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Research in Drama Education: The

Journal of Applied Theatre and
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When theatre of the oppressed

becomes theatre of the oppressor
a
Sonia Hamel
a
Sociolology-Anthropology Department, University of Concordia ,
Montreal, QC, Canada
Published online: 19 Nov 2013.

To cite this article: Sonia Hamel (2013) When theatre of the oppressed becomes theatre of the
oppressor, Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 18:4,
403-416, DOI: 10.1080/13569783.2013.836918

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13569783.2013.836918

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 RiDE: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 2013
Vol. 18, No. 4, 403–416, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13569783.2013.836918

When theatre of the oppressed becomes theatre of the oppressor

Sonia Hamel*

Sociolology-Anthropology Department, University of Concordia, Montreal, QC, Canada

On 6 February 2008, a deliberative theatre experiment was held at the National

Archives of Quebec. Inspired by the democratic virtues of public deliberation but
preoccupied with its blind spots, Forum Theatre was used as a deliberative
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medium to initiate discussion about the social tensions between the homeless and
other dwellers of public space in downtown Montreal. At this event, many
audience members rejected the depiction of themselves as oppressors in the play.
As a result, the perspectives of the oppressed towards their oppressors were
appropriated by the perspectives of the latter towards themselves, thereby
reproducing a typical deliberative space in which the hierarchy in the audience
dominated the agenda, while our homeless participants endured in silence.
Drawing from Schutzman, Neelands and O’Sullivan, I will argue that what actually
took place during the event speaks to the uneasy transposition of a third-world
aesthetic of resistance in a first-world individualistic context of identity politics.
Following Prentki, I will further argue that this uneasy transposition is exacerbated
by a funding climate predicated on an uncritical colonial model of social inclusion.
In this instance, ‘colonialism’ refers to normative understandings of inclusion
versus experiences of those who live on the margins.

Setting the stage: the genesis of the project

Montreal’s downtown area, like many other urban centres, has long been a fertile
ground for conflict. Indeed, the right to the city in this socially mixed neighbourhood
is waged between a considerable student population; affluent residents; tourists
attracted by the numerous cultural happenings, as well as by illicit activity in what is
reluctantly dubbed the red light district; and urban promoters and planners pushing
for the gentrification of this area, also characterised by a significant proportion of
single parent households and welfare recipients. Amidst this typical urban caco-
phony, downtown Montreal has been a rallying point for street youth and other
indigent populations for whom the hustle and bustle provides this underclass with
survival opportunities like squeegeeing and panhandling for instance. They are also
drawn by community resources and illicit activity, namely, that which surrounds the
drug market that attracts some tourists as well.
The relocation project of one of the more controversial non-profit organisations in
the heart of Sainte-Catherine Street, a main commercial avenue, serves to illustrate
the social tensions in this particular area. In the spirit of harms reduction, this
organisation distributes, among other activities, safe material for intravenous drug
users and inhalable drug users. Its relocation was initially met with such resistance

