more important to achieve a good debate than a good solution' (ibid. 230). However, two of the fascinating elements of this approach concern the animating force of performance; and the focus on emotion. In the case of the former, engaging in performance can bring forward questions, experiences and issues that are difficult to express in initially in words. It can reveal elements for the group to work on.Second, Boal has picked up on the concerns of Stanislavski and the need to move beyond the mechanisation of the actor's body into allowing emotion to shape the final form of the actor's interpretation of a role. However, he is also at some concerns to explore that emotion. 'The important thing about emotion is what it signifies. We cannot talk about emotion without reason or, conversely, about reason without emotion; the former is chaos, the latter pure abstraction'. (ibid.: 48).I have focused here on Boal so that we can get a little of the flavour of socio-cultural animation. The links with Freire are there - we have a Theatre of the Oppressed as against a Pedagogy. But what we have been talking about here is essentially a short-run exercise. The associationalism we began with, is much more long term - and may involve this form of intervention - but it also entails an active appreciation of ourselves as animateurs, educators and agents of formation.________Brazilian theater director Augusto Boal developed The Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) during the 1950s and 1960s. In an effort to transform theater from the "monologue" of traditional performance into a "dialogue" between audience and stage, Boal experimented with many kinds of interactive theater. His explorations were based on the assumption that dialogue is the common, healthy dynamic between all humans, that all human beings desire and are capable of dialogue, and that when a dialogue becomes a monologue, oppression ensues. Theater then becomes an extraordinary tool for transformin...
