Chapter 4, Poetics of the Oppressed, Experiments with People's Theater in Peru, pages 130-142 Summary and Analysis

The second stage is making the body expressive. Participants use their bodies to communicate, imitating animals, people, or other things. One student portrayed a hummingbird and was convinced that the student portraying a bull was his mate, the other hummingbird. Boal notes that students should be encouraged to create their own games.

The third stage is the theater as language. The first degree, or level, is simultaneous dramaturgy, where actors perform a short scene conceived by a local resident. At the climax, actors ask the participants for solutions and improvise the ideas. One woman offered her situation, having discovered that her husband took advantage of her illiteracy by putting her in charge of keeping love letters from...