*Email: sonia.hamel096@videotron.ca
© 2013 Taylor & Francis
 404 S. Hamel

from some of the more vocal opponents that a neighbourhood coalition was formed
in order to mitigate the tensions between the various stakeholders involved in this
issue. This on-going coalition, which lent itself to our deliberative experience,
includes residents, business owners, municipal and community organisation repre-
sentatives, a few scholars from several Montreal universities and research groups,
healthcare workers, etc. However, when it comes to cohabitation issues – one of the
main topics of discussion during the public forums held by this coalition – the
homeless are rarely considered legitimate interlocutors.
While the high concentration of homelessness in this area is a recurring theme,
homeless people themselves are seldom seen or heard during these forums. When
they do intervene their comments are deemed too emotional and incoherent
rendering them voiceless in these town meetings. As such, the homeless are unable
to contribute to the socially constructed definitions of urban cohabitation within
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which rules of engagement between urban dwellers are discussed. As a result, their
pariah status goes unquestioned and is reproduced.
In light of the above considerations, a joint effort between academic research and
Applied Theatre practice was initiated to explore Forum Theatre as a dialogical
medium between a small group of homeless participants and other urban dwellers.
This collaborative venture, initiated and funded by the researcher, aimed at restoring
the dignity of our homeless participants by focusing on their narratives of oppression
as visible ‘colonisers’ of public space in the absence of a private space to call their
own. By instigating a public forum grounded first and foremost on theatrical
representations of the generally underrepresented life-worlds of our homeless group,
I hoped to deconstruct normative conceptions of the public domain as a transitory
space between home, work and play, a space centred on the city as a consumable
good (Lefebvre 1972). Within this normative framework, visible homelessness is often
correlated with delinquent behaviour and poor individual choices, rather than being a
manifestation of a delinquent State unable or unwilling to ensure affordable housing.
In short, this experience was designed to challenge the traditional discursive practice
of public forums as deliberative spaces, by theatricalising the subjective narratives of
our group of five homeless participants.
A part from initiating this experience, my role as a researcher and a relatively
informed albeit neophyte of Forum Theatre, was to document this whole process
while the practitioner, director and artistic director of a downtown participative
theatre company, jokered the workshops and the events.
What follows is a brief account of the process which led to the event, an overview
of the play, and a description of the event which teases out a particularly dominant
discourse, subsequently analysed in light of my argument.

The process: from the cops at the door to the cops in our heads1
Twenty-two, two-hour weekly workshops (photo of the team in Figure 1) led to the
public Forum Theatre event on 6 February 2008. This process was punctuated by a
Forum Theatre event amongst other homeless peers in which we were able to
validate and/or modify the content of the scenes in light of the audience and Spect-
actor reactions and character replacements.
The creative process was largely dominated by the voices of those qualified as
oppressors by the group of homeless participants. One of the prominent antagonists
 Research in Drama Education 405
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Figure 1. From left to right: Researcher, professional actor, Serge (Homeless participant),
Practitioner, Olivier (Homeless Participant). Bottom left to right: Marie and Carl (Homeless
Participants). All members of the group were not present that day.

identified by our group as quasi unequivocal oppressor was police officers. This
significant interlocutor was considered an arch nemesis by our group in the verbal
exchanges that took place in the first and second workshops, as well as by the
homeless peers who later viewed the play. Indeed, the latter told stories whereby the
presumed fear of the domiciled citizen towards the unsightly spectacle of human
distress and unpredictable behaviour was used by police officers to justify incessant
displacement of the homeless from the public domain; stories in which the few
personal belongings of the homeless were often confiscated by police officers in their
altercations with the homeless; comments denouncing the lack of affordable housing
and what was considered the unfounded feelings of insecurity as legitimising the
recourse to displacement and to incarceration of the homeless, etc. The intervention
of one of the rare domiciled Spect-actors present at this preliminary event amongst
peers was eloquent. She replaced one of the street youth characters ordered to
‘move along’ by two cops and was confronted to the merciless arm of the law
embodied by the two police officers played by two of our homeless participants.
This illustration of asymmetric power relations between cops and the homeless as
an exemplar of the clear divide between the homeless as oppressed and the police
officers as oppressor lent itself quite well to Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed model.
However, rather than prompting more extensive theatrical explorations of these
narratives of oppression, the practitioner insisted on hearing the voice of this
important antagonist by hot seating a cop character played by one of our younger
homeless female participants. Interestingly though, contrary to the machiavelic
 406 S. Hamel

picture stemming from the initial exchanges, this character told the story of an
internally conflicted ‘good cop’, proud of graduating from the police academy
without being brainwashed by police culture, who became a cop to ‘defend the
widow and the orphan’. This enactment illustrated the police officer’s internal
oppression when faced with difficult interventions towards marginalised populations:

I’m not always at peace with what is expected of me as a police officer. I mean, it’s not
right to kick someone when he’s down. (Marie in her depiction of a cop)

