Óprima!
A Theatre of the Oppressed and Activism Encounter
For the first time, the Museo Reina Sofía welcomes Óprima!, an annual encounter which, since 2022, has gathered collectives, associations and creatives with an interest in uniting theatre and activism to drive social transformation via Theatre of the Oppressed: a practice, created by Brazilian dramatist and educator Augusto Boal in the 1960s, which puts forward “a theatre of oppressed classes for the oppressed” as a tool to fight against oppressive structures.
In previous years, the encounter has been carried out in cities such as Lisbon, Braga, Porto and Setúbal, among others. Propelled by the Centro de Creación e Investigación Cultural (the Centre for Cultural Creation and Research, CCIC) La Tortuga and Museo Situado, the encounter disembarks in Madrid to keep on reflecting on Theatre of the Oppressed and to share resources that contribute to the social struggles in which the participants are involved.
Check the full programme here to see the activities held in the sites of CCIC La Tortuga and Ateneo La Maliciosa.
Participants
Geo Britto is a founding and coordinating member of Escola de Teatro Popular (ETP) in Rio de Janeiro. He has focused on Theatre of the Oppressed for more than thirty-four years, twenty of which were shared with Augusto Boal. He recently published Augusto Boal e a formação do Teatro do Oprimido (Morula Editorial, 2024).
Jordi Forcadas is a performance artist whose work is situated in social action through art and forum theatre, a Theatre of the Oppressed technique which enables him to explore different forms of citizen participation and to demand human rights. He is the co-founder of Forn de teatre Pa'tothom in Barcelona, where he develops projects with communities in correctional facilities, schools, youth centres, women’s groups and migrant people. He is the author of the book Praxis de Teatro del Oprimido (Forn de Teatre Pa´tothom, 2017).
Las Teatrekas is a theatre group made up of eighteen women of different ages, ranging from 40 to 75. The group began to gestate in November 2015 and was run by two women from the Alto del Arenal Neighbourhood Association, in the Madrid neighbourhood of Vallecas, with the aim of generating a space of encounter that uses theatre as a social tool.
Laboratório de Teatro & Política is an initiative that came into being in 2021, stemming from projects developed by the Tartaruga Falante Association in Portugal. It operates as a space of collective creation and experimentation based on methodologies from Theatre of the Oppressed, dialectic theatre, the army of clowns, agitprop and performance. The initiative fosters debate from the intersection between art and political intervention and approaches issues such as LGBTIQA+ discrimination, the right to housing and informal care.
Teatro en Movimiento Callejerx is a theatre company characterised by its exploration of stage action in public spaces from a feminist angle. From the multidisciplinary, they set forth performances in non-conventional spaces, action art and community art.
Territorio Doméstico is a collective which fosters a space of encounter, care, empowerment and women’s struggles — predominantly migrant women — for the recognition of their rights as domestic and care workers. Founded in 2006, the group works to demand dignity and worth for their work within a system that makes them invisible and precarious, despite them being essential. In 2019, they released the album Sin nosotras se para el mundo (Without Us Women the World Stops), which brings together the songs they have taken to the streets to joyfully vindicate their struggles. Territorio Doméstico is also a member of Museo Situado.
Programa
Conducted by the Teatro en Movimiento Callejerx company, this two-day theoretical and practical activity seeks to explore creative processes in groups by way of stage exercises linking the discourse of ritual action to the mission of creating collective reflections on urgent issues. Led by Ximena Cañas Abell (director and dramatist) and Lucía Valenzuela Chacaltana (integrated design), the activity revises street performance techniques and the relations they bear to feminisms.
Nouvel Building, Protocol Room
30 people
Free, until full capacity is reached, with prior registration via email by writing to oprimamadrid@gmail.com until 30 October
Where do the techniques and methods systemised by Augusto Boal stem from in the poetics of Theatre of the Oppressed? Setting out from an investigation by Geo Britto, this discussion analyses Boal’s developmental actions and their influence on the formation, construction and systemisation of Theatre of the Oppressed, as well as their relationship to the turbulent world of his time.
Nouvel Building, Protocol Room
144 people
Free, until full capacity is reached
Created from the accounts of women who make up the Las Teatrekas group, and their mothers and grandmothers, this documentary theatre piece is a journey through the history of Vallecas — a homage to all those female residents who built a better neighbourhood for everyone.
Nouvel Building, Auditorium 400
400 people
Free, until full capacity is reached
Throughout history, theatre has been used as a form of expression and protest against oppression, injustice and social inequalities. Via a re-reading of the third scene of the work The Fear and Misery of the Third Reich (1938) by Bertolt Brecht — which participants must read beforehand — the workshop seeks to revise it from the perspective of Theatre of the Oppressed and create a model of forum theatre, revamping the mechanisms of totalitarian oppression presented in the piece. It also addresses how to conceive of the role of the joker in a possible forum with closed groups, in which fake news has seeped through and hate speech has become legitimised.
This workshop continues on 3 November 2024 at 10:30am in Ateneo La Maliciosa.
Nouvel Building, Protocol Room
30 people
Free, until full capacity is reached, with prior registration via email by writing to oprimamadrid@gmail.com until 30 October. Experience of Theatre of the Oppressed required
A stage performance on the difficulties faced by those who have to care for an ill mother. In a system in which only the family is responsible for caring for their own, this forum theatre piece deals with issues such as the slowness of social responses and bureaucracy in the Estatuto do Cuidador Informal (Statute of Informal Carers), a law enacted in 2019 in Portugal to regulate the rights and duties of carers and the person cared for.
Nouvel Building, Auditorium 200
200 people
Free, until full capacity is reached
A theatrical performance by the Territorio Doméstico collective which gathers the songs, slogans and performances they have created throughout their time as activists working for the rights of domestic workers and carers. A stage piece which drives home their struggles for the dignity and visibility of these works as a key part of sustaining life.
Nouvel Building, Auditorium 200
200 people
Free, until full capacity is reached
