Theatre of the Oppressed

[Michael Allan]

Hi David,

Small world! :-)

I'm intrigued by this.  My correspondent recommends "going straight to
Augusto Boal's books".  So I'm headed to the library now.

Speaking for myself, I'm open to exploring an interface of some kind
(at some level), though I don't know what it might be.  But we're
definitely in an exploratory phase right now, so anything goes.
Please do make suggestions.

http://vaudevillecourt.tv/
I love that.  Do you live at Vaudeville Court?

Mike

David Bovill wrote:
> 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?