Her characterisation, she claimed, was inspired by a female cop she knew who
personified the distinction between police officers and Pigs. This characterisation
which contrasted with the stories told by our group, stories largely echoed by their
peers, resonated with the practitioner as it echoed the need to better illustrate the
fact that ‘an oppressed and oppressor lie within each of us’ regardless of social status.
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As such, it led him to ponder over antagonistic relations between cops and the
indigent as a sort of ‘amusing game’ freely entered into by both parties.
Unbeknownst to him though, in doing so, he de facto downplayed narratives which
illustrate feelings of powerlessness, subordination and humiliation experienced by
the group of participants in particular, and by the homeless in general when faced
with cops as these responses demonstrate:

It’s not a game we (homeless) feel like playing.’ (Marie submitted to the hot seat in the
role of cop). ‘You don’t feel like playing, you feel like killing! (Carl: a homeless veteran)

What ensued from this second workshop on was the hot seating of almost all the
antagonists named by our group: the affluent resident, the tourist, the business
owner and the street worker whose status oscillated between antagonist and
protagonist. All but the homeless themselves were submitted to the hot seat. As a
result, the narratives of oppression described by the group were explored rather
superficially and timidly throughout the creative process. Consequently, the uneven
power relations informing relational dynamics in public space were lost in the
translation between the stories initially told by the participants and their less than
convincing theatrical embodiment.
In this strategic, albeit legitimate effort to illicit reflexivity among our participants
in order to, among other reasons, avoid antagonising audience members which
would surely undermine dialogue at this upcoming event, this emphasis on
antagonistic voices led to disembodied and unconvincing representations of the
group’s daily experiences in public space. Moreover, the practitioner’s call for more
nuanced depictions in the play followed a meeting with the President of the
neighbourhood coalition we partnered with for the final event of 6 February 2008. He
had previewed the play during the preliminary presentation among homeless peers.
He admitted to a certain amount of uneasiness regarding the views expressed by the
play: reifying a naïf belief in a mythical harmonious urban landscape, he feared that
the experience might worsen tensions and deepen the gap between the homeless
and others in the downtown area. His apprehensions prompted us to review some of
the scenes. It was decided then to soften the scenes that involved altercations
 Research in Drama Education 407

between police officers and our homeless characters, and this, despite strong
objections expressed by Carl, one of our more militant participant, a seasoned ‘urban
camper’ who, for the last 10 years, has had his squats systematically destroyed
by cops:

It’s worse in real life! The cops are worse than what we present in the play!!!’ he
cried in a desperate attempt to maintain those scenes as they were initially
presented.

In another exercise, the participants were asked to describe a best and worst
moment. One participant described two revealing situations: one which illustrated
feelings of rejection by his mother and the other, feelings of oppression in a rooming
house he resided in, both as ‘worst moments’. The climate he described was so
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oppressive that it would later prompt him to resort to the streets seen by him as less
brutal and more liveable than this rooming house which he likened to a drug den.
Instead of exploring these narratives theatrically, only the second situation was
written into the play by the professional actor-practitioner. This significant moment of
disclosure related to painful childhood memories was set aside as it was deemed too
personal to be explored, thereby dodging the opportunity to bring this particular
participant to embody his own narrative of pain and rejection as a way to better
understand his own feelings of disenfranchisement.
Finally, the emphasis on antagonists undermined our group’s own under-
standings of their realities in public space. Furthermore, the superficial exploration of
their own experiences would hinder their capacity to speak up during the final
event not to mention that, despite efforts to lighten-up some scenes, members of
the audience largely invalidated the content of the play as I will subsequently
demonstrate.

A few words on the play ‘Mains tendues’ (Hands reaching out)

The forty-minute play was divided into nine scenes that illustrate aspects of the daily
lives of the homeless: their displacement by police officers who use absurd city
regulation to legitimate their actions; begging as a source of uneasiness or irritation;
the approaches of some non-profit organisations which make their ‘users’ feel
exploited and used as mascots for potential funders; food line-ups where the
homeless gather (illustrated in Figure 2); pressure from business associations which
cause tension between business dwellers and the homeless; typical squatting
strategies; the brittleness of social bonds amongst the homeless; the drug dealing,
which surrounds them and to which they are vulnerable and closely associated; and
finally, their quest for social ties with those neighbourhood residents they have
befriended.
Scenes involving cops and the homeless were transformed into a farcical
display rendering any critical discourse concerning the asymmetrical powers within
this pivotal relationship, and what it means in the larger context, remote to say the
least.
 408 S. Hamel
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Figure 2. From left to right: Jessica (Homeless participant), Carl, Professional actress. A scene in
the play depicting food line-ups.

