Augusto Boal Workshop NY May 15-17

I got this email from TOPLAB. If you are able, please check it out.

I took a workshop with Augusto about 10 years ago and it was fantastic.

Adam
===================

Please forward or repost

The Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory (TOPLAB)
451 West Street
New York, New York 10014
(212) 924-1858
toplab@toplab.org
http://www.toplab.org

Because a few registered participants had to drop out of the Aesthetics of
the Oppressed workshop that is to be facilitated by Augusto Boal, a small
number of places have opened up for those sessions.

The first workshop, Rainbow of Desire into Forum Theater, remains
completely filled and registration is closed.

If you would like to be considered for one of the places in the Aesthetics
of the Oppressed workshop please fill out the application form that is
appended below and return it to us at toplab@toplab.org.

The workshop takes place from Thursday, May 15 through Saturday, May 17,
2008 from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm, all three days. Tuition is $550. No
scholarships or tuition discounts are available and tuition must be paid
online upon acceptance.

We expect that these workshop places will be filled quickly and, while
acceptance is not guaranteed, they will probably be given to those who
apply the earliest.

The workshop will take place at the Brecht Forum, 451 West Street, New
York City.

A description of the Aesthetics of the Oppressed workshop follows.

And don't forget about the public performance/demonstration with Augusto
Boal on Tuesday, May 13 from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm at The Riverside Church,
91 Claremont Avenue, New York City. Online reservations can be made at
http://brechtforum.org/node/1613?bc=

========================================================================
TOPLAB is pleased to announce that Augusto Boal has been nominated for a
Nobel Peace Prize!
========================================================================

The Aesthetics of the Oppressed: Games, Techniques and Dialogues

facilitated by Augusto Boal, with assistance from Julian Boal and TOPLAB
facilitators

Thursday, May 15 from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm,
Friday, May 16 from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm, and
Saturday, May 17 from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm

This workshop will combine basic and advanced Image Theater exercises and
techniques with theoretical and practical dialogues and discussions with
Augusto Boal on aspects of Theater of the Oppressed principles, praxis and
facilitation. This is the integrated arts approach used at Boal's Center
for the Theater of the Oppressed in Rio de Janeiro and consideration of
Boal's new ideas and recent formulations concerning the aesthetics of the
oppressed will be included in this workshop.

Image Theater is designed to develop individual skills of observation and
self-reflection, and cooperative group interaction. Leadership-building
and consensus-building games and techniques explore relations of power
and group solutions to concrete problems through "living body imagery."
Discussions begin through the language of images, offering a fresh
approach to power analysis and new opportunities for the exchange of
ideas.

Tuition: $550

*****

Application to the Aesthetics of the Oppressed:

Please fill out this application and return it to toplab@toplab.org
You will be notified as soon as possible about your acceptance. DO NOT SEND
ATTACHMENTS. EMAIL CONTAINING ATTACHMENTS WILL BE DELETED UNREAD.

Name

Address

City

State/Province

ZIP/Postal code

Country

Daytime telephone

Evening telephone

Cell phone

Email

Alternate email (if any)

Website (if any)

1. Please tell us what, if any, experience you have had with Theater of
the Oppressed, or with theater generally. (Note that theater experience
or background is not in and of itself a sufficient criterion for
acceptance. Similarly, lack of theater experience does not disqualify
anyone from being accepted. Most participants in TOPLAB workshops have
not had any theater or drama training.)

2. Tell us about your involvement in or work with social-change
movements or organizations.

3. What do you hope to get out of these workshops? Do you plan to use
the techniques in your social action work? How?

4. Are you a member of a labor union? If so, which one? Are you a
student? If so, where? Are you a teacher? If so, where?

