The intervention of the art of tragedy
"Nature tends towards certain ends; when it fails to achieve those objectives, art and science intervene. Man, as part of nature, also has certain ends in view: health, gregarious life in the State, happiness, virtue, justice, etc. When he fails in the achievement of those objectives, the art of tragedy intervenes. This correction of man's actions is what Aristotle calls catharsis.
Tragedy, in all its qualitative and quantitative aspects, exists as a function of the effect it seeks, catharsis. All the unities of tragedy are structured around this concept. It is the centre, the essence, the purpose of the tragic system. Unfortunately, it is also the most controversial concept. Catharsis is correction: what does it correct? Catharsis is purification: what does it purify?"
(Augusto Boal 1993, p.27)
Boal, Augusto. 1993 Theatre of the Oppressed, London, UK: Pluto Press.
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Answers to exploitation in photographs
"In 1973, while conducting a literacy project in a barrio of Lima, Peru, the noted Brazilian educator Paulo Freire (and his colleagues) asked people questions in Spanish, but requested the answers in photographs. When the question 'What is exploitation?' was asked, some people took photos of a landlord, grocer, or a policeman (Boal 1979, p.123). One child took a photo of a nail on a wall. It made no sense to adults, but other children were in strong agreement. The ensuing discussions showed that many young boys of that neighbourhood worked in the shoe-shine business. Their clients were mainly in the city, not in the barrio where they lived. As their shoe-shine boxes were too heavy for them to carry, these boys, rented a nail on a wall (usually in a shop), where they could hang their boxes for the night. To them, that nail on the wall represented 'exploitation. 'The 'nail on the wall' photograph spurred widespread discussions in the Peruvian barrio about other forms of institutionalized exploitation, including ways to overcome them."
(Singhal, A., M. J. Cody, et al. 2004)
Boal, Augusto. 1979 The theatre of the oppressed., New York, USA: Urizen Books.
Arvind Singhal, Michael J. Cody, et al. (2004). Entertainment-Education and Social Change: History, Research, and Practice, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
[An experiment in participatory research and research as social catalyst.]
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Tends To Perfection: Nature
"things themselves tend to perfection [...] Nature, according to Aristotle, tends to perfection, which does not mean that it always attains it. The body tends to health, but it can become ill; men in the aggregate tend to the perfect State, but wars can occur. Thus nature has certain ends in view, states of perfection toward which it tends but sometimes nature fails. From this follows the purpose of. art and science: by "re-creating the creative principle" of things, they correct nature where it has failed."
(Augusto Boal)
Boal, Augusto. 1993 Theatre of the Oppressed, London, UK: Pluto Press.
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The Constellations ProjectSHARE
