Boal TDR the Cop in the Head

The Cop in the Head: Three HypothesesAuthor(s): Augusto Boal and Susana EpsteinSource: TDR (1988-), Vol. 34, No. 3 (Autumn, 1990), pp. 35-42Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1146067 .Accessed: 05/02/2014 08:49

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The Cop in the Head Three Hypotheses

Augusto Boal

What we do takes from art not science! Therefore, we cannot present concrete proofs of anything. We do not demonstrate theorems. We only propose hypotheses.

"Hypo" . . . means "on this side of, underneath." Hypotheses need practical verification in order to be valuable. And our practice has verified our hypotheses.

The theatre of the oppressed emphasizes theatre as a language that must be spoken, not a discourse that must be listened to. It also stresses theatre as a process that must be developed, rather than a finished product that must be consumed. The theatre of the oppressed goes beyond the ordinary boundaries of theatre because it asserts the oppressed are the subjects rather than the objects of theatrical activity. Also, it advances toward other do- mains: sports, politics, psychology, and philosophy-all fields as complex as ours.

"The Cop in the Head," part of a more general concept within the framework of the theatre of the oppressed, concerns those oppressions that have been internalized.

We usually work on the boundaries of politics, using theatre of the oppressed techniques to study specific events such as how to organize a strike. There are many people who dare not participate in a strike or other political actions. Why? Because they have cops in their heads. They have internalized their oppressions.

The cops are in their heads, but the headquarters of these cops are in the external reality. It is necessary to locate both the cops and their headquarters. In this instance, we are at the border of psychology, but always on the side of theatre.

There is no spectator in a theatre of the oppressed session: there are only active observers. The center of gravity is in the auditorium rather than on stage. An image or a scene that does not reflect upon the observers cannot be dealt with using our technique, since it constitutes a personal case that cannot be considered collectively. We may empathize with the person who has shown us such a scene, but we cannot really speak other than as

The Drama Review 34, no. 3 (T127), Fall 1990

35


36 Augusto Boal

1. Boal wrote Torque- mada while in prison in 1971-where "cops" were not only in the head. Later that year, Boal directed the show at New York Univer- sity, Tisch School of the Arts. (Photo courtesy of Au- gusto Boal)

oppressed people ourselves. We can give good advice; however, we do not run the same risks.

The theatre of the oppressed has two fundamental principles: I) To help the spectator become a protagonist of the dramatic action so that s/he can 2) apply those actions s/he has practiced in the theatre to real life.

In order to be able to realize these two basic tasks, the theatre of the oppressed and particularly the process of The Cop in the Head proposes three hypotheses:

I. Osmosis between macrocosm and microcosm. 2. Metaxis. 3. Analogical Induction.

First Hypothesis: Osmosis--The Macrocosm and the Microcosm Hypothesis: "All the moral and political values of a given society along

with its structures of power and domination, as well as its corresponding mechanisms of oppression are contained in the smallest cells of the social organization (the couple, the family, the neighborhood, the school, the office, the factory, etc.) and in the smallest events of social life (an accident at the end of a street, the ID control in the subway, a doctor's visit, etc.)."

The big national themes are inscribed in the small personal ones. Ac- cording to this hypothesis, if one speaks of a strictly individual case, one is


The Cop in the Head 37 also speaking about all similar cases and therefore the society in which this particular case takes place.

For this to be true it is necessary that all the singular elements of individual discourses become symbolic and lose their exclusivity. In this shift from the particular event to its social context, we abandon psychotherapy for theatre.

One can also add: "The dominating ideas in a given society are those of the dominating class" (Marx). An Indian who sees a cowboy movie will end up thinking as a cowboy rather than as an Indian.

Twenty years ago, we had a very interesting experience in the U.S., comparing social values in the segregationist South with those in New York, where "integration" appeared to be more advanced. We showed a dozen or so dolls to hundreds of black children. The dolls were different colors: white, green, blue, black, etc. We asked them to point out the prettiest and the ugliest. In the South, where the segregated blacks had better kept their aesthetic values (along with other values), the children said that the prettiest was the black doll and the ugliest the white one. In the North, where "integration" imposes the values of the white society, the results were just the opposite: the white doll was the prettiest and the black was the ugliest. The black kids had acquired the whites' values.

I call the propagation of ideas, values, and tastes "osmosis." Osmosis happens through repression and seduction. Also by repulsion, hate, fear, violence, constraint or, on the contrary, by attraction, love, desire, prom- ises, dependency, etc.

