?’

The Teacher responds matter of course: ‘ He is not feeling well, but there is nothing wrong with him. He is tired from climbing.’

The Three Students, to the teacher again: ‘So you are not troubled about him?’

There is a long pause.

The Three Students, among themselves: ‘Did you hear that? The teacher said this boy was only tired from climbing. But is he not looking very strange? Right behind the hut is a narrow ridge. Only by gripping the sheer rock with both hands can one traverse it. We hope he is not ill. Because if he cannot go on, we must leave him here.’

The scene illustrates the idea about distanced acting, the ‘verfremdungseffekt’ whereby the characters are not emotionally engaging; there is no real interaction in the relationship between the characters; the conversation is formal and distance.

The last scene ends with the Three Students take from the young boy the jar he says to fill with medicine and bring it to his mother when they return from the city. They carry him and hurl him down the valley and the Great Chorus closes the play with:

Such performance can have a powerful and empowering impact on the audience. Not only the audience must be able to identify with the young boy’s suffering and the play must also provoke the audience to think about the cause of the boy’s death. How the bitter law has left the boy with no other choice but to give the consent to be left behind in the mountains. He knows he will not survive in the mountain alone and instead of being left to die alone he chooses to die by being hurled down the valley. The teacher’s acting mirror a social and political condition that needs to be changed and his role leads the audience to see his action is wrong and misguided.

The ‘Epic’ theatre may not exactly involves a significant amount of interactivity between the actor and the audience; and the audience has no direct impact on the dramatic action in any way like the ‘Forum’ theatre, however it is about trying to change the world, to strengthen the human will to live; and to treat despair not as a desperate end but as a beginning of productive doubt. The acting will signify: ‘I am showing you what these characters did and I am also showing you that they may have done the wrong thing. I am inviting you to look at these actions critically.’ In addition to that i t is to propel the audience to say: ‘I’d never have thought it. That’s not the way it should be. That’s bizarre and hardly believable; it has to stop. The sufferings of this man appal me, because they are unnecessary. Some action needs to be done to stop this suffering.’

Forum Theatre as Theatre of the Oppressed – its intention to transform the spectator into the protagonist of the theatrical action and by this transformation, to try to change the society rather than contenting ourselves with interpreting it – Augusto Boal

Ken Gewertz from Harvard Gazette Archives points that oppression, according to Augusto Boal, is when one person is dominated by the monologue of another and has no chance to reply. He also points that Boal's life is devoted to giving those who are in this one-down position the tools with which to express themselves and discover a way out of their powerlessness.

Boal, the founder of a movement known as "Theatre of the Oppressed" develops “Forum Theatre” a process whereby an audience member can stop a performance and suggests different actions for the actors, who will then act on the audience’s suggestions. What differentiates Theater of the Oppressed from other forms of ‘Dramatic’ theater is that it really does involve everyone. There is definitely a significant amount of interactivity between the audience and the actor and the audience can have a direct impact on the dramatic action in some way.

The audience in a Forum Theatre is no longer regarded as a spectator but a ‘spect-actor’. He will have the opportunity to both act and observe, and to engage in self-empowering processes of dialogue that help foster critical thinking. He is invited to go onstage to take part in the play and he is free to comment on the action or even to play roles of his choice. There is no boundary between stage and audience and there is a close relationship between audience and actor, which is used to resolve an issue. By allowing the audience member to participate on the play, he will become empower not only to imagine change but to discover new ways of resolving the dilemmas that the play presents . In follow-up exercises, the audience member will learn how to translate these insights into social action.

Forum Theatre takes the specific problems of a community and creates a universal story, where all of the members of the community have a stake in the play that will be presented. It is developed by professional artists, subject experts and the community group that deals with the issue at hand such as teenage abortion, battered wife; and other oppressed social issues. The play will run once for the audience members to see and the script presents is a worst-case situation or an anti-model for dealing with a social issue. The play builds to a crisis and stops there, offering no solutions. It is then run a second time with the audience members able to go onstage to ‘freeze’ the action at any point where they see an incident of oppression. To ‘freeze’ the action, the audience member will yell ‘stop!’ to intervene the play; and he will walk onto the stage to replaces the character he sees as being oppressed and tries to change the situation for the better.

One example of a Theatre for the Oppressed is based at St. Augustine, Trinidad. There is an outreach programme called Arts-In-Action that traveled the length and breadth of Trinidad reaching out to the people, mainly women and children in abusive situations, men in denial, and the silent children who speaks only with their eyes, domestic, violence, suicide, drugs, lack of self-esteem, etc. One such particular drama project involves a group of Golconda’s widows from the Nelson Island, off Trinidad. The drama session revealed the concern of the fate of so many women who outlive their husband; and all the participants are widowed women, aged between forty-five and eighty-two years. None of the women have any practical experience of formal drama or theatre at any stage of their lives. They come together to share their stories and role-playing the epic moments of their lives. They learn to discuss and deal with their emotional pain such as abusive husbands and children. The result for the sharing session based on live experience is crushingly poignant and rewarding. After the interactive drama activities and workshop, the women are able to shape their scenes again; it also helps to justify these old women’s lonely existence, giving them back some of their lost self-esteem, possible causing them to become vibrant members of their community once again, by empowering them to initiate positive changes.

There are many other forms of Theatre for the Oppressed that has similar powerful and empowering impact on its audience. Boal’s people's theatre such as newspaper theatre, invisible theatre, photo-romance, breaking of repression, myth theatre, analytical theatre; and rituals and masks are based on alienation devices which turn the ordinary elements of everyday life into the target of study and criticism. They all have a significant amount of interactivity and the audience has a direct impact on the dramatic action in some way. Take for example the Invisible theatre, one of the six types of the Theatre of the Oppressed by Boal, is based on deep play. The play usually happen in non-theatre public places such as shopping centres, the street or the train station. One or more performers will create a noticeable scene in the public, designs to attract discussion or debate. Once that is established, another actor will comes by and vocally expresses an opinion for or against the action being shown. Then another performer comes along and argues the opposite viewpoint, once again as vocally as possible. Gradually more and more members of the public are drawn into the debate.

There is no doubt Boal’s theatre is very much interactive and most of the time the audience is pulled into the performance , almost making them feel as though they were the ones performing. However it is not necessarily the theatre for change is powerful and empowering only when the audience is directly involved in the play. Brecht’s theatre for change is not as interactive as Boal’s but they both share the same objective, i.e. to increase people’s joy in living and to strengthen their will to live. It is only through interactive theatre and storytelling we can reach out to people and make them really think about the consequences of their actions on the global environment.

Boal, Augusto. Hamlet and the Baker’s Son. My Life in Theatre and Politics. 2001.

Kleber, Pia and Visser, Colin . Re-interpreting Brecht, His Influence on Contemporary

Huxley, M. & Witts, Noel. The 20 th Century Performance Reader. 2002. Routledge.

Willett, John. Brecht on Theatre. The Development on Aesthetic. 1992. Hill and Wang,

Lyndersay, Dani. Celebrating Their Seasons: Golconda’s Widows and Other Senior Citizens.