Video 1: Please see the full text version to access Video 1, or alternatively please
see the article’s supplementary material tab to access the video: http://dx.doi.org/
10.1080/13569783.2013.836918
What’s more, certain scenes lent themselves badly to the forum, insofar as the
protagonist/antagonist dyad was not easily identifiable. For example, the squatter’s
scene demonstrates how he profits from the indeterminacy of certain places in order
 Research in Drama Education 409

to set up camp. His monologue is interrupted by a bunch of tourists who are

fascinated by this squatter. They take photos in a carnival-like fashion – hence the
vagueness of this scene in which the protagonist/antagonist dyad has been blurred.
The question of the right to the city as a contested realm rather than a harmonious
orderly sphere was not subjected to later deliberation, though the question is at the
very heart of some of the social tensions which underlie relational dynamics in urban
centres (Mitchell 2003). In fact, this gap was mentioned by a city civil servant: ‘There
was a great line in regards to space, the knowledge of space [in the squatter’s scene],
but the question of sharing public space is not emphasised sufficiently in the play’.
This municipal employee also deplored the vague and at times incomprehensible
profile of the homeless characters depicted in the play and personified by our
homeless participants.
Moreover, displacement of the visible signs of marginalised populations like the
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homeless should be questioned. Indeed, this displacement could be read as a sign of

the privatisation of public space in the incessant push for orderly and prosperous
urban centres designed for the consumption delight of the affluent. In this context,
the stubborn visibility of the homeless who refuse to slip into social inexistence can
be construed as a constant reminder of their struggle to keep public spaces public
and accessible to all regardless of one’s spending power (Mitchell 2003).

The February 6th Forum Theatre: invalidation and the denial of recognition
The level of participation exceeded our expectations: 68 people showed up, when we
were expecting only 50 or so. As anticipated, many civil areas were well represented:
downtown residents, transient residents from bordering communities, police officers,
some business people, research and community workers, a health care worker,
municipal decision makers, and a politician at the provincial level – in other words, a
full array of stakeholders concerned with cohabitation in downtown Montreal.
Those missing from the evening: other homeless. There is no doubt that we had
overestimated the solidity of the social network of our handful of participants on
whom we relied in the mobilisation of peers, not to mention that the social agenda
of the researcher was somewhat disavowed by the total absence of peers. The
absence of homeless peers who could potentially echo the claims made in the play
hindered any possibility of a counter narrative when faced with invalidation from
the audience. As such, their absence was a significant constraint for the joker who
acted as a ‘human shield between our homeless group and audience members’
(Practitioner during the group discussion following the event) rather than a dialogical
conduit. Indeed, instead of engaging audience members to assume the role of Spect-
actors by momentarily stepping inside the shoes of our homeless protagonists,
spectators opined on what was presented on stage in a two-way conversation with
the joker. Only three replacements were attempted towards the end of the evening
as most spectators were leaving.
In spite of some of the spontaneous reactions during the play which reflected
receptivity, the first interventions from the spectators foretold the rift to come: a
mentality of ‘us, the good tax abiding citizens’ versus ‘them, these homeless that
seem to reject help offered by their community resources’. On top of questioning the
sound thinking behind public spending in terms of homelessness, many comments
 410 S. Hamel

during the forum mirrored a perception that there is an absence of moral faculties
amongst those people who refuse, for example, to sleep in shelters:

It’s puzzling to me because these people [the homeless] claim to feel rejected, but there
are some who try to help them and they reject this help. Sleeping on the sidewalk like a
dog can’t be fulfilling for them. I can’t imagine that a person in such a situation could
feel fulfilled.

