Although Augusto Boal himself admitted that he did not work often with young people, various practitioners around the world frequently use Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) techniques with young “spect-actors.” Youth and Theatre of the Oppressed, edited by Peter Duffy and Elinor Vettraino, is a long-awaited volume that addresses the practices and considerations of using Boal's TO techniques with youth. Boal's techniques seek to enable the oppressed to transform reality and free themselves from oppression through theatrical methods, and since young people are often more vulnerable to oppression than adults, youth seem an obvious demographic with which to practice TO. A wide range of practices are reflected in the thirteen chapters of this book, where contributors from the West Bank to Canada share their experiences of practicing TO with young people in preschools, elementary and secondary schools, jails, and community centers around the world.
The book is divided into three parts: “Theatre of the Oppressed in Educational Settings,” “The Political Life of Youth,” and “Theatre of the Oppressed Practice with Youth.” The first part explores using TO techniques in formal school spaces. The institutionalized settings of schools often oppress students who do not fit in; contributors in this part of the book share how they employed TO techniques to create a safe space in which students might explore these oppressions and thereby transform their realities. Johnny Saldaña's case study of how five facilitators explored, and attempted to help transform, the oppression of a bullied child in a fifth-grade classroom through Boalian theatrical forms is especially inspiring in light of the proliferation of tragic teenage suicides across North America.
The book's second part focuses on using TO techniques to deal with political agendas involving youth. Although the political circumstances profiled here (such as Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, racism, and sexism) are not unique to young people's lives, youngsters are often powerless materially to transform these situations. Part II includes essays by Warren Linds and Linda Goulet focusing on antiracism programs in a public school board program in Canada; by Sanjoy Ganguly on Jana Sanskriti in India; by Brent Blair on TELAvision in the United States; and by Chen Alon and Sonja Arsham Kuftinec, with Ihsan Turkiyye, on a Viewpoints project in Israel and Palestine. It also offers a reflection by Diane Conrad on the labor of a team of theatre educators at the University of Alberta, Canada, working with incarcerated youth. In their essays, contributors not only ponder the successful outcomes of representative projects, but also address the limitations they faced in executing Boal's techniques with young people in circumstances of political oppression.
The third part of the book is a mixture of testimonies, “how-tos,” and critical reflections. For readers who are most interested in how they might employ TO techniques in their own work with young people, the chapters in this section may prove most useful. Two interviews conducted by Duffy, “Staying Alert: A Conversation with Chris Vine,” and “The Human Art: An Interview on Theatre of the Oppressed and Youth with Augusto Boal,” provide especially profound insights into both pragmatic and philosophical aspects of why and how one practices TO with young people.
The editors of this book state that their goal is to “provoke thoughtful dialogue, question established conventions, and further the exciting international conversation about TO and youth” (xii). They also warn that the book may leave readers with more questions than answers. The book's most notable achievement is that it provides insight into not only the benefits but also the limitations of practicing TO with youth. It is worth noting that while Boal stated that TO techniques need not be altered according to the age demographic of spect-actors, most of the contributors find it necessary to stray from “pure Boal” when practicing with young people. This seems not to be because Boal's techniques are flawed, but because when working with youth, (adult) organizers are frequently concerned with effecting a positive outcome above all. In other words, adults want to hear what they want to hear. In order to satisfy both their own artistic integrity as well as those who fund such work, practitioners must walk a fine line between facilitating authentic experiences for their young spect-actors and satisfying the organizers of these sessions. In this conflict, ironically, lies another institutional oppression.
On a final note, a comprehensive bibliography on the topic of TO and young people would have been a helpful addition to the book. While most chapters include references, the depth and focus of each chapter varies considerably. A comprehensive list of works by and about Augusto Boal, Paolo Freire, and other influential figures would have completed this volume of critical deliberations on practicing Theatre of the Oppressed with young people.
