Feminist Theater of the Oppressed: What is it? How can its philosophies and methods transform our approaches to critical pedagogy? How does Feminist Theater of the Oppressed help us reflect on improvisation, experimentation, and power in our teaching and organizing contexts?

Our June 2024 guest, Bárbara Santos, takes up these questions as a portal into discussion of how power shapes (and can be transformed in) our pedagogies. Barbára is an actress, performer, writer, and organizer. She is the artistic director and co-founder of KURINGA - Space for Theater of the Oppressed in Berlin, Germany. She is Founder of the Ma(g)dalena International Network, a collaborative of practitioners of Feminist Theater of the Oppressed based in Europe, Latin America, and Africa. 

Bárbara’s work as a director, performer, organizer, and writer has been instrumental in disseminating Theater of the Oppressed globally, and elevating feminist critiques and methods within its praxis. Her books include Roots and Wings of Theater of the Oppressed (Portuguese 2016, Spanish 2017, Italian 2018, English 2019); Aesthetic Paths: Original Approaches on Theater of the Oppressed (Portuguese, 2018; English and Spanish forthcoming); and Theater of the Oppressed: Feminist Aesthetics for Political Poetics (Portuguese, 2019; English, 2023).

The tree of Theater of the Oppressed—images, movement, sounds, words, play—comes to life throughout Barbára’s work and, in the process, honors women’s lives through dialogue and political action.

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CREDITS:

Co-hosts: Lucia Hulsether and Tina Pippin

Audio Production and Music: Aliyah Harris

Intro Music: Lance Haugen and Aviva and the Flying Penguins

Roots, Branches, and Wings: On Feminist Theater of the Oppressed

[[rush transcript generated with AI]]

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Tina: Welcome to Nothing Never Happens: The Radical Pedagogy Podcast. I'm your host, Tina Pippin, along with co host, Lucia Hulsether.

The Tree of the Theatre of the Oppressed, from Images and Her Movement, Sounds, Words, Play, Image Forum, and Legislative Theatre, comes to life in Barbara's work as a way to honor women's lives through dialogue and concrete political action for social change. Welcome Barbara Santos to Nothing Never Happened.

Barbára: Yes, like, I already told this story in one of my books that I, I am sociologist as, primary and also teacher in school. And then I was working in the multidisciplinary team, yeah, as sociologist.

And then we didn't know how to deal to make a conference about something the old teachers just don't want. They just hate it. And then one of our colleagues saw Augusto Boal and his team in one school doing forum theater. And our colleague was, suggests us, well, let's go ask them to make a play for us.

their own play about their own topic. And then we just, they asked us if we don't want, would not be interested to do our own play. And then surprising my team that was so open minded people, they told, yeah, why not? Let's do it. And then we made a play about the questions that we wanted to discuss with our colleagues.

was like promoting dialogue between, teachers, students, school community and the head of and, and workers. And then we found this perfect using this forum theater because all people in the community of a school community could be in the same level as audience. You know, what was another way of speaking, father, parents and teachers and, you know, like students and all of them suddenly would be in the same level as a student.

Tina: Oh, that's that's wonderful foreign theater for social change So how has have you gone from there that starting point to becoming a full time? Practitioner and also getting involved in acting, directing, all of that yourself, and forming, new spaces for Theater of the Oppressed. So

Barbára: the beginning was like, we, Boal came to get to know us, actually he came as audience because they, he had hear something about us, and he found really interesting the way that we are really making some way change inside of the school system in our city, and he came as audience.

And when Boao was candidate for the municipality, for the municipal parliament, yeah, the city council, I was member of the party. And then I was one of the, the person that was organized the campaign. And after that, I never separated. We worked together 20 years. And I was the coordinator of the center afterwards.

Barbára: So actually when I, I, what happened is we start to do this because we want to change theater of the oppressed. We were not more satisfied, not with the method, also with the method, but also with the environment. We are, we were really tired to work in the environment that the The majority of the facilitators was male facilitators.