Claiming that most neighbourhood residents are more tolerant than what was
depicted in the play, this same resident and her husband called for more efforts and
politeness on the part of the homeless themselves:

I’m under the impression that we [domiciled] are being asked to be more tolerant but
couldn’t the homeless also do their part in terms of respecting the passersby not to
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mention try harder to overcome their homelessness?’ (Wife)

I asked a homeless person I see regularly how he feels about the neighborhood and he
told me that he felt quite lucky to be in such a tolerant part of town.(Husband)

Video 2: Please see the full text version to access Video 2, or alternatively
please see the article’s supplementary material tab to access the video: http://dx.doi.
org/10.1080/13569783.2013.836918
Targeted seasonal police sweeps, designed to rid the neighbourhood of its
unsavoury elements according to the homeless group, are mentioned in the play as a
common practice which often results in massive incarceration of several homeless
bystanders. A police chief, present at our event, categorically denied this sort of
measure as a ‘possible unfortunate thing of the past’ which no longer took place
since he’d been assigned to the area, while a community activist sitting behind him
had an incredulous smirk on her face. One of our homeless participants, often directly
targeted by these sweeps, objected:
 Research in Drama Education 411

Homeless participant: ‘Since when?!? Since when have these sweeps stopped?!? The day
after Thanks giving this year Sir…there was one the day after thanks giving!’
Police Chief: ‘The day after thanks giving?!’
Participant: ‘The day after thanks giving of this year!!!’ Anyway, we won’t take the time
to settle this now…’
Police Chief: ‘Yeah, yeah… We’ll discuss this later’.
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Video 3: Please see the full text version to access Video 3, or alternatively
please see the article’s supplementary material tab to access the video: http://dx.doi.
org/10.1080/13569783.2013.836918
The same spectator suggested that the exclusion depicted in the play was
misleading because according to most, ‘The exclusion is self-applied’ by the
homeless themselves ‘who choose to drink beer instead of buying food’. In the
absence of support from those audience members who directly witness the
discriminatory police tactics towards the homeless on a daily basis in their work
and in the absence of homeless peers in the audience, our homeless participant was
in fact reduced to silence for the rest of this event.
Two of three character replacements involved a third character, neither protag-
onist nor antagonist. The third replacement involved the character of the irate
passerby solicited by two homeless teens begging for change or cigarettes. While this
character was identified by the audience as the oppressor due to his aggressive
attitude towards the beggars, in two of the three replacements, he was framed as the
oppressed.
In the first of these replacements, a telephone conversation was simulated
between this exasperated character, oppressed by excessive solicitation, and one of
his domiciled neighbours as this third ‘neutral’ character. In this exchange, the latter
reassures the former that instead of getting angry or feeling overwhelmed, he could
just as easily ignore this solicitation seeing as there are community resources that
 412 S. Hamel

provide basic goods for these indigent youths, thereby reinforcing the indifference
towards marginalised populations. In the second replacement, a young female Spect-
actor attempts to reason with the irate domiciled passerby insisting that he need not
be so rude with the young beggars. Finally, an elected city official stepped on stage
to replace the exasperated passerby. In this attempt, he stepped out of character
to describe how, in ‘real life’, he was rudely accosted by a street youth who yelled:
‘I hope you die you fucking bastard!!!’, when he chose to ignore this youth’s
solicitation.
This intervention justified claims made by those who encourage passersby not to
give to beggars who are undeserving of the charitable donations of the law abiding
citizens. Furthermore, it reinforced the idea that there are ‘good, polite, deserving
homeless people’ and there are threatening ones. In one fail swoop, tensions which
underscore co-presence between the homeless and other dwellers were reduced to a
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problem of poor manners on the part of the homeless and the passersby alike,
thereby skirting the issue of the right to public space regardless of social status or
one’s spending power.

