A delightful and enlightening addition to nonfiction graphic novel collections.” — School Library Journal, Starred Review

Culture of all forms (not only theatre) emerges from this aesthetic nature. We are all cultural producers, in that we produce our own lives, and produce things we need to live. Culture is necessarily diverse, because it is a set of ‘ways of doing’, which in turn are ways to reach different dreams. Hence, while the essence is in a sense common, it manifests in ways which produce diversity and difference. This is because the essence is a creative force, rather than a fixed type of being. In The Aesthetics of the Oppressed, Boal extends his theory beyond his usual domain of theatre. He explores the broader role of the arts. For Boal, art is a form of sensory dialogue. It is a means to pursue truth through the senses. It expands the range of one’s ability to detect signals of a special type, in which signifiers are the same as signifieds. Boal gives emotional expression, such as smiling, as an example of this type of signal. Boal’s coinage for this kind of signal is a ‘unicity’. Art helps us to experience and perceive unicities. There are different phases to Boal’s work. In his own writings, Boal suggests that his early work is mostly about theatre in the conventional sense. His later work is more focused on ‘human beings as theatre’, or theatre as the ‘true nature of humanity’. He increasingly sees social life, in itself, as theatrical. Theatre is a microcosm – a reproduction on a smaller scale – of the whole of social life. In Aesthetics of the Oppressed, Boal lists several techniques for forms of art other than theatre. One of these entails listing a personal or national event, and trying to link its personal and political significance together. Another involves declaring identity based on different relationships – modelled on the theory that identity is relational. Forms of imagery include photographs of hands, which show a person’s activity, and sculptures made from clean rubbish. In terms of sound techniques, the goal is to connect with inner rhythms. Techniques include telling stories in dance, and turning mechanistic gestures into dance.In the section about digestion, there is an explanation of different vitamins and minerals. The description of Vitamin D states that it can be found in sunlight. This isn't inaccurate, but not fully explained. The body produces vitamin D as a result of exposure to sunlight. With as much detail as this book goes into explaining the different processes of the human body, a clarification of this statement would have been nice.

Multi-award winning writer Lucy Kirkwood’s current projects include writing the book and lyrics for new musical The Witches, based on Roald Dahl’s classic book, now playing at the National Theatre. All culture is involved in aesthetic production. However, theatre has a special significance, in that it embodies the capacity for self-observation. Theatre stems from humans’ ability to observe ourselves – not only to see, but to see ourselves seeing. At root, theatre is the uniquely human capacity to observe oneself in action. By seeing ourselves seeing, we can see ourselves in situ – in the situations we’re in. And we can imagine what we can become. We can split ourselves into the person in situ; the observer; and the “not-I”, the person we are not. The doubling or splitting of the self into observer and observed is crucial here. It allows reflexivity. The role of theatre is to enact this split. Hence, theatre is change and creation. It does not simply represent realities. Image Theatre uses the human body as a tool of representing feelings, ideas, and relationships. Through sculpting others or using our own body to demonstrate a body position, participants create anything from one-person to large-group image sculptures that reflect the sculptor’s impression of a situation or oppression. Welcome to the Human Body Theater, where your master of ceremonies is going to lead you through a theatrical revue of each and every biological system of the human body! Starting out as a skeleton, the MC puts on a new layer of her costume (her body) with each "act." By turns goofy and intensely informative, the Human Body Theateris always accessible and always entertaining. The idea that people rarely see or hear reality – but simply watch it or are silent – has political implications. In one of his essays, Boal writes of three social problems common in Brazil – begging, child sex work, and inhuman prison conditions. Of all three, he writes, the problem has become so familiar that people cannot see or hear it. In other words, the outrage at inhumanity which the problem should evoke has been dulled by familiarity. On the other hand, it is a ‘lie’, albeit a ‘truthful lie’, to say that the majority support a proposal, when they do not fully understand it. There cannot be effective democracy without genuine “hearing”.Another important aspect of art is metaphor. Boal sees metaphor as a kind of translation. It is central to language, and all the arts which represent realities. Metaphor is one of the things which distinguishes humans from animals. The modern media are criticised for destroying the power of metaphor. The most important part of the Aesthetics of the Oppressed is the Aesthetic Process. The process develops the ability to experience things in a sensory way. It expands people’s expressive and perceptual potential. The main role of artistic products (or works of art) is to amplify this process socially. A participant in Theatre of the Oppressed is said, paradoxically, to become her or himself. What Boal seems to mean here is that the participant is formerly submerged in an alien culture. By forming her/his own perspective, s/he becomes an autonomous subject. Aesthetic distance is a way to see the real, rather than being submerged in it. In this way, the oppressed can formulate their own metaphoric world, or set of meanings. Ethically, we should try to multiply what is learnt. Any work of art (including dance, music, theatre, etc) contains a particular ideology, or worldview. Learning art and culture can help to expand one’s own sensibility. But ultimately the point is to produce one’s own art, from one’s own point of view. Boal argues that artists should ignore the market. The real purpose of art is to speak with one’s own voice. However, this leads to a fatal struggle between artist and art-consumer or buyer. Every artist is essentially ‘subversive’, or anti-capitalist. This theory of hearing/seeing is central to the concept of oppression. Oppression entails an absence of dialogue. It involves a monological relation in which only one of the terms can speak. It also implies a basically conflictual relation in which both sides, but especially the oppressed, are victims. Dialogue is impossible until people recognise each other as different.