Majority of facilitators was white and middle class or upper middle class. Yeah, the people that was writing about this. And then we saw the difference that majority people inside of the groups was female. You know, they oppressed the collaborators, the majority of the people inside of the workshop. They, the majority was female, you know, and oppressed and colorful people.

A woman under violence is easy, just divorce. It's kind of, wow, amazing. If you divorce, finish your problem, you know, this. And then we, the, the, the, our protagonists or the protagonist that we, we meet looks like idiots. Stupid people, you know, women was so much on stage as stupid as powerless, you know, not consider the power of the survivor, you know, it's like the victims there.

Violence is a women problem. Machismo is a women problem. It's not a social problem. You know, and then we start to have this questioning. That was political is a power, power relation about power relation side of the community, but also methodological in the sense that, which kind of question we are asking for the audience.

We were cis women and we meet together and then we made it. And then we were questioning our own space in this international community. Yeah. And then we also was kind of make an investigation methodologically. How could we bring on stage some more complexity? Not show women as the one that is under violence.

It's not about that. So many, different influences inside of myself, outside of myself, you know, and this is not my problem because the society was convinced me to be there because it's good for the society that I keep if I be there and, and just take care of my family. You know, it's not one, one decision.

And afterwards when we, we start so quickly to develop an international network, you know, this, I start to make this a laboratory in Brazil, and afterwards Guinea Bissau and Mozambique, and afterwards was like women from different places just asking us, we also want to do this. And then we become quickly in two years an international network of feminist, group, theater groups.

Actually,

Barbára: when, when the, our, our, the difference of our way of work that we call the after the last three meters. Yeah, that is this feministic, aesthetics that is looking or work in the direction of political poetics in the sense that, how you are going to develop our work. Actually, the base of the theater of the oppressed is there as an inspiration.

We, when we go inside and work together, we not imagine that the problem is not there. You know, we like, we are, we are here talking, two white women and one black woman. We, from the beginning, we consider that, we not imagine that this is not here among us. Yeah, we are, in this talking, we have people from the, global north and I, from the, global south.

We also consider that, you know, it's like, we the whole time work in the perspective that is this everything is in the side of the room. This is a feminist perspective, you know, it's like, we, work, taking in consideration our socialization. And then our socialization matches is anti racist, is like patriarchy, patriarchal.

It's not that. It's to be conscious, you know, to be conscious of the process that we are doing in this our history is not outside of our process, if we are going to work together, our socialization come together with us. Yeah. And what is good and what is bad of that. Come together with us and that we have to consider that.

For instance, in my way of working, we never ask for personal stories. We have to meet each other in our, aesthetic production and the image that we produce and the things that we are doing until we found, okay, this area here is an area of interest. And from this area, we are going to find out what we want to talk about that.

We are not much realistic in the way of representation. Yeah, we have much more interest in the aesthetic tools, we are much more interested in real language of theater. You know, it's much more than the social language of something, and I would say,

Lucia: I think this is really important and having recently been in a few groups that weren't really using theater of the oppressed, but that had an expectation that people to build community and intimacy.

I'm curious if you could for listeners who may not be familiar with these critiques elaborate on. What might be, troubling to you or, reiterating of oppressive structures to come in and expect people to, tell, tell stories, even if that's something that people have been conditioned to think is like, that's exactly how you build relationships with, with folks.

You know, This is, one of the things that I made that week, the last week, this weekend, sorry, was like, people made image, what is oppression for them, what's, what, when they feel themselves oppressed, which kind of image they would make, what, what is that, you know, and then we made groups of image that have some similarity, and we try To investigate what this image has in common.

And then several times you find that it is just consequence of stress. You are so stressful because family or because, you know, this is a, May of your life sprinting in your body, the consequence, this is also subjectivity. When I pay attention in my body, in the movements of my body, if, oh, here, oh, what is it?

This is your body saying you something. saying you something about your life, your way of sitting or don't moving or be so stressful, or, you know, like, even we produce things inside. We produce two more. That's finally, we found out that our body, something was crazy and then produce a kind of stuff inside.

