Legislative Theatre: Using performance to make politics

Legislative Theatre is the latest and most remarkable stage in the unique Augusto Boal project. It is an attempt to use theatre within a political system to create a truer form of democracy. It is an extraordinary experiment in the potential of theatre to affect social change. At the heart of Boal’s method of Forum Theatre is the dual meaning of the verb ‘to act’: to perform, and to take action. In Legislative Theatre Boal creates new, theatrical, and truly revolutionary ways of involving everyone in the democratic process. This book includes: a full explanation of the genesis and principles of Legislative Theatre a description of the process in operation in Rio Boal’s essays, speeches and lectures on popular theatre, Paolo Freire, cultural activism, the point of playwrighting, and much else besides.