image courtesy of http://www.ctorio.org.br

Augusto Boal (1931–2009) was one of Brazil’s leading playwrights and theater directors. While obtaining a master’s degree at Columbia University’s School of Engineering, he began writing plays with the supervision of noted drama professor John Gassner, who worked with famous playwrights such as Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. Upon his return to Brazil, he joined the São Paulo repertory company, the Arena Theatre, and became director in 1956. As Brazil become more oppressive after the military coup, Boal began to write plays that drew upon the censorship, oppression, and torture enacted by the Brazilian military regime. His innovative plays combined dramatic and visual arts as well as music. In 1971, Boal was imprisoned and tortured by the military police for his subversive activity, and later exiled. In exile he wrote Theater of the Oppressed and Torquemada. Some of his other plays include Arena Conta Zumbi, Arena Conta Bolivar, Arena Conta Tiradentes, and Revolution in South America. Under the sponsorship of the New-York based Theater of Latin America, then run by Joanne Pottlitzer, Boal brought the Arena Theatre to the United States in 1970, when they presented Arena Conta Zumbi. The play was performed at the Latin American Fair of Opinion at St. Clement’s Church in New York. Read an interview with Augusto Boal by James Green.

“The campaign against the dictatorship had a good effect internally. The prisoners felt supported and the dictatorship was afraid. If they [the military] did what they did, everyone remained silent, and there had been no international repercussions, then they would have continued” — Augusto Boal