Playing Boal is the first book to examine the techniques in application of Augusto Boal, creator of Theatre of the Oppressed and internationally renowned Brazilian theatre maker and political activist.
Boal's work is becoming famous, say the editors of this volume, for its ability to effect change on both a personal and social level. But what happens to the techniques when they are used in different contexts? Playing Boal looks at the use of the Theatre of the Oppressed exercises by a variety of practitioners and scholars working in Europe, North America and Canada. It explores the possibilities of these tools for 'active learning and personal empowerment, cooperative education and healing, participatory theatre and community action.'
A fascinating collection in itself, Playing Boal will illuminate and invigorate discussion about Augusto Boal's work and the transformative potential of theatre. It includes two interviews with Boal and two pieces of his own writing, making it the most comprehensive and in-depth volume on Augosto Boal's work to date.

Radical Doubt investigates ethical play across a spectrum of performances, on and off the stage. In witty, recursive, personal, and propulsive prose, Mady Schutzman elaborates on the Joker System, conceived by Augusto Boal, best known for Theatre of the Oppressed. The Joker System is a collaborative approach to representing social dilemmas through a rare fusion of destabilizing ambiguity and journalistic rigor. Schutzman models the Joker System while expanding well beyond the theatrical. In polyphonic compositions that perform their own philosophy, she uncovers illuminating links between calculus and conjuring, koans and resistance, humor and witnessing, complexity theory and sorely needed new practices of living in our divisive times. These life practices rely upon crafty and circuitous strategies to deliver their subversive punch. Jok(er)ing matters, Schutzman insists. When communities fragment and identities fixate, enter the trickster! Sonja Kuftinec Theatre Arts and Dance, University of Minnesota

Radical Doubt investigates ethical play across a spectrum of performances, on and off the stage. In witty, recursive, personal, and propulsive prose, Mady Schutzman elaborates on the Joker System, conceived by Augusto Boal, best known for Theatre of the Oppressed. The Joker System is a collaborative approach to representing social dilemmas through a rare fusion of destabilizing ambiguity and journalistic rigor. Schutzman models the Joker System while expanding well beyond the theatrical. In polyphonic compositions that perform their own philosophy, she uncovers illuminating links between calculus and conjuring, koans and resistance, humor and witnessing, complexity theory and sorely needed new practices of living in our divisive times. These life practices rely upon crafty and circuitous strategies to deliver their subversive punch. Jok(er)ing matters, Schutzman insists. When communities fragment and identities fixate, enter the trickster! Sonja Kuftinec Theatre Arts and Dance, University of Minnesota

Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) is often referred to as a body of theatrical techniques. Yet this does not do justice to the rich contribution of Brazilian theatre director Augusto Boal, TO's founder and innovator of over 40 years.
"A Boal Companion" explores performative and cultural ideas and practices that inform Boal's work by putting them alongside those from related disciplines. Contributors in this anthology put TO into dialogue with complexity theory, Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Levinas, race theory, feminist performance art, Deleuze and Guattari, and liberation psychology -- to name just a few. In this way, kinship between Boal's project and multiple fields including social psychology, ethics, biology, comedy, trauma studies, and political science is made visible.
This collection not only expands the knowledge of TO practitioners and scholars but invites into TO those readers unfamiliar with Boal's work whose primary interests lie in one of the related disciplines addressed in these essays. The ideas generated throughout the collection will:
- Expand readers' understanding of TO as a complex, interdisciplinary, multi-vocal body of philosophical discourses
- Provide a variety of lenses through which to practice and critique TO
- Make explicit the relationships between TO and other bodies of work.