This book retrieves the narrative and social context of Brazilian historical performances and artistic movements to restore, with the support of a vast literature review, aesthetic analysis and the debate around engagement, the due complexity to the multifaceted concept of political theatre. Broadening the perspective, it addresses one of the most significant contemporary resonances of such an itinerary: Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, challenging canons of the role of performers and spectators. The research also seeks, by refusing pamphleteering or professorial responses, to shed light on the contested actuality of theatre’s social function, especially after the extreme right wave that has been testing the usefulness of traditional institutions.

This book retrieves the narrative and social context of Brazilian historical performances and artistic movements to restore, with the support of a vast literature review, aesthetic analysis and the debate around engagement, the due complexity to the multifaceted concept of political theatre. Broadening the perspective, it addresses one of the most significant contemporary resonances of such an itinerary: Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, challenging canons of the role of performers and spectators. The research also seeks, by refusing pamphleteering or professorial responses, to shed light on the contested actuality of theatre’s social function, especially after the extreme right wave that has been testing the usefulness of traditional institutions.