Preface to the 2008 edition;
Preface to the 2000 edition – The Unruly Protagonist;
Preface to the 1974 edition;
1. Aristotle’s Coercive System of Tragedy:
Introduction;
Art Imitates Nature;
What is the Meaning of ‘Imitation’?;
What, then, is the Purpose of Art and Science?;
Major Arts and Minor Arts;
What does Tragedy Imitate?;
What is Happiness?;
And What is Virtue?;
Necessary Characteristics of Virtue;
The Degrees of Virtue;
What is Justice?;
In What Sense can Theatre Function as an Instrument for Purification and Intimidation?;
The Ultimate Aim of Tragedy;
A Short Glossary of Simple Words;
How Aristotle’s Coercive System of Tragedy Functions;
Different Types of Conflict: Hamartia and Social Ethos;
Conclusion;
2. Machiavelli and the Poetics of Virtù:
The Feudal Abstraction;
The Bourgeois Concretion;
Machiavelli and Mandragola;
Modern Reductions of Virtù;
3. Hegel and Brecht: The Character as Subject or the Character as Object?:
The ‘Epic’ Concept;
Types of Poetry in Hegel;
Characteristics of Dramatic Poetry, Still According to Hegel;
Freedom of the Character-Subject;
A Word Poorly Chosen;
Does Thought Determine Being (or Vice Versa)?;
Can Man be Changed?;
Conflict of Wills or Contradiction of Needs?;
Empathy or What? Emotion or Reason?;
Catharsis and Repose, or Knowledge and Action?;
How to Interpret the New Works?;
The Rest Does Not Count: They Are Minor Formal Differences Between the Three Genres;
Empathy or Osmosis;
4. Poetics of the Oppressed:
Experiments with the People’s Theatre in Peru;
Conclusion: ‘Spectator’, a Bad Word!;
5. Development of the Arena Theatre of São Paulo;
Need for the ‘Joker’;
Goals of the ‘Joker’;
Structures of the ‘Joker’;
Appendices;
Notes;
Index.

Augusto Boal saw theatre as a mirror to the world, one that we can reach into to change our reality. This book, The Theatre of the Oppressed, is the foundation to 'Forum Theatre', a popular radical form practised across the world. Boal's techniques allowed the people to reclaim theatre, providing forums through which they could imagine and enact social and political change. Rejecting the Aristotelian ethic, which he believed allowed the State to remain unchallenged, he broke down the wall between actors and audience, the two sides coming together, the audience becoming the 'spect-actors'. Written in 1973, while in exile from the Brazilian government after the military coup-d'etat, this is a work of subversion and liberation, which shows that only the oppressed are able to free themselves