submitted by adamsc@augsburg.edu
All Augsburg faculty, students, and staff are invited to participate in a Theatre of the Oppressed workshop here on campus in July!
“Theatre is a form of knowledge; it should and can also be a means of transforming society.” (Augusto Boal, Games for Actors and Non-Actors). Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed is happy to offer this one day workshop on Theatre of the Oppressed, facilitated by PTO Board Member Mark Weinberg from the Center for Applied Theatre in Milwaukee, WI. Designed with local participants in mind, this workshop will run on Thursday, July 23 2026, from 1:00-4:30pm CDT at Augsburg University in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. We thank Mark for this voluntary service as a board member.
In this workshop participants will be introduced to the techniques used in Theatre of the Oppressed to not only reveal reality as it is, but more importantly to invent reality as it could be. After some basic theory, the first part of the workshop will focus on demechanization, perception, and community building. We will do some exercises (physical reflections on oneself), play some games, and explore how we create together.
The second part of the workshop will introduce Image Theatre – making sculptures with our bodies and dynamizing them to discover the goals, desires, and possibilities within them.
During the last segment of the workshop, we will become spect-actors in a Forum Theatre scene and raise questions about the power of Theatre of the Oppressed to point to the difficulty of challenging systemic oppression and to promote learning for all involved.
The working language of this workshop will be in English.
Augsburg faculty, staff, and students can register at no cost by contacting Charles Adams at adamsc@augsburg.edu.
This event is sponsored by the Theater Department and the Schwartz School of the Arts.
More information on the Pedagogy & Theatre of the Oppressed Conference and Pre-Conference Events