Hamlet and the Baker's Son

For this quarter, I was given the autobiography Hamlet and the Baker's Son by and about Augusto Boal. To quote Luke, "This book is about three of your favorite topics. Theater, politics, and South America!" Obviously I had to look at it.

A Rough Summary

Augusto Boal is a Brazilian theater director, but he is different from most other directors (I would think, not that I know very much about other directors). His primary quest is to discover the "true Brazil," to move theater from the upper and middle-classes and bring it to the average people. He was imprisoned and exiled during the time of a brutal dictatorship. Now he has returned to Brazil, where he continues developing his new theater techniques.

Finding Context

Due to a lack of theater knowledge, I had a decent amount of trouble following along as he described all of the shows he directed. I was also confused about the events happening during the time of the book. In order to get some context, I did some research on Brazilian history. Brazil is a country with a very interesting history. It has gone from being a colony, to an empire, to a democracy, to a dictatorship, back to a democracy, back to a dictatorship. Imagine if the communist movement had been successful there. The country would have had every form of government conceivable! Except for theocracy, but that's pretty minor.

Still, I have difficulty analyzing it. I feel like the book had so much to offer but I couldn't compute it all.

Nationalism

Boal was an artist, and as an artist, he was surrounded by numerous kinds of social movements. These were predominantly leftist socialist movements, some even communist. However, he never affiliated himself with any kind of ideology. Instead, he was more of a nationalist; he wanted to find the heart and identity of Brazil.

He did this in a number of ways. He set up writing workshops for Brazilian writers, he drove out to obscure areas of the country to perform, and he tried to get the audience involved in his shows. He tried to find the true people.

But I think what makes Boal so respectable is how he acknowledges that he cannot fully understand the struggles of Brazilian peasants.

There were two moments where he realized the limits of an artist. The first is when he discovered what he refers to as "Chê Syndrome."

"I call this 'the Chê Syndrome', a condition to which so many of us at some point or another succumb. Wanting to free slaves by force: I have my truth, I know what's best for them, therefore let us do what I want them to do, now. I know it is right. I see what they cannot see: let them come with me, I want to open their eyes. They have to see what I see, since I see the right way! The best of intentions. The most authoritarian of practices - coming from above."

This condition is quite common for people, engaging in social movements that lack sincerity and efficacy. It's so nice to see it written in words. I suffered from this very condition myself for a while. Thank goodness I matured beyond it!

The second moment when he realized his limits is when he performed in a small town in the northeast region of Brazil, which is very poor. He re-enacted a revolution with fake weapons. The peasants asked the actors if they would like to take their arms and join in the conflict. The artists explained that the weapons were fake, but the peasants continued to prod them to join their army.

This is an important ethical question for an artist.

"We have no right to incite anyone to do something we are not prepared to do ourselves."

How can the artists expect people to rebel when they will not do so themselves? How can we call people do act when we do not act? 

Before the first military coup took place, Boal was in a restaurant where his artist and intellectual friends were debating what was going to happen. They each had their two cents to offer, but again, they refused to act.

"Intellectuals gave themselves the right to suggest ways forward…and fold their arms. As if being intellectual meant the acquired right to do nothing more than think."

My question was, how does the artist act? How does the artist participate in the political and social spectrum without coming across as insincere and cowardly?

Political Participation

When the military took over Brazil, many censors were placed upon Brazilian art. At first, the artists tried to work around them. However, it reached the point where the artists could no longer take having their messages blocked for being "subversive." There was one television producer who tried to find something to film for his television show that wouldn't be blocked. He was so desperate, he decided to film a worm being killed with acid. Again, this was considered subversive.

Boal got sick of his theater being considered over the top.

"If anything was 'over the top' it was our very existence, as creators: how can an artist work under a dictatorship if the artist is the body who, when free, creates the new, and the dictatorship is the body which, by shutting people up, preserves the old? Art and dictatorship are incompatible. The two words loathe each other!"

The artists performed their shows regardless of the censors, and that's when troubles began. People disappeared, people got killed. The artists made sure to have weapons for self-defense, even if they didn't particularly know how to use them.

One day, Boal got kidnapped off the street. He was taken into custody where he was tortured. They wanted him to give information, to give up names of other subversive peoples. He never gave in. He doesn't consider himself a hero for never giving in, he simply states that he never revealed information.

Afterwards he was exiled from his country, and he wandered from place to place for years, never feeling at home. He did develop new forms of theater during the time of this dictatorship.

I believe it was at this point where Boal was no longer a shallow activist but an active participant. He maintained his integrity, survived exile and dictatorship, and brought world attention to the issue. But that's not all he did. 

Identity

Throughout his life, he worked to form a national identity for Brazil, creating a centripetal force. This is no easy task. The world of post-colonialism is a lonely one. Think about it. The country was created by a bunch of vicious white people going in, killing people, and taking land. In South America, people didn't own land! They had no such concept. So what you had was a system where a bunch of people from the outside with superior weapons came in and said that everything was theres. Specifically in Brazil, a large amount of the Native population was killed. They do not have much of a pre-colonial history, unlike per se Mexico, who has the legacy of the Aztec and the Maya from which to draw from.

