Image Theatre and Forum Theatre (Boal)

Domain VIII · Creative & expressive arts therapies · Augusto Boal · 1960 · Brazil

What it is

Image Theatre and Forum Theatre are core methods of Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed (TO), developed in Brazil from the 1960s and influenced by Paulo Freire's pedagogy of the oppressed. They are participatory theatre methods for groups and communities, not a psychotherapy. Boal's own therapeutic…

Format

• Goal: a group in which everyone can safely work on shared social themes.
• Screening: a brief individual interview. Cover current crises and recent trauma, dissociation, psychosis, active suicidality or self-harm, mobility and touch limits, any current legal case or abuser in the same community, and the person's expectations.

Who practises it, and how they are trained or regulated

• The sources give two sequences. A.R.T. Fusion describes six project phases for a community Forum production. The PASAR training gives twelve exercises in four blocks. For clinical use, the sequence below combines them and adds a screening phase and a closure phase. The screening and closure phases are clinical synthesis. Neither manual provides them in that form.
• Version followed: Augusto Boal's Image Theatre and Forum Theatre as he set them out in Games for Actors and Non-Actors (Routledge; 1992 edition cited by the training sources, 2nd edition with "new reflections on Forum Theatre") and The Rainbow of Desire: the Boal method of theatre and therapy (Routledge, 1995, trans. Adrian Jackson). The Boal books are drawn on only as catalogue and contents pages, so step-level…
• Theatre of the Oppressed has no regulated profession or protected credential. Practitioners train with experienced Jokers and TO centres.

Questions to explore with your client

• What drew you to it, and what are you hoping it will change?
• Is there physical contact? Was it explained beforehand, and do you feel free to say no or stop at any point?
• Does it involve intense or unusual breathing? Have you been told about the medical conditions for which that is not advised?
• Does it involve fasting, a special diet or 'detox'? Have you discussed this with your doctor?
• Is it a group, retreat or community? How do they respond if someone wants to leave or raises a concern?
• Who runs it, and what training or registration do they hold?
• What actually happens in a session or meeting, and how often?
• What does it cost, and is there pressure to commit to more?
• How do you feel afterwards, in the hours and days that follow?
• Does it fit with, or clash with, the work we do here?

What practitioners of it watch for

• shame at making mistakes. Celebrate errors.
• pairs that become self-critical. Model laughing at mistakes.
• people who are always left out. Pass the clap to them yourself.
• colluding with "I'm stuck" (Dwyer); questions that imply fault.
• people leaving abruptly. Follow up within 24–48 hours, by agreement.

Problems the guide addresses

• Screening and pacing
• Overwhelm or retraumatisation during an image or scene
• Abuse disclosure, or a child or adult at risk
• Touch, and bodies that don't want to be sculpted
• Victim-blaming interventions
• Magic solutions and violence
• The Joker over-identifying or steering
• A stuck group: no ideas, silence, or "nothing would work"
• A distressed antagonist actor, or hostility after the play
• The story owner regrets sharing

When to involve someone else

• New or worsening physical symptoms, or advice to stop or change prescribed medication: involve the client's doctor or prescriber.
• Signs of coercion, isolation from family and friends, escalating costs or secrecy: discuss openly and consider safeguarding.
• A crisis or thoughts of suicide: follow your crisis protocol. In the US, call or text 988; in the UK and Ireland, Samaritans on 116 123.

Drawn automatically from the guide's own sections. Stay curious: neither endorse nor dismiss what the client values, and check anything that matters against the full guide and its sources. Not medical advice.