In particular, theatre expresses the human capacity for creativity. There are many different “languages”, or forms of expression. All of these are irreplaceable and valuable. They are different ways of knowing the world. The multiplication of languages, or learning of new languages, help us get closer to the real, because they give more and more perspectives on it. The particular “language” of theatre is the human body. To act is to know and control one’s body, to make it expressive. The body, not theatrical technique, is the proper focus of learning. In his later works, Boal claims that ‘theatre is the human language par excellence’. Humans are most human when doing theatre. This is because theatre emphasises the capacity to observe oneself in action. This reflexive structure of self-observation is for Boal central to humanity. From his work Boal evolved various forms of theatre workshops and performances which aimed to meet the needs of all people for interaction, dialogue, critical thinking, action, and fun. While the performance modes of Forum Theatre, Image Theatre, Cop-In-The-Head, and the vast array of the Rainbow of Desire are designed to bring the audience into active relationship with the performed event, the workshops are virtually a training ground for action not only in these performance forms, but for action in life. The "host" is Bones, a skeleton, who deftly leads us through several "acts" of the human body systems, introducing us to all kinds of interesting characters, from a chorus line of germs to the five oversized senses, to the poor "finger" who has to serve as an example of many different body problems. Despite these characterizations, most things are drawn realistically, and lots of scientific words are introduced. Tweens and teens working on science reports will find the Table of Contents useful in identifying chapters on each of the body systems. Youth will also use the glossary and bibliography as reference sources. Lccn 2015937863 Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-alpha-20201231-10-g1236 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9693 Ocr_module_version 0.0.13 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA19942 Openlibrary_editionOne of the roles of art is to restore the sensory level of perception and communication. This requires that art break down, or move past, the armouring provided by bodily rigidity, habit and language. Art is a process of stimulation, likened to dream and utopia. Boal speculates that it activates a particular kind of aesthetic neurons. We are all artists. Everyday practices, such as lovemaking, can also be art. Librarians will find a broad readership for this engaging work of nonfiction. This book would be an excellent addition to a growing collection of graphic nonfiction options for middle school youth. Consider developing a display to feature works of STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) graphic nonfiction. Forum Theatre works from rehearsal improvisation to create a scene of a specific oppression. Using the Greek terms “protagonist” and “antagonist,” Forum Theatre seeks to show a person (the protagonist) who is trying to deal with an oppression and failing because of the resistance of one or more obstacles (the antagonists).