Greek Theatre Research Paper
Drama essay
“Theatre has the capacity to transform our perceptions of the world we live in”
To what extent is this statement true of two twentieth century theatre practitioners you have studied.
The theatre has tremendous capacity to transform our perceptions of the world. Two theatre practitioners who had strong beliefs in this statement were Vsevolod Meyerhold and Augusto Boal. Both Meyerhold and Boal believed that theatre had the power to transform the way we look at the world, each displaying these with different methods and techniques. Meyerhold rejected Stanislavsky’s theory of naturalism and felt theatre is a place of expression, while Boal placed greater emphasis on his belief that everyone can act. His Theatre examined oppressions …show more content…
Due to some hardships he was faced with in his life Boal developed the theatre of the oppressed. He recognized that oppression could impact severely on individuals and society in general. After his 15 years in exile he had enveloped different “subtypes” of theatre of the oppressed that worked on trying to help human beings see how they could eradicate oppression. Some examples of this type of theatre are called Image Theater, which involves some simple exercises with an aim to uncover truths about societies; second is invisible theatre, in which the audience is unaware that it is watching a scripted piece of theatre. The third type is forum theatre, in which an audience watches a scene where there is an oppressor who is oppressing a victim. The actors perform the scene once and then repeat it, inviting the audience/spectators to replace the protagonist and stop the oppression. The aim is for the spectators to overcome the oppression, before the play was concluded, to change our perceptions of the world. An in class example of this was Neva’s attempt to stop the oppression, by instantly denying the claims, and agreeing to do more than one thing in the same night, plainly lying to the people, it stopped the oppression, but would cause a much higher conflict after just that night. Through the works of Meyerhold and Boal, we can see that theatre has an enormous capacity to influence, challenge and change our perceptions of our
“Theatre has the capacity to transform our perceptions of the world we live in”
To what extent is this statement true of two twentieth century theatre practitioners you have studied.
The theatre has tremendous capacity to transform our perceptions of the world. Two theatre practitioners who had strong beliefs in this statement were Vsevolod Meyerhold and Augusto Boal. Both Meyerhold and Boal believed that theatre had the power to transform the way we look at the world, each displaying these with different methods and techniques. Meyerhold rejected Stanislavsky’s theory of naturalism and felt theatre is a place of expression, while Boal placed greater emphasis on his belief that everyone can act. His Theatre examined oppressions …show more content…
Due to some hardships he was faced with in his life Boal developed the theatre of the oppressed. He recognized that oppression could impact severely on individuals and society in general. After his 15 years in exile he had enveloped different “subtypes” of theatre of the oppressed that worked on trying to help human beings see how they could eradicate oppression. Some examples of this type of theatre are called Image Theater, which involves some simple exercises with an aim to uncover truths about societies; second is invisible theatre, in which the audience is unaware that it is watching a scripted piece of theatre. The third type is forum theatre, in which an audience watches a scene where there is an oppressor who is oppressing a victim. The actors perform the scene once and then repeat it, inviting the audience/spectators to replace the protagonist and stop the oppression. The aim is for the spectators to overcome the oppression, before the play was concluded, to change our perceptions of the world. An in class example of this was Neva’s attempt to stop the oppression, by instantly denying the claims, and agreeing to do more than one thing in the same night, plainly lying to the people, it stopped the oppression, but would cause a much higher conflict after just that night. Through the works of Meyerhold and Boal, we can see that theatre has an enormous capacity to influence, challenge and change our perceptions of our