of the Oppressed, then we thought we have to do something so let's finish the centre.  And then whenever we will have the conditions we will do it again.  Let's finish it.  Let's bury it.  And then came the idea of participating in the elections and this re-invigorated the centre, and during 4 years we had economical security.  We were all paid by the Chamber and then we could do our work for free.  All the work we did of Legislative Theatre was totally free.  Even from our salaries we would take money to pay for the productions so that was the moment we decided that we had to make not only forum theatre but to try to transform the city through Legislative Theatre.  Democracy is a very beautiful system but has this inconvenience.  You have extreme power in your hands and when you vote you lose that power.  It's a paradoxical reality and then you're going to get power again, 2, 4, 8 years later to vote again and to lose your power the moment you exert your power.  You use your power you lose it, and then we thought during this time how can we make the citizen be aware of what's going on?  To delegate power to the other ones is so horrible.  When you delegate power you lose your power and then you become a spectator of that person.  You may have confidence in the person, you may trust them, but it is something that when you speak with your voice and something else when someone speaks in your place.  When someone speaks in your place, even if it's an honest person, intelligent person, creative person, but that person will never translate correctly what you want to say.   So we came to the Legislative Theatre by accident, but by desire because we always wanted this.  To make the citizen responsible for everything that happens in the city and then it was by accident and it was not because the accident could have happened and this would not have happened - the Legislative Theatre.  It happened because we wanted it to happen but also because an accident intervened.

Tom    This theme of representation, of not allowing another person to represent you but to take responsibility for representing yourself, this is a theme in your work.  Would you like to say any more about representation?

Boal     No I could only reiterate.  In politics it's even more evident.  In politics we discuss very much in the Chamber for instance that there are some subjects that are voted secretly and I always was against that, violently against that, because if a person votes for another person to represent his or her will, and then that representative of your opinion is going to vote secretly you don't know for what.  I think it's immoral to do that.  Something very cowardly, so I always said we have to vote openly and not to hide the vote.  Several times I was censored in the Chamber because before voting I showed my vote to everyone and I put it in the envelope in front of everyone so that they would know for what I was voting, so I think that for instance in Brazil until the 50's women were not allowed to vote and the argument was that if they are not married, they are not yet responsible.  If they are married the husband is responsible for them because he is the chief of the family.  We never said that a woman was the chief of the family.  If there is a man in the family, the man is the chief so she is not responsible if not married, but of course never women would have their say, would not have the chance to say what they thought.  If it was always like that a man would vote for her.  Like the blacks during many years, they could not vote.  And the argument was yes, but the white people are going to take into consideration their needs.  It's not true.  You cannot understand the other one...if they are alive they have their own voice, let them say what they want.  And all my desire to create a form of theatre in which there is transitiveness.  It is to allow everyone to say what you want including myself.   I do Theatre of the Oppressed, so I can write my own plays about myself because I am allowing the other ones I am creating conditions for everyone to speak but I am included in this everyone.  So as I am part of the everyone I want to write my plays about myself.  I want to direct my plays according to my

vision as a director.  If I were an actor I would like to act also, go on stage and play characters, so it's not against the other forms of theatre.  On the contrary it's in favour.  Sometimes I give the example of football in Brazil.  There are some marvellous players, but Sundays many streets and many squares in Rio and other cities they are close to the traffic so that people can play.  The streets are closed for their leisure, so this is not against the professional football.  It's even a help because if everyone plays football they are going to understand football much better.  They are going to be much more interested in going to see it.  Like if everyone did theatre the professional theatre would be full every day because they would like to see what the other ones are doing.  So sometimes professional theatre is not so interesting to the population because the population does not practice theatre.  If you do theatre all of the time then you want to see a play done by others.  The more you develop theatre inside the population in general, the more you create conditions for having bigger audiences, a more interested audience, more participation from the audience.

Tom    And the same with politics?

Boal     And the same with politics.  Yes exactly the same.  If you can do assemblies and discussions and if you know that your voice is going to be heard that your vote is going to be taken into account, of course you will participate more, and the experiment that we are doing now in St. Andrere which is close to Sao Paulo where 1,000,000 live and also in the south of Brazil, Port Allergrage.  What the Theatre of the Oppressed is doing in those two  cities, and we want to do more next year is exactly that - to participate in what is called the participatory budget in which the population itself the citizens in general they decide what to do with the money that belongs to the city and then we are doing theatre in their assemblies so before discussing how much money we spend on this or how much money we spend on that, they see concretely in the theatre what are the problems that we have to solve with that money.  So the discussion about money is not a quantitative discussion.  It is a qualitative discussion.  Are you going to use your money on a hospital to have more x-ray machines or to have better pay for the doctors and nurses and in which proportion.  So all of this is concrete because if a nurse gets more money perhaps she is not going to be obliged to work in 2 or 3 different places.  She's going to open more space for other people to work and give better quality...so all those discussions they precede, the theatrical discussions precede the real money discussions.  Money is not a question of money.  Money is a question of power.  Power is a question of well being of the population, so theatre brings this humanity to the budget discussions.

Tom    What you're doing is, you're using theatre to make politics transparent?

Boal    Yes.

Tom     And accountable?

Boal     Yes.  To make theatre as politics and I am very happy that the year before we started working in St. Andrere the population participated in the participatory budget.  They were there, but very few people were there.  When we started doing theatre many, many, many more people came - 3, 4 times more people came to the participatory budget to discuss the budget because there was theatre involved.  There was theatre, there was music, there was art, and then they were attracted by the fact that theatre was there, and who told me that was the mayor, so he knows what he's talking about.

Tom    Do you see any dangers in methodologies devised for one set of cultural circumstances being used in another?