Synopses & Reviews
Augusto Boal's First Autobiography
Augusto Boal, by any measure, has had an extraordinary life. The controversial founder of the Theatre of the Oppressed, he was imprisoned and tortured by the Brazilian military government in the seventies for his radical theater work which encouraged peasants to protest land reform.
Hamlet and the Baker's Son is Boal's remarkable story of how a small, observant boy from Rio became one the most vocal and political figures of 20th-century theatre. With passion and honesty, Boal traces his jagged journey from the early days in university theatre to his increasing dissatisfaction with available theatrical forms to his position as an elected official in the 1990s.
Exile and travel are the predominant features of his life. He recounts his sojourns to Latin American and European countries, a teaching job at New York University, and exile in Paris -- the culmination of which is a bittersweet return to the city of his youth, Rio de Janeiro.
Showing that personal life is inseparable from the artist's work, Boal continues to travel the world giving workshops and inspiration to teachers, prisoners, actors, and social workers. His autobiography gives voice to his unique gift of using the stage to empower the disempowered. It also tells a moving and memorable story of the family man behind the public orator.
Synopsis
Hamlet and the Baker's Son is the autobiography of Augusto Boal, inventor of the internationally renowned Forum Theatre system, and 'Theatre of the Oppressed' and author of Games for Actors and Non-Actors. From his early days in Brazil's political theatre movement to his recent experiments with theatre as a democratic political process, Boal has devised a unique way of using the stage to empower the disempowered, and taken his methods everywhere from the favelas of Rio to the rehearsal studios of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Synopsis
Hamlet and the Baker's Son is the autobiography of Augusto Boal, inventor of the internationally renowned Forum Theatre system, and 'Theatre of the Oppressed' and author of Games for Actors and Non-Actors and Legislative Theatre. Continuing to travel the world giving workshops and inspiration to teachers, prisoners, actors and care-workers, Augusto Boal is a visionary as well as a product of his times - the Brazil of military dictatorship and artistic and social repression and was once imprisoned for his subversive activities.
From his early days in Brazil's political theatre movement to his recent experiments with theatre as a democratic political process, Boal's story is a moving and memorable one. He has devised a unique way of using the stage to empower the disempowered, and taken his methods everywhere from the favelas of Rio to the rehearsal studios of the Royal Shakespeare Company.