The uneasy passage from third-world aesthetics to first-world individualism

The oppressed in Boal’s late 1960s and early 1970s aesthetic language confronted
obvious enemies in the military regime in Brazil (and other totalitarian regimes in
Latin America). Indeed, beyond extreme economic gaps between the poor and the
affluent, censorship and repression were commonplace. In other words, Boal’s work
is ‘rooted in the experience of political struggle under conditions of overt and brutal
economic and political oppression’ (Strawbridge 2000, 8). In spite of the fact that
oppression can be pointed out in North America with the homeless embodying the
image of marginalisation in its extreme manifestation, there is a prevailing ‘belief in
an absent or inaccessible power centre that cannot be attacked…. The construction
of an invisible, inviolable enemy tempers our confrontational urges’ (Schutzman
1994, 140). This prevailing belief exacerbates the individualistic a-political contexts
within which Theatre of the Oppressed practitioners perform their role as joker. As
Neelands (2007) rightly points out, when working in Europe and North America, Boal
himself was influenced by the therapeutic underpinnings of identity politics as is
evidenced by his Rainbow of Desire and Cops in the Head techniques. This therapeutic
shift reflects the changing context from Latin-America to Europe (Strawbridge 2000).
Schutzman is less critical of Boal and his techniques as used by other practitioners
the world over by acknowledging the dialogue between social activism and
‘therapeutic sensibilities’. Strawbridge echoes Schutzman as she recognises the
connection between personal identity and politics which she correlates with politics
and therapy as identity is shaped by systems of meaning embedded in power
relations.
On the contrary, O’Sullivan likens Boal’s techniques to individualistic empower-
ment. Drawing from Callinico’s critique of Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed (1995),
O’Sullivan 2001 convincingly argues that there is a considerable gap between Boal’s
Marxist theoretical leanings and his actual practice which she qualifies as ‘Reformist’
at best in that it emphasises individual emancipation while leaving the larger
oppressive realities unchanged. In fact, in as much as Boal’s approach is premised on
trying new ideas in order to free the protagonist from his or her oppression through
 Research in Drama Education 413

his Forum Theatre model, it echoes the Hegelian metaphysical primacy of thought
over experience which clearly contradicts Marx’s concept of Praxis (O’Sullivan 2001).
In light of this, the struggles for recognition as legitimate citizens in the debate
over the right to the city for the homeless that my research aimed at uncovering
require ‘…a political theory for AT [Applied theatre] that both recognises and cross-
references economic injustices with cultural and symbolic injustices … typical of
identity politics’ (Neelands 2007, 312). But, in a climate of scarce resources for many
non-profit organisations pressured to foster social inclusion by enhancing individual
adaptation to the existing social order for those who fall through the cracks,
questioning the soundness of a given socio-political arrangement is a risky
proposition to say the least. As a case in point, during the group discussion which
followed the event, the practitioner admitted being ‘contaminated by his previous
role as coordinator of a coalition where the imperative to please everyone at all costs
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is commonplace’, and this, in the ever pervasive quest for consensual agreement.
Furthermore, as Director of his Theatre Company, he shied away from a more critical
approach when faced with potential funders in the audience to whom he directly
spoke during this event.
The rhetoric of social inclusion often underscores applied theatre projects as it is
one of the main criteria by which a project is evaluated and funded. As Prentki
suggests, these projects are ‘…predicated upon a colonial model where the centres
prescribe what is good for the periphery … in the name of “social inclusion.” This
agenda is predicated upon the notion that society … or the status quo, is something
in which any right-thinking person would wish to be included’ (Prentki 2012, 202).
Despite my deconstructive aims, perhaps a careful scrutiny of my own research
agenda, that is, including unheard narratives of the homeless in neighbourhood
public forums, uncovers this same colonial social inclusion tendency, one which was
clearly disavowed by the absence of homeless peers at this event. Be that as it may,
the practitioner’s acute awareness of this harsh colonial funding reality significantly
undermined his freedom to embody the role of joker as ‘fool’. Instead, his role was
reduced to that of ‘a glorified master of ceremonies or keeper of the rules’(Prentki
2012, 209).
As such, the unquestioned rhetoric which dominated the agenda during the
Forum Theatre event went well beyond a simple rejection of the content of the play.
The audience turned the tables around as they appropriated the narratives of the
oppressed towards themselves: shop owners and residents depicted themselves as
oppressed by aggressive solicitation and by overall anti-social behaviours of their
homeless neighbours who were portrayed as responsible for their own life
conditions, thereby justifying the right to indifference claimed by some of the
domiciled.
In fact, by blurring the divide between oppressed and oppressor, this rhetoric and
the few character replacements transgressed one of the rules in Theatre of the
Oppressed, that is, the replacement of the protagonist. Indeed, because audience
members were experientially unfamiliar with the practical and psychological
implications of the homeless experience, no one dared to replace a homeless
character. But rather than replacing the antagonist role of indignant passerby to
question his class bias and its inherent ‘right to indifference’, the discussions focused
on facile solutions like better mutual attitudes at best, or worst, a blatant justification
 414 S. Hamel

