The Gothenburg Theatre Spectator

Augusto Boal was a cultural activist and a revolutionary. Aristotle was a 4th century BCE philosopher and arguably conservative, setting public life above private life. He considered anything that concerned the  polis , the city, politics, in the sense that it mattered for order and his conception of the natural hierarchies between men, men and women, and men and slaves. Men who were citizens were naturally meant to be the rulers over men who were not, over women and over slaves. He explains all of this in some detail in his treatise  Politics . This difference between Boal and Aristotle is relevant to their theories about the theatre and its function.  A baseline for looking at the politics of art in relation to Aristotle’s theory of tragedy is his conception in  Poetics  that the artist “must of necessity imitate one of three objects, - things as they were or are, things as they are said or thought to be, or things as they ought to be” (1997: 53). These p...

"Life is not so foolishly and mathematically arranged that the great always devour the small. It happens equally often that a bee kills a lion, or at any rate drives it mad." - August Strindberg's Preface to Miss Julie (1888) This is a playtext review. Julie in Strindberg’s eponymous play does not drive anyone mad. She is driven mad. She is driven to suicide in this class play that is also a gender power play. It reflects Strindberg's contempt for young aristocratic women and lack of faith in their ability to fashion themselves or their lives into something worthwhile. Miss Julie represents a modern woman in the late 19th century; independent and full of a would be kind of agency, based more in desire and will than in politically or ideologically sanctioned power. She wants to make her own choices in life and love. Yet, she lives in a world that demands of women a fortitude and vision that Strindberg does not give her. The tragedy of Miss Julie is made out in Stri...