5. Tell us about any foreign travel experience, especially in
underdeveloped or developing countries.

6. How did you hear about the Theater of the Oppressed and the Theater
of the Oppressed Laboratory?

7. Any other comments or info about yourself?

*****

======================================================================
"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 Boal
======================================================================

The Theater of the Oppressed, established in the early 1970s by
Brasilian director and Workers' Party (PT) activist Augusto Boal, is a
form of popular theater, of, by, and for people engaged in the struggle
for liberation. More specifically, it is a rehearsal theater designed
for people who want to learn ways of fighting back against oppression in
their daily lives. In the Theater of the Oppressed, oppression is
defined, in part, as a power dynamic based on monologue rather than
dialogue; a relation of domination and command that prohibits the
oppressed from being who they are and from exercising their basic human
rights. Accordingly, the Theater of the Oppressed is a participatory
theater that fosters democratic and cooperative forms of interaction
among participants. Theater is emphasized not as a spectacle but rather
as a language designed to: 1) analyze and discuss problems of oppression
and power; and 2) explore group solutions to these problems. This
language is accessible to all.

Bridging the separation between actor (the one who acts) and spectator
(the one who observes but is not permitted to intervene in the
theatrical situation), the Theater of the Oppressed is practiced by
"spect-actors" who have the opportunity to both act and observe, and who
engage in self-empowering processes of dialogue that help foster
critical thinking. The theatrical act is thus experienced as conscious
intervention, as a rehearsal for social action rooted in a collective
analysis of shared problems of oppression. This particular type of
interactive theater is rooted in the pedagogical and political
principles specific to the popular education method developed by
Brazilian educator Paulo Freire: 1) to see the situation lived by the
participants; 2) to analyze the root causes of the situation; and 3) to
act to change the situation following the precepts of social justice.

Augusto Boal

Augusto Boal is a political activist and major innovator of
post-Brechtian theater. He served as Artistic Director of the Arena
Theater in Sao Paulo from 1956 to 1971. In the 1970s, he came under
attack by the Brasilian government, resulting in his imprisonment,
torture and subsequent exile. Boal has lectured, conducted workshops,
and mounted productions throughout North and South America, Europe,
India and Africa, and has written a number of books, including Theater
of the Oppressed; Games for Actors and Non Actors; and The Rainbow of
Desire. An activist in the Brasilian Workers' Party (PT), he presently
resides in Rio de Janeiro. In 1992, he was elected to the City Council
of Rio, a post he held for four years. Once installed in office, he
adapted his theater techniques for use in city politics, with some
hilarious--and sometimes rancorous--results. Members of the Center for
the Theater of the Oppressed became Boal's City Council staff, and
created seventeen companies of players practicing "Legislative Theater"
throughout the city. Currently, Boal continues to work with the Center
for the Theater of the Oppressed in Rio de Janeiro and is researching
and formulating a theory of the aesthetics of the oppressed.

The Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory (TOPLAB)

The 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 political 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.

Since 1990, through the auspices of the Brecht Forum, TOPLAB has
initiated and organized intensive workshops led by Augusto Boal in New
York City. It has also planned and led hundreds of training workshops in
the techniques of the Theater of the Oppressed at the Brecht Forum and
elsewhere in New York City, as well as throughout North America and
internationally. In this capacity, TOPLAB 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. Each year, TOPLAB
offers a series of public workshops at the Brecht Forum in New York.

In addition to facilitating 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, Afghanistan and elsewhere, and
its members and associates are involved in a wide range of progressive
and radical political and cultural groups and movements.

TOPLAB will neither facilitate workshops for, nor accept funding from
for-profit corporations and similar enterprises.

========================================================================
"The Marxist poetics of Bertolt Brecht does not stand opposed to one or
another formal aspect of the Hegelian idealist poetics but rather denies
its very essence, asserting that the character *is not absolute subject*
but the object of economic or social forces to which he responds and in
virtue of which he acts...

"In Brecht's objection [to idealist poetics], as well as in any other
Marxist objection, what is at stake is who, or which term, precedes the
other: the subjective or the objective. For idealist poetics, social
thought conditions social being; for Marxist poetics, social being
conditions social thought. In Hegel's view, the spirit creates the
dramatic action; for Brecht, the character's social relations create the
dramatic action....

"Brecht was a Marxist; therefore, for him, a theatrical work cannot end
in repose, in equilibrium. It must, on the contrary, show the ways in
which society loses its equilibrium, which way society is moving, and
how to hasten that transition.

