About the Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory
by Marie-Claire PicherThe purpose of the Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory, founded in New York
City in July 1990, is to provide a forum for the practice, performance and
dissemination of the techniques of the Theater of the Oppressed. TOPLAB is a
group of educators, cultural and political activists and artists whose work is based
on extensive training and collaboration with Augusto Boal since its founding.
TOPLAB conducts on-site training workshops on theater as an organizing tool for
activists in neighborhood, labor, peace, human rights, youth and community-based
organizations. We work with educators, human service and mental health workers,
union organizers, and community activists who are interested in using interactive
theater as a tool for analyzing and exploring solutions to problems of oppression
and power that arise in the workplace, school, and community problems
connected to AIDS, substance abuse, family violence, homelessness,
unemployment, racism and sexism.Just as the principal goal of popular education is to change the power relations in
our society and to create mechanisms of collective power over all the structures of
society, so too the principal goal of the Laboratory is to help groups explore and
transform power relations of domination and subjugation that give rise to
oppression. Within this learning process: 1) all participants are learners; 2) all
participate in and contribute equally to the production of knowledge, which is a
continuous dialogue; 3) the learners are the subject and not the object of the
process; 4) the objective of the process is to liberate participants from both
internal and external oppression, so as to make them capable of changing their
reality, their lives, and the society they live in.Since 1990, through the auspices of The Brecht Forum, the Laboratory
has initiated and organized intensive workshops led by Augusto Boal in New York
City. It has also planned and led more than two hundred public training workshops
in the techniques of the Theater of the Oppressed. In this capacity, the Laboratory
has brought together people from diverse backgrounds, occupations, and
organizations, and functioned as a resource, information, and networking center
serving individuals and groups interested in theater for social change.The purpose of TOPLAB is to provide a forum for the practice, performance and
dissemination of the techniques of the Theater of the Oppressed. The
constituencies we work with are interested in using interactive theater as an
organizing tool to analyze, and explore solutions to, problems of oppresion and
power that arise in the workplace, school and community--problems connected to
racism, sexism, unemployment, homelessness, family violence, AIDS, substance
abuse, among others.The problem directly addressed by TOPLAB is one that underlies the very process
of organizing for democratic social change: the relationship of means to end. The
way people conceive of a specific problem--how they see themselves within it,
how they interact with others who share similar oppressions, and how they
organize (or not organize) to propose and achieve solutions, is part of the problem
itself. In other words, the nature of group process--specifically, the need to
establish democratic group process as the means to achieving participatory
democracy--needs to be addressed. One of the challenges of organizing, for
example, is that marginalized people often lack confidence in their own thinking
and ability to strategize, and therefore look to organizers for answers, and due to
expediency, they may not find within the group the necessary support structures
for developing strong leadership skills. Thus, despite meaningful victories the group
may be able to achieve by following the lead of the organizer, this dynamic
perpetuates long-term dependency and disempowerment.Therefore, just as the principal goal of popular education is to change the power
relations in our society and to create mechanisms of collective power over the
structures of society, so too the principal goal of the Theater of the Oppressed
Laboratory is to help groups, within the context of a democratic learning process,
confront and transform power relations of domination and subjugation that give
rise to oppression. Within this learning process: 1) all participants are learners; 2)
all participate in and contribute equally to the production of knowledge, which is a
continuous dialogue; 3) the learners are the subject and not the object of the
process; 4) the objective of the process is to liberate participants from both
internal and external oppression, so as to make them capable of changing their
reality, their lives and the society they live in.The Laboratory has given workshops in the New York City public schools, and at
collegesand universities in New York and elsewhere, and has developed and
conducted on-site workshops with different community organizations to explore
problems specific to their particular work: the role of the arts in the struggle
against racism, at the North Star Conference; building solidarity among women, at
the Urban Pathways/Travelers Hotel Women's Shelter; AIDS prevention, with the
Shaman Theater-Pregones-ASPIRA coalition; and promoting health among
homeless people with HIV/AIDS, at the Foundation for Research on Sexually
Transmitted Diseases. The Laboratory also led a workshop at the April 1995
teach-in in New York, "Out from under the Bell Curve: A Teach-in on Confronting
Right-wing Ideology and Social Policy," and presents workshops each year at the
annual Socialist Scholars Conference held in New York City. Members of the
Laboratory attended the International Festivals of the Theater of the Oppressed
held in France in 1991 and in Rio de Janeiro in 1993, strengthening relations with
theater activists from twenty-two different countries, while planning the creation
of an International Association of the Theater of the Oppressed.The Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory has presented workshops in indigenous
communities of the Los Altos and Las Canadas regions of the Mexican state of
Chiapas, and worked with the Diocese of San Cristobal de las Casas in the cities of
Comitan and and San Cristobal, offering training workshops for social justice
workers and educators. Other work in Mexico included training peace and social
activists who were part of a youth community in the state of Tabasco, and with
street children in Mexico City, and peace and solidarity groups based in the capital.
TOPLAB was also a participant in the International Festival of Alternative Theater
(Reunion Internacional de Especialistas en Teatro Alternativa), held in Mexico City
in 1997.TOPLAB has also presented workshops in El Quiche, Guatemala in conjunction
with Caritas for health and literacy educators, women's rights groups, and
community organizers, and in an alcoholism treatment center, working with both
clients and recovery professionals, and presented a staff-development workshop in
Guatemala City for psychologists and teachers of at-risk pupils.In addition to targeted training workshops, TOPLAB members have worked in
various street theater projects around the themes of globalization, neoliberalism
and international solidarity, and to protest United States aggression in Iraq and the
Balkans.The Laboratory also gives advice and support to individuals and groups who use
the techniques of the Theater of the Oppressed in their particular field (education,
social work, community organizing, the arts). The Images Theater Collective, for
instance, grew out of the meetings and study sessions led by the Laboratory on
the political potential of interactive theater. In 1992, as part of the movement to
counter the official Columbus Quincentennial celebrations, the Collective wrote and
performed a play, based on Image Theater techniques, on colonial oppression and
resistance in Latin America. In addition, as a result of Laboratory activity, Theater
of the Oppressed theory and techniques have been integrated into the basic
curriculum of both the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre Training Unit and the
Education Program of the Latino Experimental Fantastic Theater. Finally, in 1993,
the Laboratory became an independent affiliate of the Institute for Popular
Education at The Brecht Forum, established to promote the Paulo Freire approach
to popular education.TOPLAB will neither facilitate workshops for, nor accept funding from for-profit
corporations and similar enterprises."We must emphasize: What Brecht does not want is that the
spectators continue to leave their brains with their hats upon entering the
theater, as do bourgeois spectators."
--Augusto BoalTOPLAB can be contacted at
c/o The Brecht Forum
122 West 27 Street 10 floor
New York, New York 10001
Phone (212) 924-1858; fax (212) 674-6506
http://www.toplab.org