Blog #1: Image theatre workshop

Since this is my first blog entry and the reading wasn’t very long, I thought I’d take this opportunity to expound on my limited background with Theatre of the Oppressed. I was first introduced to Augusto Boal and his ideas during my eleventh grade IB Theatre class, in a unit that covered predominantly invisible theatre and image theatre. I was asked to participate in a small invisible theatre piece within the class to start the unit, but what most interested me was a workshop we did on image theatre.

For this activity we broke off into pairs: one person was the sculptor, and the other person acted as the clay. In silence, the sculptor had to physically “mold” their partner into a position that represented a time when they felt oppressed, and the emotions associated with this situation. When the sculptors were finished, they moved around the room to view the images. Then, the sculptors had to alter their image of oppression to show how they might have resisted said oppression, and the group surveyed the sculptures again. Partners switched roles, and the activity was repeated.

I was strongly affected by this workshop, both as a sculptor and a model. It was helpful to represent my emotions using another person, as I could view my model objectively and present a better image of repression than if I had been sculpting myself. It was also freeing to be sculpted. My oppressed position was very cramped and low to the ground, whereas my resistance position was much more open. Through physical representations of repression I came to empathize greatly with my partner and the rest of the class.