August


September





SPECT-ACTOR

Playing with the Spect-Actor's Voice: a Bodily Exploration led by Brent Grihalva


Augusto Boal is the father of what is called Forum Theatre, and he is held in high regards by theatre practitioners and critics for his book Theatre of the Oppressed. Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed is all about acting as opposed to talking, questioning rather than giving answers, analyzing rather than accepting. The Theatre of the Oppressed is used as a tool for change as opposed to a force solely for entertainment. Boal believed the word and idea of theatre was not limited to a physical space where plays were put on or a setting for major events, tragic or comic. He believed theatre extended to reference great social occasions and repetitive daily acts. He was always intrigued with the performance of breakfast, the scene of going to work, the act of working, and the epic of Sunday lunch with the family. Theatre of the Oppressed aims to deal with all approaches to theatre, and all social and personal situations of life, from the mundane to the over dramatic.

During a common Forum theatre evening/showing, the production's actors would perform the play once all the way through. A break would been taken for the audience to soak in the content, actions, and multiple interpretations of the play. Then the actors would start to run through the play a second time, but during this second run through there would be moments for the audience to make interventions. These interventions conventionally occurred through an audience member taking the place of an actor and either finishing the play as they saw it or changing the character's action to alter the entire play.

By asking the audience to play the role of spectator and actor Boal has transformed beings into humans through theatre, passive audience members become Spect-actors. The theatre then becomes more than just the art of entertaining ourselves, but the art of looking at ourselves as well. By engaging in the art of looking at ourselves we then are empowered with the tools to change ourselves.

The games and exercises we'll work with during our core group exploration time will be centered around discovering and fostering the Spect-actor within each of us. We'll be playing with the idea of the body as voice. My curiosity sprung from two questions, How are our bodies seen as voices for ideas and sensations? And, how can we develop the knowledge and power to construct new ways of seeing our bodies as voices?

We'll start by working with some physical theatre workshop exercises that explore neutrality, and what effect our bodies cause by moving away from neutrality. The physical theatre exercises will provide us new ways to read and understand our bodies and our movement. After getting to know our bodies, how they move through space, and what those movements mean, we'll explore some of Boal's games and exercises in Image and Forum theatre. We will aim to gain a better understanding of the weighted images our bodies can construct, and the weighted relationships between our bodies and objects in specific spaces through these exercises.