In 1992, Augusto Boal, founder of the globally influential repertoire of performance techniques known as Theatre of the Oppressed, was elected as a vereador, essentially the equivalent of city councilor in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Boal and his office staff used theatre as their primary method for collecting citizen input about legislation. His term lasted from 1993 to 1997, and his office shepherded thirteen bills to their successful passage as law. This dissertation examines three twenty-first century Legislative Theatre projects, all drawing on techniques from Boal’s initial Legislative Theatre project but staged in North America. The case studies include Practicing Democracy, a 2004 production by Headlines Theatre in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, a project that directly engaged the Vancouver City Council; a Legislative Theatre workshop facilitated by Augusto Boal and his son Julian Boal as part of the pre-conference of the annual Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed Conference in Omaha, Nebraska, in May 2008, an event that culminated with a performance in the Omaha City Council Chambers; and The Eye & Tooth Project: Forum Theatre on the Death Penalty, a 2009 workshop and performance in Austin, TX, exploring how participants could practice lobbying skills through theatre. With these three theatre processes as examples, I explain how using Forum Theatre as the primary method for Legislative Theatre constructs citizenship as a process of collective knowledge-building. These projects stage citizenship as a collaborative act through which citizens gather to teach each other about their experiences with policy. Each production differently constructs performance as a “think tank” epistemology—an embodied way of building and transferring knowledge about legislation. I describe how Legislative Theatre think tanks dismantle traditional discourses of “detached” expertise by constructing citizens themselves as experts. In the process of making these larger arguments, this dissertation also addresses a variety of practical questions useful for future practitioners of Legislative Theatre: How was each project designed? What were its goals? How did the creators apply performance toward those goals? How and why did they forge connections (or not) with lawmaking bodies? For what communities might the projects have been more or less accessible? / text

Made available in DSpace on 2016-12-08T16:52:06Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 ANEXOA.pdf: 34871 bytes, checksum: a99eddb20f2f49b8e7ad44111435aa86 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-01-28 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The scientific inquiry presented has as central object the Legislative Theatre, of Augusto Boal. First of all, we try to register the experience carried through by Boal during his public mandate while councilman in the city of Rio de Janeiro in the year of 1993; by that time, the performances resulted on the approval of some municipal laws. From the accomplishment of workshop and interviews with people who had lived deeply the experience of the Legislative Theatre, and also through a critical analysis of the aesthetic, legal and political aspects of this theatrical form, we tried to verify if the Legislative Theatre would be able to extend the democratic participation in the legislative process. Besides that, we searched to inquire how the theatrical dimension would be related with the degree of participation in the legislative theatre. Finally, it has been proved that, beyond reflection, understanding and social inclusion of its participants, the Legislative Theatre is characterized as a tool of social performance / A investigação científica apresentada tem como objeto central o Teatro Legislativo, de Augusto Boal. Primeiramente, buscou-se documentar a experiência realizada por Boal na época de seu mandato político enquanto vereador na cidade do Rio de Janeiro no ano de 1993, que teve como resultado a aprovação de leis municipais, originadas a partir de encenações teatrais. A partir da realização de oficina e entrevistas com pessoas que vivenciaram a experiência do Teatro Legislativo, e através de uma análise crítica dos aspectos estéticos, políticos e jurídicos dessa forma teatral, buscou-se verificar se o Teatro Legislativo seria um instrumento apto a ampliar a participação democrática no processo legislativo. Demais disso, buscou-se averiguar em que medida a dimensão teatral estaria diretamente relacionada com o grau de participação nas práticas de teatro legislativo. Por fim, comprovou-se que, além de oportunizar reflexão, compreensão e conseqüente inclusão de seus participantes, o Teatro Legislativo caracteriza-se como uma ferramenta transdisciplinar de atuação social