This is really deep. You know, this is a really deep relation with something that we consider oppression. And from the subjective, subjective level. We are going to find out what's the oppression that printed on the body, you know, we made another way around. This is really particular, but we don't work like a therapy that we are asking personal staff, you know, it's like, we are going to looking these, sculptures that clay sculpture that everybody in the room may look at them and try to understand us.

You know, I'm say yes, sometimes I don't want even say yes, but finally I told yes. And you ask me why you told yes, and I don't know how to answer you. You know, this kind of situation that is, yeah, because I thought, because I feel, I felt, because you know, this kind of thing, this is the thing that we have also to pay attention.

And our main way of work is privileged aesthetics. You know, it's privileged body communication, non verbal communication, to not be based only in the communication that the words can do.

Barbára: So at this weekend, for instance, we made this really, aesthetic process with clay. We think that was really, investigate the subjectivity. But when we went for the big, the, the macro structure, we, we were talking about really, about how gender is a way of controlling people. Yeah. How gender is a way of creating boxes for people.

And then we, we came, we come out with this big topic. About how is the, unbalance between gender when we talk about mental health and that one of the consequence of this kind of problems that we are showing this weekend was thinking about, wow, how to to deal with that. Women has to work outside, has to work inside.

It's something that she didn't make nice. She failed, you know, and then it was, it was a really subjective topic at the same topic. When we look in the society, this is a big and so complex topic, you know, and these Become private because you who deal with mental health question each person we don't see, you know, even we know this is a social problem.

Every year we have more people in trouble with mental health every single year, every month. Tomorrow will be more than yesterday. You know, a lot of people is studying it. Yes, like especially after pandemic. But who deals with that in public? This become a private question. You have to take care of yourself.

This is the problems that we face everyday life.

Lucia: I wonder if this might be a good moment for another example of, of one of the exercises that you do. I'm thinking of No Means No or The Pink Machine. Like, could you describe sort of how, what that looks like when you enact it at a workshop?

Barbára: Actually, this is, is Pink Machine and No Means No is, is a two piece that we build up with Madalena Berlin.

It's a forum theater No Means No is a, is a play that we play. During more than two years as legislative theater, it's like, this is, related with this, question that we have in Europe about the right that the women don't need to prove that she's not the one that have to prove that she told no.

Because it's immediately you don't have judgment. You don't have, justification, you know? And when you are in the mixed group, often have this kind of, but, What time was it? Oh, you were alone. Oh, maybe it was not intentional. Maybe, you know, like, has a lot of excuses that come out, or women feel like they have to have, to give a lot of explanation.

Tina: Is there an example of one exercise that you're that was particularly moving or, or useful to get to the, issues that you could talk about?

Barbára: We have a lot of exercise, a lot, but it's like we, for instance, we have some kind of dynamics that we, we try to understand our, we call the tree of ancestrals.

And doing what we know and also imagine what our family was telling us, yeah, for instance, in three generations for me, my grand grandmother was living in the countryside. And then. I didn't know her, but I know that she was working there. And then I try to put in my body these movements. And then after, after we try to understand what was the movements, the women before us, as it tried to make concrete, you know, it's like, and then we try to come for our days and see these movements.

But we have also nowadays fundamentalists that they live like exactly people would live in the last century. You know, or before it, you know, and then this is this at the same time here to understand this kind of construction, you know, it's like I am here, but I am a result of a history of a lot of interest, you know, it's like my way of understanding life.

Lucia: And it gets so, it's so contingent on what happens in, in the room itself.

And of course, who is there? I wonder that if this might be a good moment to ask you, about, the Magdalena International Network and what, what, what that is, and what kinds of vision, the practitioners and theater groups are trying to enact through, through the, through this network.

Barbára: Yeah, I think that we start to be a network for necessity to be in contact because we start to develop these methodology, these tools, these aesthetic tools, this process, and then we want to have a space to exchange.

This is a kind of empowerment, you know, like when we know that you are part of something. You know that your voice can be multiplied because other women are going to do something somewhere, you know. And of course, when you have an important country in this network is Argentina. But now with this government, it's like, so difficult for them also to, because economic questions with, with this melee and like a right wing that is taking people from the job, change the policies and in several countries.