Eventually, the country raised its status from a colony to basically a co-nation with Portugal. Then it became independent, had two emperors, and then had a tumultuous political history like many of the Latin American nations.

In a situation where a country is so artificially created, what does it mean to be Brazilian? Is it the language? They speak Portuguese. Is it the people native to the area? The country mixed ethnicity with whites, Pardos (mixed of indigenous and white), blacks, Asians, and Amerindians. 

Is it the environment? Certain plants only belong to the country. Brazil hosts a large part of the Amazonian forest.

Is it the people who live there now? Is it the upper-class? Is it the lower-class? There is such a stark difference between the peasant who lives under what is essentially a feudal system and the businessman who thrives in Rio. How can these people be one?

The answer is, the Brazilian national identity draws upon all of these factors. It is the history, it is the present, it is the people, it is the environment, it is everything. But it's not always easy to see this identity.

This is why Boal was so enthusiastic about having his plays be so essentially Brazilian. He was sick of people re-enacting European plays, pretending to be something that they are not. On the other hand, he didn't want to emphasize "folk culture" in an insincere manner.

"Was there not an elitism in the concept of 'popular culture' as an impoverished corruption of the true culture? Was it not another way of saying 'folklore', a dwarfish form when placed beside the 'true culture' of European inspiration?"

This is why he worked to have Brazilians write plays, to perform in the obscure corners of Brazil. He was building an identity to unite these different peoples. This is very political. How can a country operate when nobody agrees with each other? Where people don't feel like one?

If you go to countries outside of the United States, you can see how much of an effect our culture has. So many nations do not have this sense of national identity, and therefore do not have much art of their own. People listen to American television shows and listen to American music. This isn't because America imposes itself on other countries; it's because these other countries do not have other options.

I don't know the details about how Boal has helped create a national identity for Brazil, but I'm sure he has had a large impact. 

I actually thought about that considerably. Boal himself is one man who made a large impact on the Brazilian identity. But how much of that identity is Brazilian, and how much of it is the identity of Augusto Boal? Is Brazilian theater simply Boalian theater? Because he participated and developed numerous artists, I would say no. However, even if much of the theater was based off of him alone, it could still be considered authentically Brazilian.

Another aspect of national identity comes in revered figures. We have plenty of our own. George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson. Even some more modern-day heroes, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The national anthem was written by one man, Francis Scott Key. The flag was created by one woman, Betsy Ross. Martin Luther King, Jr. led the civil rights movement, Susan B. Anthony led the woman's rights movement. These people may not be gods, but they have a supernatural presence in our identity.

Hmm. I wonder if one could create a theory that compiles all of the aspects of national identity. Food for thought. I'm going to sit on that.

Speaking of famous figures, Boal has an interesting quote about that.

"For me, myth is not mystification per se. Myth is the simplification of the historical individual, retaining the fundamental traits of his character, his essence, so to speak, which becomes magnified. However, it becomes mystification if non-essential circumstances are magnified and what is important is thrown into the waste bin of history. The picturesque remains, the principle is lost."

Quotes

There are a number of quotes that I just like, even though I don't have much to say for them. Here are a few.

"International solidarity could be useful. Dictators are ashamed of what they do: if they are denounced, their acts of evil diminish. May they always be denounced!"

"What stark madness to want to decide who is right and who is wrong she, in art, many paths, even divergent ones, can all be right. Only one is the wrong path, for sure: the path of mediocrity!"

"The intention to sin is already sin; if the sinner does not sin because he has been impeded, even then he is a sinner. The assassin is an assassin even when his victim escapes."

"Remembering today what I remembered yesterday, the thing remembered now differs from the memory before. Everyday is a new day. I am no longer who I was only hours ago. My being is becoming. I never am: I am always becoming. I am that which I am not yet, and I am also what I have already ceased to be. In the act of approaching being, I become that which I shall never be, since, if I become by being it, I shall already be in transit to another being which I am not yet nor will be, as I am the first, always in transit. Inevitably."

"People afraid to dream in color, dreaming in black and white. Dreaming of dew drops, not daring to dream of oceans."

"Theater has to be in flesh and blood. Otherwise, it is entertainment."

"A ritual in search of lost purity: he who writes purifies himself, liberates himself, bathes naked, seeing himself. Before putting my clothes back on, to meet the world, I want to meet myself. I want to know my hand's reach, the remoteness of my food. I want to know: I write. This book is my purification."

"I am convinced: we can only return to places where we have never been…I am convinced: we only remember what has not happened."

"My life has been a draft, unfinished sentences, unexpected syntaxes. But I neither can, nor want to make a clean copy: I did what I could. If I could have done more, I would have."

Bibliography

Boal, Augusto. Hamlet and the Baker's Son: My Life in Theater and Politics. Trans. Adrian Jackson and Candida Blaker. London: Routledge, 2001. Print.