Where does osmosis happen? Everywhere. In every cell of social life: in the family through legal parental power, money, dependency, affections; at work through salary, bonuses, vacations, unemployment, retirement; in the army through punishment, promotion, hierarchy, the seduction of exercising power; in school through grades, end of the year marks, files; in advertising through the false association of ideas-beautiful women and cigarettes, Niagara Falls and whisky, etc., etc.; in the newspapers through the selection of news, the manipulation of diagrams; in the church through hell, paradise, the unknown, communion, forgiveness, guilt, hope.

Also, in the theatre. How? The theatre, as we know it, puts two different worlds in contact: the

auditorium and the stage. Conventional theatrical rituals determine the roles that both worlds must play. Onstage, images of social life are pre- sented in an organic, autonomous fashion which cannot be modified by the auditorium. During the performance, the auditorium is deactivated, reduced to contemplation (sometimes critical) of the events that develop onstage. Osmosis moves from the stage to the auditorium in an intransi- tive manner. If there is strong resistance to deactivation in the auditorium, the performance can be stopped, but it cannot be transformed since it is predetermined. The conventional theatrical ritual does not change. It may broadcast, mobilizing ideas, but the ritual itself remains unchanged.

Numancia, a play by Cervantes, tells the story of a city under siege whose inhabitants decide to resist until the last man, the last woman, and the last child die. They are all killed, but they do not surrender. During the Civil War in Spain, Numancia was performed in a city under siege by the fascists. It is obvious that the piece produced a great mobilizing effect in spite of theatrical conventions. In this particular instance, reality shattered the ritual. In an "ordinary" performance, one usually forgets about real life because it is necessary to pay attention to the stage. Here, the stage re-


38 Augusto Boal

minded the spectators of what was actually happening in the streets. The convention of the theatrical ritual was broken by the dynamism of the social events.

In the theatre of the oppressed, one tries to make the auditorium-stage dialog entirely transitive: the stage may attempt to transform the auditorium, but the auditorium can attempt to change everything.

The transmission by osmosis is not always peaceful. It relies on subject- object relationships. Nobody can be reduced to the condition of absolute object, however. Therefore, the oppressor produces two different reac- tions in the oppressed: subversion and submission. Every oppressed is a submissive subversive. His submission is his Cop in the Head. But he is also subversive. Our goal is to render the subversion more dynamic while making the submission disappear.

Second Hypothesis: Metaxis In a traditional theatrical performance, the spectator/character (or actor)

relationship takes place through what we call empathy: "en," inside; "pathos," emotion.

The emotions of the characters strike us and the moral world of the performance invades us through osmosis. We are led by the characters and their actions which we cannot control. We experience a vicarious emotion.

In an ordinary theatre of the oppressed session, in which the oppressed have created a world of images based on their own oppressions, the relationship active observer/character changes drastically and becomes sympathy: "sym," with. We are no longer led, now we lead. I am not touched by somebody else's emotions. I produce my own. I control my actions. I am the subject. There, where somebody like me led the action, we are now the subjects.

In the first instance, the stage that moves takes me with it. In the second, it is me who makes it move.

The oppressed become the artists. The oppressed-artist produces a world of art. She creates the images of

her real life, that is, her real oppressions. This world of images contains the same oppressions that exist in the real world that produces them, but they have been transformed aesthetically.

When the oppressed-artist creates the images of her oppressive reality, she belongs to both the real and aesthetic world in an active rather than vicarious way. In this instance, we have the metaxis phenomenon: the total and simultaneous adherence to two different and autonomous worlds.

The aesthetic transubstantiation belongs to the two autonomous worlds: reality and the image of reality that has been created by this process.

It is very important that these two worlds are truly autonomous. The artistic creativity of the oppressed-protagonist should not limit itself to a simple reproduction of reality, or to the symbolic illustration of the real oppression: artistic creativity must have its own aesthetic dimension.

Usually, the participants insist upon the meaning of each image. This requires the translation of an image into another language, the verbal. But images cannot be translated, just as the first chords of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony cannot be translated into a 500oo-page book.

