Theatre of the Oppressed

[David Bovill]

Hi Michael, this is something I am particularly passionate about. This group
is related to the work of Augusto
Boal<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Boal>,
who unfortunately died last year (I was really hoping to meet him on the
trip to South America I am planning later this year).

His work is I believe fundamentally related to Liquid Democracy, in that it
provides some of the offline methodology required to make LD universally
accesible. Even more important it provides the strongest possible metaphor
for the "human interface" to technical LD systems that I have come across in
15 years of researching this.

I have worked on interactive and theatre projects using techniques derived
from the work of Augusto Boal and others since the mid 1990's, linking these
to online communities and decision making techniques.I am hoping this Autumn
to get some first hand experience of how projects such as the "Legislative
Theatre<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_of_the_Oppressed#Legislative_theatre>"
experiments panned out in practice in Brasil - it is hard to get past the
charisma of the man himself in references to this work such as the book of
the same name (which contains a lot of anecdotes but is not really a
critical evaluation of the projects reception).

Since 2002, I have moved my personal research as to how it is possible to
encapsulate LD systems and human (performative) interfaces in legal
structures, that can offer a radical new form of social organisation, that
is fun, works on small scales, but is scalable, both technically and
legally.

I'd very much be interested in discussing again how we could take forwards
this area, in concrete and small steps. I believe this is possible by
integrating a focussed series of events into the process of developing an
innovative and appealing user experience to a distributed LD infrastructure
as developed here. I think a good way forwards would be if I put these ideas
down in writing, and propose something we can act on in practice rather than
a simply theoretical discussion.

If you feel this would be a valuable discussion to have, maybe someone could
propose the best way to integrate this discussion with the current tools and
fora we have available?

On 11 July 2010 20:08, Michael Allan <mike at zelea.com> wrote:

> http://www.theatreoftheoppressed.org/
>
> I heard of them from a correspondent in the NCDD list.  They seem to
> be doing the same thing as we are, except through drama.  I didn't
> understand them until I read their "declaration of principles":
> http://www.theatreoftheoppressed.org/en/index.php?nodeID=23
>

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