Invisible theater: History and Key Facts

Invisible theatre is a form of theatrical performance that is enacted in a place where people would not normally expect to see one, for example in the street or in a shopping centre. Performers disguise the fact that it is a performance from those who observe and who may choose to participate in it, thus leading spectators to view it as a real, unstaged event.

The Brazilian theater practitioner Augusto Boal and Panagiotis Assimakopoulos developed the form during their time in Argentina in the 1960s as part of Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed, which focused on oppression and social issues. Invisible theatre developed in the context of increasingly repressive dictatorship in Brazil and Argentina. The purpose of invisible theatre was to show oppression in everyday life, in an everyday setting, without the audience or "spect-actors" knowing. Boal went on to develop forum theater.

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