There are many people who cannot enjoy abstract painting because they are always trying to interpret, to translate the images. If a painting is called Still Nature they try to find where the grapes, or the pineapple, or the bananas are. Think, for instance, of Picasso's Naked Woman with Apple in which one can find neither the woman nor the apple. The woman and the


The Cop in the Head 39

2. Boal's 1984 production of Nicht Mehr Nach Calin- gasta (Nothing More Af- ter Calingasta) in Graz, Austria, won best play of the year-an example of Boal's ability to deal in "vicarious" emotion. (Photo courtesy of Augusto Boal)

3. Dealing in an "active" aesthetic world, participants engage in a theatre of the oppressed workshop in Rio de Janeiro in 1980. (Photo courtesy of Augusto Boal)

apple no longer exist in the same way they did when being created: they are transubstantiated in the painting. Now they only exist in Picasso's head. The metaxis takes place inside him. We must identify with Picasso, through sym-pathy, in order to also experience metaxis and produce a similar painting.

If our society, our culture, or our social life have nothing to do with Picasso's, the metaxis will not happen because our transitive identification (sympathy) with him is impossible. A Chinese or a Chilean of the same generation and social class as a French person will not experience the painting in the same way.

Similarly, when an oppressed produces images of his oppression, it is necessary for us to identify ourselves with him "sympathetically." Solidar- ity is not enough. His oppression must be ours.

The image must become autonomous for metaxis to occur. In this instance, the image of reality is as real as an image.

The oppressed creates images of his reality. Afterwards, he must play with the reality of those images. The oppressions are the same, but they present


4o Augusto Boal

themselves transubstantiated. The oppressed must forget the real world in which his image has originated in order to be able to play with the artistic image. He must extrapolate himself from social reality into the reality we call fiction (theatre, image) and, after he has played with the image, after having made "theatre," he must reverse the extrapolation: He will manipu- late the aesthetic reality in order to change the social one.

The transubstantiation process must be accomplished by the oppressed- artist herself. She is the one who has to create the image on which participants will work. She is not required to remain within the boundaries of realism, nor is this expressionism, in which everything is deformed by individual subjectivity. Since we speak in the first person plural, however, it can be thought of as an objective expression: how does this group of people, who belong to the same social class and work in the same place, see the other characters who oppress them, and how do they perceive themselves who being the subject of such oppression? Even if the images are created by only one person, they will speak for everyone.

It is very important to maintain the coherence of the new world being created. During the game, one cannot make references to the origin of this world. Each world has its own, unique origin.

The second hypothesis can be formulated as follows: "If the oppressed- artist is able to create an autonomous world of images based on his own reality, and play out his freedom in these images, he can then apply everything he has accomplished in the fiction to his own life."

This hypothesis calls for precision in categorizing images and differ- entiating between the concepts of person, personality, character, and mask.

The person is potential. Each human being is infinitely rich, full of psychological and intellectual possibilities. One may consider these possibilities good or bad. Everyone is potentially capable of performing all the actions, feeling all the emotions, and enjoying all the pleasures a person is able to, without any moral connotations.

In each culture, these potentials are only partially accomplished through education, work, and social life. Either by choice or constraint, each of these areas form an individual's personality.

If the person realizes her potential, her personality is the action. If the person is the "I can do it," the personality is the "I do it." The person is much richer and more varied than the personality, but this is not revealed in daily life.

Restrictions exist in the name of reality. But which reality? It is an historically determined reality. In a society where a class struggle exists, it is obvious that the dominant classes impose their constraints. It is time to break them!

The character is "the other." It is the other echoing within ourselves. If the character exists within ourselves, we can play it even if it is completely different from our personality. On the other hand, we cannot play a character which does not exist in us. We could not play two Martians in love, for instance, unless we project our own personality onto them.

The same text of Hamlet may arouse a totally different character within different people. To play a character means to transform into action (fiction) a part of our potentiality, of our person. And this is a part which does not coincide with our personality.

The mask is the death of the personality. It is the mechanization and the hardening of the personality. It is the absence of creativity. It is death.


The Cop in the Head 41

4. Boal leading a 1979 workshop in Stockholm, Sweden. (Photo courtesy of Augusto Boal)

Third Hypothesis: The Analogical Induction In a theatre of the oppressed session in which the participants belong to

the same social group (students from the same school, neighbors, workers from the same factory, etc.) and suffer the same oppressions, the individual story of a person will immediately become plural, since one's oppression is everybody's oppression. The characteristics of each individual case can be neglected due to their similarity with all the others. Therefore, during such a session, sym-pathy is immediate: We are all speaking about ourselves.

