10/1: Theater of the Oppressed and Virtuality

File version newmedoct1.doc

New Media and Literature, Oct 1 handout

Augusto Boal and Theater of the Oppressed

Boal’s examples have significant implications for virtual environments:

“…image theater is without doubt one of the most stimulating, because it is so easy to practice and because of its extraordinary capacity for making thought visible.” (344)

The embodied and interactive elements of this form of theater point to spaces in between conventional associations between representation and learning – gesture; embodied images; minor movement within context – evoke modes of affect (“feeling”) that can become transformative.

[see NPR article on VR therapy and combat stress]

Yet, Boal’s work with theater in Latin America signals a need to return to how we define “virtuality.”

What is virtuality? And how does it require a re-thinking of the material forms of “new” media?

All this requires as well a re-thinking of narrative.

What is the difference between the narrative experiment in Mary Flannagan’s “Domestic” piece and the therapy narrative of VRT?

Lessig’s lecture on Free Culture

How is Rip/Mix/Burn related to theater of the oppressed?

What difference does mediation make in all this?

If we think about what goes on with virtual reality therapy, can we say that there is more to “content” (free or otherwise) than the abstractions of “the past” and “ideas”?

What about the material space in between?

Is there a difference between “PowerPoint consciousness” and “Flash consciousness”?