Boal    Yes, I would say it would be dangerous if it was a sort of catechism, a recipe that you have to take the experiment exactly like it was made in Brazil and now you have to transplant it to Northern Ireland.  You have to do exactly the same thing here.  Yes, that would be dangerous.  What has been done in Brazil can inspire people here to find ways of doing theatre.  Maybe some of the mechanisms of Legislative Theatre are applicable.  I think that you should apply the Forum Theatre because it is democratic.  Everyone participates.  I think that the interactive mailing list, the consultation directory to the people that are mostly concerned with the problem is good.  I think that the chamber in the street simulating a re-union a meeting of the chamber in churches, in trade union halls, in schools are good because it activates people.  But there are other things that are perhaps even better here and I cannot imagine so I think that the bad results can come from an automatic, a mechanical transposition forcing a method that is flexible and not stratified, so if it serves as an inspiration it is good.  Next month I am going to London and we're going to try to make an experiment in Legislative Theatre in the old GLC Building which was used as a chamber to make the law and was closed in 1986.  It  was closed in the period of Margaret Thatcher.  She said she did not need those people to make the laws:  she could make her own laws.

Tom    Yes she was a great friend of General Pinochet.

Boal  (Laughing)  Yes.  Perhaps she consulted him to know what should be the good laws for London.  In her reign the GLC was closed.  It was sold to a Japanese enterprise who built a very big hotel at one side and an aquarium for fish under the basement but they cannot touch the place where the deputies met because by law it's untouchable, so it's there exactly as it was.  So on the 27 November we are going to do a session of Legislative Theatre inside the GLC Chamber like a re-opening of the GLC.  I think it's fantastic, but how are we going to do it now?  The place is not suitable for theatre.  You have to invent a sceneography for that place.  It's extremely powerful symbolically.  It has a story and a meaning.  You cannot forget that you are inside there.  You cannot forget that this has a meaning which is a potent symbol so we have to discover how we can do it here in 5 days what in Rio took 4 years to design, so we have to discover how we can do Legislative Theatre in London this November.  Of course we have to take some suggestions from the Brazilian experience but the experience in London is going to be different.  Like it would be here in Belfast different, so I don't think there is any danger provided that the people who do it are creative people, so then there is no danger.

Tom    In the attempt to find personal oppressions might we give rise to paranoia rather than liberation?

Boal    I don't think that we become paranoid by doing Theatre of the Oppressed.  I think the opposite and why?  Because for instance when you do any form of Theatre of the Oppressed, but especially the Rainbow of Desire series and the cop on the head, all those techniques what we try always is going from the particular case of a person not into the singularities of that person but into the generalities of the group participating.  So we try always to...overlapping.  I can tell you my story and it's my personal story, my particular story, but when we do a technique of the Theatre of the Oppressed we don't go into the singularities of my person, but we try to overlap with the participants.  So as we analyse one person we are in reality analysing the whole group and not only that person and that makes it social and not concentrating on what could perhaps lead to paranoia but I don't believe it does.  It would be if you singularised too much.  In therapeutic work my wife, she's a psychoanalyst, she has not made no-one paranoid.  On the opposite I don't know if she has cured anybody but they get better - better health, better mental health after some sort of treatment, so I don't believe that talking about ourselves, discovering ourselves can be paranoia.  I believe in the

contrary.  I believe that the truth is therapeutic and when we discover the truth we are in a way...to get rid of the problems we have.  Truth is therapeutic I believe.

Tom    Augusto, who are or have been the most influential thinkers in your life?

Boal     (Laughing)  I have read that question before.  I have to give examples because who have been influential?  I would say all intelligent people because when a person says something intelligent that stimulates me so tremendously that I have been so influenced by so many people that it would be not fair to say this one or that one.  So I will give some examples of people who have influenced me but I'm not saying that these are the only ones.  If I think about the Ancient Greeks, the one who influenced me very much was Thespis.  Why Thespis?  Because he was the first person who was in a chorus in the dythrambic chorus singing all disciplined the song that the poet had written and dancing the movements of the choreographer and saying what was the acceptable official story so he jumped out of that and refused to be inside the chorus and said what he really thought.  So this act of rebellion, he invented the theatre with this act of rebellion when he went out and said I don't agree with it, the chorus singing in poetry and he answering, replicating in prose.  So this act of rebellion for me is extraordinary.  A man invented the theatre.  In this act of rebellion he jumped out of the chorus.  And Socrates, because Socrates was one that did not impose anything. His process of reasoning he was called mieutic.  The mieutic was this - instead of saying Look here, I think this is that, he said What do you think about this?  And the person would say Well I think this and he said, Okay, well if you think this, what are the consequences.  By asking questions he makes the person discover the knowledge that the person had without being conscious of that knowledge, e.g., when he asks Alcabiades what is heroism?  The first answer is heroism is to die for your country and Socrates answers Okay, but you have to sometimes defend your country, so maybe if you run away from the enemy you can fight better later.  As Shaw said, To try to make the soldiers of the other country die for their country.  (Laughing.)  So little by little be builds the definition of heroism, so this questioning for me is extremely important.  Now if we jump to Shakespeare and Cervantes, because they came in a moment of extraordinary transition from feudalism to modern times, and they re-produced this transformation of the thought of the world.  Cervantes using Don Quixote who was a person that 2 centuries before had all the ideals of chivalry and he would be a perfect hero, but when it comes at the end of the 16th century and beginning of the 17th century, he still has values of the past and so he becomes anachronistic and he shows what is happening by this anachronism.  Like Hamlet I think his main dilemma is not to be or not to be.  His dilemma is to be and not to be.  Because it's the two things that he has inside. The right version should be to be and not to be - that's a big problem. That's what he tries - to be a man with noble ideals of the past but he's living in an epoch where those noble ideals don't count anymore.
And the next person is Marx.

Tom     What did you learn from Marx?

Boal     I learned from Marx history. I learned to understand that things happen because they are moved by social force, they are moved by social interests and it's not the head of one person that governs the world, it's the social force. And from Freud I learned that we are not master of even ourselves, of our own conscious life that is sometimes and somehow governed by our unconscious. Before, men thought that they were the centre of the universe. And then he learned that  it is the earth that is rotating around the sun and not vice versa. And with Freud you learn that there are unconscious laws