On the contrary, in a specific session of The Cop in the Head, it is possible that somebody tells a story of an individual oppression whose characteristics can be singled out and be very different from the individual circumstances of the other participants. In this instance, we would be caught by em-pathy, becoming spectators to the person who is telling the story. We can also be in solidarity with that person, but this would not be the theatre of but the theatre for the oppressed.

Third Hypothesis: "If an individual's farewell image or scene prompts other analogous images or scenes from colleagues in the session, and if one builds a model detached from the particular circumstances of each individual case using these images, such a model will contain the general mechanisms through which oppression is produced. This revelation of the general mechanisms of oppression will enable us to study the different possibilities for breaking the oppression sym-pathetically."


42 Augusto Boal

5. Boal with cultural workers in a Brazilian public school in 1986, presenting their own plays about violence, sex, and lack of money. (Photo courtesy of Augusto Boal)

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Even if one does not get to the point of building a model, or if one considers that it is not necessary in a specific instance, the confrontation between, or juxtaposition of, similar cases and the resulting forum will be sufficient to produce sym-pathy because during such a forum the particu- larities will acquire a symbolic character (given the fact that we have previ- ously produced, seen, and studied other cases which have deeply engaged us).

The function of analogical induction allows for a gestaltic analysis which provides several different perspectives on each situation. We do not interpret or explain anything. We simply offer multiple points of view. The oppressed must be helped so that she can reflect upon her own actions, i.e., regarding possible alternatives shown to her by other participants based on their particular circumstances. We must provide a distance between action and reflecting on it. The protagonist must be able to see herself both as a protagonist and as an object. She is the observer of the observed person.

These three hypotheses are based on the fundamental hypothesis of the theatre of the oppressed: "If the oppressed himself (and not a surrogate artist) performs an action, this action, performed in a theatrical fiction, will allow him to change things in his real life."

This hypothesis contradicts the theory of catharsis, according to which the spectator's role leads her to void the emotions she has experienced during the performance.

Translated from the French by Susana Epstein Originally published in the Bulletin du theatre de l'opprime, no. 5, 1981.


Article Contentsp. 35p. 36p. 37p. 38p. 39p. 40p. 41p. 42

Issue Table of ContentsTDR (1988-), Vol. 34, No. 3 (Autumn, 1990), pp. 1-200Front Matter [pp. 1-6]TDR CommentAfter the Fall of the Wall [pp. 7-9]Signing the Purity Oath [pp. 9-10]

In MemoryMeeting Beckett [pp. 11-12]

Letters, Etc.Black Theatre-Where the Funding Isn't [pp. 13-15]No Secret Politics in the U. S.? [pp. 15-16]Postcolonial Imperialism? [pp. 16-19]ITItems [pp. 20-21]Etc. [pp. 22]Corrections for Peixoto, Martin, Epstein and Schechner [pp. 22-23]

Augusto BoalInvisible Theatre: Liege, Belgium, 1978 [pp. 24-34]The Cop in the Head: Three Hypotheses [pp. 35-42]Boal at NYU: A Workshop and Its Aftermath [pp. 43-49]Boal in Brazil, France, the USA: An Interview with Augusto Boal [pp. 50-65]Theatre of the Oppressed Workshops with Women: An Interview with Augusto Boal [pp. 66-76]Activism, Therapy, or Nostalgia? Theatre of the Oppressed in NYC [pp. 77-83]Selected Bibliography on Augusto Boal [pp. 84-87]

CzechoslovakiaWithout Theatre, the Czechoslovak Revolution Could Not Have Been Won [pp. 88-96]On Stage with the Velvet Revolution [pp. 97-108]

Clearing Space: AIDS Theatre in Atlanta [pp. 109-128]Charlie MorrowCharlie Morrow Alarums and Excursions [pp. 129-147]Making Waves: An Interview with Charlie Morrow [pp. 148-158]Hefty Hefty Hefty-Wimpy Wimpy Wimpy: An Interview with Charlie Morrow [pp. 159-161]

CurrentsOpen Doors for the International Theatre School of Latin America and the Caribbean [pp. 162-176]Crossing Cultures: Aleksandr Galin's "The Roof" at Florida State University [pp. 176-183]Retrospective of Modern Indian Theatre: New Delhi, 1989 [pp. 183-189]

Back Matter [pp. 190-200]

Boal TDR the Cop in the Head

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