So, and then,

Barbára: we, for one side, we have this, strong network, but also here in Berlin, we decide to create a space, you know, because when you have a space, you create a reference. Yeah, it's like to have a space. It's really important to to have a reference, but people know where to go, you know, and then we start here in Berlin to work like we come from Latin America come from Brazil, our way of work is collective.

You know, it's like, they were majority of them were children of refugee people, and some of them even didn't have a passport because they didn't have nationality. They were not, a nationality. Palestinian at the same time, they are not Germans. They are, they are, didn't have a kind of citizenship.

And then the Kuringa was a consequence of a necessity, you know, to have a place to work with the groups. And then we've, since then, we always work with community groups here in Berlin, but we are always part of several different networks in Europe. We work with a strong network in Europe that we call Together for more than almost seven years together was a network with different groups that, work here in Europe and different countries.

For instance, once a year we, have a big course here that is really international that people that come in Berlin should learn our way of work. This is theater for press, this is Teatro de las Oprimidas, but it's really based on And our aesthetic tools, yeah, like how to use this kind of process to do an interactive theater.

Because as you told, it's so easy to become a kind of workshopper, People, you know, majority of the place is not in that way. You don't have much discussion. You cannot go deep because every time you have a different group that come for workshop and then finish. And then, you know, and to have a space is a opportunity to have groups, to have electives, to empower deep, to go deep in the discussion, go deep in the work and make a difference.

It's for me in like the little experiences I've had jokering or being participants and participant in scenes and building communities. There's always this element of surprise, like if being like surprised, you're totally overwhelmed, but like, wow, that went in a different direction. I absolutely did not expect and it is a demand on me to transform something about how I was thinking before or my sense of my relationship to the, to the other, the others in the room.

And I'm curious if you have any stories or narratives about a time maybe recently or before that's been like a total surprise in your work, where you've had to shift something in your own mind facilitation techniques.

Barbára: Yeah, I have just a little

Lucia: yeah,

Barbára: or

Yeah,

Barbára: so it's like, for me, I have plenty of that is like, because I work with theater of the past more than 30 years. It's like, it is a lot of, different kind of challenge, different kind of, work and possibilities. But it is, like, for me, what is a as really important, the change for me is like this aesthetics way of working because, when I, I work, working here with poor community.

Yeah, it's like we go different places. Of course, they present in the, in the community too, but yeah, if you go out of the community, you're going to meet middle class. And in these situations, always the forum was so much verbal. Yeah, it's like become so verbal that the theater was lost. This make me really sad.

The whole Forum Theater session, when people start blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and no theater more in the room. It's like finish the theater. But I noticed what was that because I was always asking the young people, why you just give up this forum? And they told, ah, Barbara, it's like people just speak. They just speak, speak, speak, speak, and then we have nothing else to say.

And when the, when we make the forum, we rebalance power. And that was like, because people on stage also know other languages. Imagine I also work in Germany that several times people don't have one language in common with everybody. You know, sometimes people has different language, even the members of the group, and then we have to use other language, you know, and then I think this was for me an important movement to recognize our arrogance and our, our way of not seeing, you know, for instance, if we speak, this is democracy.

Lucia: It makes me think of the way that, I think was it, was it Julianne Boal or Augusto Boal who says something about oppression is when monologue replaces dialogue. And I feel like you're opening up that, that definition about like, it's not just about the monologue or dialogue.

It's

Barbára: like so many words. No of them. This was our. this come from one colleague in UK. Okay. It was not an expert that made this. Oh. It's a guy that work in,

And he was telling them in the theater monologue, you have an actor, This actor is saying the whole text. One actor tell everything, yeah? And then even when speak about two or three people is one actor. This is a monologue. But some theater has dialogue. This, we have several actors that they are exchange ideas, yeah?

