I had never heard of Augusto Boal until I listened to yesterday’s Democracy Now!

Augusto Boal, the legendary Brazilian political playwright and popular educator, died this weekend at the age of seventy-eight. He was the founder of the Theater of the Oppressed, a popular international movement for a participatory form of theater as a means of promoting knowledge and democratic forms of interaction. Boal conducted workshops all over the world. His techniques of using theater to discuss power and oppression have been widely inspirational and influential.

In 1971, the Brazilian military dictatorship imprisoned and tortured Boal for four months. After his release, he was forced into exile for fifteen years. He’s written a number of books, including Theater of the Oppressed and Games for Actors and Non-Actors, as well as The Rainbow of Desire and Legislative Theater. In the ’90s, Boal also served as a city councilmember for Rio de Janeiro.

Boal was tireless ’til the end of his life. According to a statement from the Center for the Theater of the Oppressed in Rio, Boal left behind a completed new version of his book The Aesthetics of the Oppressed, and he spent the day before his death, May Day, in a solidarity vigil with workers.

Later this month, Augusto Boal’s son Julian Boal will be in New York leading workshops at the Brecht Forum on the techniques developed by his father and performing them at Riverside Church on May 25th.

The interview reminded me so much of the strategies that Chican@s use to do outreach, in particular, El Teatro Campesino.

I’m not sure why theater works so well in spreading the word. It technically seems like it takes too much money to put together and doesn’t reach as many people as the internet or even a newspaper might. But it does work. And it remains an important cultural nexus for many many Latino communities.

Which is the interesting thing about media that is community centered and controlled. When communities get to decide the way they want to communicate, suddenly traditional forms of media like newspapers and the internet are what seem to cost too much money and not reach enough people to make the investment worth it.

As newspapers continue to die off and corporate media sources lose more and more money, it’s something to keep in mind. What needs of communities are those media sources simply not fulfilling?