of this right to indifference as is illustrated by the anecdotal evidence described by

the city official.
Nevertheless, this appropriation of the perspectives of the oppressed by the
audience, as well as the recourse to this third character speaks to the interdepend-
ence between the homeless and urban dwellers who share a common ‘Oppressive
Territory’: the witness who steps out of her silence to mediate tensions stemming
from the uncomfortable co-presence between the homeless and the indignant
passerby is also ‘oppressed’ by his attitude towards the less fortunate; the passerby
as well can be considered ‘oppressed’ by the concentration of homelessness in the
downtown area where affordable housing is fast becoming a vestige of the past.
Neither is directly to blame for the increase of homelessness, but they both
experience its impacts. This interdependence between More than one oppressed-
protagonist is highlighted by Schutzman (1994) and Spry (1994) as one of the
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possible outcomes of a first-world Theatre of the Oppressed aesthetic language. In

fact, the identification and theatrical embodiment of oppressive territory which
involves more than one ‘oppressed’ can partially overcome the dichotomous
oppressed and oppressor without forfeiting the socio-political agenda which defines
Theatre of the Oppressed, despite O’Sullivan’s claims.
However, in our particular case, within this a-political individualistic setting,
coupled with the lack of agency of the joker who was ‘caught between his role as
joker of the event and that of Director of his Company’ in constant need of public
funds2, this notion of ‘Oppressive Territory’ went unaddressed in terms of potential
alliances. Indeed, interventions were reduced to individual agency uncoupled from
larger social issues like lack of affordable housing in an insidious gentrification
process, let alone a critical discussion on the privatisation of public space. In sum,
each interlocutor was attempting to preserve his or her own sense of self as a ‘good
person’ rather than an indifferent or rude oppressor, finding it hard to view him or
herself as complicit in the problem of homelessness through complacency and lack
of solidarity.
Finally, the ‘oppressed’ status of the homeless was even called into question as it
was stated that being homeless and/or oppressed in downtown Montreal was
relatively mitigated by easy access to food and shelter not to mention by the self-
proclaimed tolerance and generosity of open-minded domiciled neighbours, to the
point of out and out rejecting the social exclusion experienced by the homeless
group as is clearly suggested by one of the interventions cited above. This further
substantiates the challenges faced by Theatre of the Oppressed practitioners when
applying a third-world aesthetic language of resistance to first-world individualistic
self-righteousness premised on meritocracy. The latter tends to frame the very idea of
oppression as a personal problem stemming from ill-suited individual choices.

Conclusion
Using Forum Theatre as a dialogical medium, this research project aimed at restoring
the voices of those who, by challenging the normative conceptions of order in public
space, develop their own understandings of cohabitation in the urban setting. What
can be said about an experience that has reproduced those same blind spots found
within typical arenas of deliberation? Educated people of social standing were given
their right to speech, while the homeless were reduced to silence – reduced to the
 Research in Drama Education 415

status of passive stand-ins, after having so courageously and generously exposed

themselves on stage.
Clearly, this particular Forum Theatre experience could very well be analysed from
several angles not addressed in this article, including its formal aspects (methods
used, time frame, space, etc.) and it is more substantial aspects (profile of the
homeless participants, theoretical groundings of the researcher, scope of the
research, perspectives of the practitioner regarding Theatre of the Oppressed and
his role as joker, etc.). Instead, this article relates the appropriation of the perspectives
of the oppressed by members of the audience to the challenges faced by Theatre of
the Oppressed practitioners in general in their use of Theatre of the Oppressed in the
first-world. It does this by exploring how these challenges actually unfolded in this
specific case study.
The individualistic paradigm which underscored this whole process was clearly
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manifest in the practitioner’s efforts to illicit reflexivity in the group of homeless