And one of the student told, I understood. And then he told, please explain me, and he told like, okay, monologue is when one is speaking, dialogue is two monologue,

what makes a lot of sense. Majority of the time, we don't have dialogue as dialogue. The majority of the time, what we have in reality, It's monologue. People just wait for their turn to speak what they have to speak. It's not really an interaction, yeah? No, it's like, and then this, this was a guy, not Boal, not Julian Boal, but was a person with some mental, I don't know, problem,

Lucia: yeah?

Barbára: I don't know if mental health problem or even some kind of Like

Lucia: developmental disability or something.

Lucia: it got attributed. I think I read this in a book some I read it in some Theater of the Oppressed book and it was attributed to I wrote in my

Barbára: book too, but I say, always I say, this is Tim Wheeler.

This is from UK. UK? But also it's not his words. It's not his words. It's words from their students.

Lucia: That's a really good feminist intervention into the sort of, the historical memory and sort of institutional institutionalization and sort of, It's also on the official narratives around theater.

Barbára: It's also something that is really feminist. If you go for one of the main stories that Boal used to tell, I am a great friend of Boal. It's like an author. But one of the main stories about these women in Peru, did you listen to this story once? That the woman for the Forum Theater was born in the Forum Theater?

This is the only story, one of the few stories in the theater of the press, the characters don't have names.

Lucia: If you see

Barbára: other stories, all of them have names. This is something also, you know, it's like a, It's something little, but says a lot.

And then another scholar wrote a piece that was like talking about this student again and using her as this avatar for lesbian feminism and what it meant. And I'm like, who is this student? And there's this important moment in the first book where the student like quits working for the professor and is like, I don't want to deal with you anymore.

Barbára: Exactly. Yeah, they don't have name.

They don't have name. They are contributors.

Lucia: Yeah. They are

Barbára: authors. Yeah.

Tina: Yeah,

Lucia: we

Tina: have

Barbára: to finish.

Tina: Yes, I'm aware of time. Is there anything we didn't cover that you really want to say to our audience?

Barbára: I think it's like I continue to be a curious person about the possibilities of developing. And I, I think it's like the big challenge for our days is when we, we, these things that there's a really.

Always our reality is asking us to be creative, to go one step forward, you know, it's like And then it's that, it's like, I think it's, I'm really interested in, in, in this, you know, like, it's a, it's a big, big challenge that we have in our, in our time, you know, to imagine the future.

Barbára: at the moment, I am much more involved with the, the field of film because I was directing a film, Let's See Here, and then our film was launched here in Berlin, in Berlinale, that was really, incredible stuff.

Also in Rio, film festival. And, I, I am really interested in this new language because we feel we can speak with much more people. Yeah. And then it's like, of course, if you're going to see the film that we produced, was like a musical that was talking about the violence in Rio de Janeiro. And we, we make a film that is really theatrical.

What I, I, I identify a lot because the sound is one character. Yeah. Is a, is a part of the narrative. A strong part of the narrative. What is in my work. Also, it's like, you know. I, I really enjoy when people was trying to find new ways of communication and that we can create. And this film specifically was something that was taking me attention.

Wonderful.

Tina: Well, mine is quick. I am reading James. By Percival Everett, who was the writer of Erasure, that became, the, the film American Fiction, and James is a, is a redo of Mark Twain's, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which I read as a child, and from the perspective of the character of Jim, the slave, on the adventure, it's, it's fantastic.

I recommend it. Okay, Lucia?

It was long listed for the Booker Prize, and it's about this, it's about this, island off the coast of Ireland. where the people speak, or are, many of them speak Irish. And there's this linguist character from France who comes to the island, who is really, really obsessed with capturing like the sort of exoticized authenticity of the language of the people who are there.

scholarly, I mean, there's many, many really interesting things about the novel, which I'm only partway through, but I was reading the part about the French, the French linguist who is going and really, really hoping that the, the people are the reflections of the authenticity he's expecting in order to, support his scholarly production.

And I was feeling like that the satire was, was landing, was landing really well. so Audrey McGee's The Colony is what I'm reading right now.

Tina: Well, Barbara Santos, we, we are so appreciative of you giving us your time and your wisdom and your work and your vision for the future. Thank you for being with us today.

Barbára: Thank you very much. See you next time. Amy presents.

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