"Brecht contends that the popular artist must abandon the downtown
stages and go to the neighborhoods, because only there will he find
people who are truly interested in changing society: in the
neighborhoods he should show his images of social life to the workers
who are interested in changing that social life, since they are its
victims. A theater that attempts to change the changers of society
cannot lead to repose, cannot re-establish equilibrium. The bourgeois
police tries to re-establish equilibrium, to enforce repose: a Marxist
artist, on the other hand, must promote the movement toward national
liberation and toward the liberation of classes oppressed by
capital...[Hegel and Aristotle] desire a quiet somnolence at the end of
the spectacle; Brecht wants the theatrical spectacle to be the beginning
of action: the equilibrium should be sought by transforming society, and
not by purging the individual of his just demands and needs....

"I believe that all the truly revolutionary theatrical groups should
transfer to the people the means of production in the theater so that
the people themselves may utilize them. The theater is a weapon, and it
is the people who should wield it."

--Augusto Boal, The Theater of the Oppressed

===
The Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory (TOPLAB)
toplab@toplab.org
http://www.toplab.org

"My fellow Americans, major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the
battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."
--George W. Bush, May 1, 2003

"...I told the American people that the road ahead would be difficult, and
that we would prevail. Well, it has been difficult--and we are
prevailing."
--George W. Bush, June 28, 2005

"Our cause in Iraq is noble and necessary....America is engaged in a new
struggle that will set the course for a new century. We can and we will
prevail."
--George W. Bush, January 10, 2007

"Prevailing in Iraq is not going to be easy."
--George W. Bush, March 19, 2007

+U.S. military fatalities through May 1, 2003: 140
+U.S. military fatalities through June 28, 2005: 1743
+U.S. military fatalities through January 10, 2007: 3017
+U.S. military fatalities through March 19, 2007: 3217
+U.S. military fatalities as of May 5, 2008: 4071 (this figure exceeds the
number of people killed in all of the incidents that occurred on September
11, 2001)

+Iraqi deaths due to the US invasion, as of September 2004 (estimated by
The Lancet): 100,000+
+Iraqi deaths due to the US invasion, as of July 2006 (estimated by The
Lancet): 654,965
+Iraqi deaths due to the US invasion, as of May 5, 2008 (estimated
by Just Foreign Policy): 1,205,025*

*These figures are based on the number of deaths estimated in The Lancet
(the British medical journal) study through July 2006, and then updated
based "on how quickly deaths are mounting in Iraq". To do that, Just
Foreign Policy multiplies The Lancet figure as of July 2006 by the ratio
of current deaths reported by Iraq Body Count (IBC), divided by IBC deaths
as of July 1, 2006. The IBC numbers, considerably lower than those cited
by The Lancet, Opinion Research Business (a British polling firm which
estimated 1.2 million Iraqi deaths as of September 2007), and even the
Iraq Ministry of Health, are based on the number of fatalities cited in
various news reports and have been criticized, with much justification,
for not giving an accurate assessment of the real Iraqi death count. The
much more rigorous and statistically-reliable study, conducted by teams
from Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and Al-Mustansiriya
University, and published in The Lancet in September 2004, put the figure
at around 100,000 civilians dead. However, that data had been based on
"conservative assumptions", according to research team leader Les Roberts,
and the actual count at that time was credibly assumed to be significantly
higher. For example, The Lancet study's data greatly underestimated
fatalities in Fallujah due to the surveying problems encountered there at
that time. The second Lancet study, released on October 10, 2006,
indicated that 654,965 "excess" deaths of Iraqis have occurred since the
outbreak of the aggression and genocide committed by the United States
against the people of Iraq. The current figures provided by Just Foreign
Policy seem to be logically consistent with the increasing rates of death
from 2003 to 2004, and 2004 to 2006.

Sources: http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html
http://icasualties.org/oif/
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
http://www.zmag.org/lancet.pdf
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1338749,00.html
http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/Iraq_war.html
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php4?article_id=6271
http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20041025/008279.html
http://www.thelancet.com/webfiles/images/journals/lancet/s0140673606694919.pdf