participants by stressing introspective thought divorced from structural constraints.
For example, rather than exploring the ‘oppressed and oppressor within’ stressing
the more a-political therapeutic individualistic emancipation through knowledge of
self, perhaps the interdependence between the homeless participants we worked
with and some of the significant interlocutors they mentioned during the workshops
might of been emphasised during the creative process, thereby pointing towards
unsuspected alliances, as a way to restore the humanity of both oppressor and
oppressed (Freire 1972, in O’Sullivan 2001).
This individualism reflects the invisible power dynamics typical of liberal
democracies referred to by Schutzman. This context of an unattainable power centre
serves as a backdrop in many applied theatre projects in general and in this Theatre
of the oppressed experience in particular. Consequently, this rather a-political
framework was reified rendering critical deconstruction concerning issues like
homelessness remote.
The funding climate within which Theatre of the Oppressed practitioners
negotiate their interventions is centred on quantifiable results according to social
inclusion criteria. This further ensures that a-political individualistic approaches go
unchecked and our experience is no exception. This experience did not inspire a
dramatic collision of the oppressive experiences of the audience with an acknow-
ledgement of their oppressive class status which might have led to a space of
intersubjective solidarity as a possible outcome. In a certain sense, it reified the
‘culture of silence’ (Freire 1972, in Strawbridge 2000) inhabited by the homeless.
Indeed, in this case study, a widespread fear of conflict and of ramped up tensions
led to a narrow understanding of cohabitation between the homeless and the
domiciled as a mere question of good manners. This facile remedy was all that was
needed to magically alleviate the oppression of the homeless and their exasperated
domiciled neighbours. In light of this, the possible therapeutic value of this exchange
was confounded with notions of adaptation and conformity mirrored by social
inclusion imperatives, rather than with Boal’s therapeutic venues which thrive on
very real inconsistency, conflict and disorder (Schutzman 1994). This reductive turn of
events was pointed out by one of the last interventions from the audience. A
community activist reminded all who were present that night that ‘good manners’
are the least of a homeless person’s concern, a person who has a cardboard box or a
crowded refuge to call home cannot be expected to smile politely as hundreds of
 416 S. Hamel

people pass her by in total indifference. She Further insisted that homelessness
should never illicit indifference or even tolerance but indignation directed at the
State not at the homeless themselves. A welcome intervention indeed.
Beyond the uneasy transposition from a third-world aesthetic to a first-world
aesthetic illustrated by this specific case, a question remains concerning the
transformative limits of Theatre of the Oppressed in any context. Indeed, it is focused,
as O’Sullivan claims, on ‘Micro-revolutions’ aimed more at therapeutic healing and
purging than at challenging existing social arrangements. In our case, a subsequent
discussion between the practitioner, one of the more invested homeless participants
and me, confirms this tendency whereby the practitioner mentioned he felt the
audience needed a purge. There is no doubt that this a-political therapeutic leaning is
in stark contradiction with Boal’s initial criticism of the Aristotelian catharsis.
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Keywords: Forum Theatre; deliberation; homeless; public space; recognition

Notes
1. Names of homeless participants are fictitious.
2. Comment from the newly appointed coordinator of the neighbourhood coalition we
partnered with during a subsequent discussion including the practitioner and myself.

Notes on contributor
As a Ph.D. in Applied Humanities at the University of Montreal, and professor at Concordia
University Sociology-Anthropology Department, Sonia Hamel developed a passion for urban
anthropology and social activism. Following her graduate degree, she drew from this social
activism by getting involved in several Montreal neighbourhoods where she focused on
mobilising disenfranchised populations. This experience raised important questions about
access to public space for marginalised groups which she explored in her thesis.

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