Augusto Boal - the great Brazilian theater director

He is very known in France and, I believe, in US. He is the creator of the "Theater of the Opressed" and has many books translated into English: "The Rainbow of Desire: The Boal Method of Theatre and Therapy" (on the left) and "Legislative Theatre" (on the right) are on my list.
There are many sites about him and his work in English. His wife, Cecilia Boal is a psychoanalyst and has helped me once while mine was on vacancy. They are friends and when I discovered it I felt very happy for I admire Augusto Boal's work long before even thinking about doing therapy. As a matter of fact I thought that this whole thing about psychoanalysis was for weak or rich people. LOL I have the fortune to say I'm not weak and about rich... almost loosing my middle class status! lol

I took from the site dedicated to Augusto Boal one paragraph of his interview during a workshop in Berlin :
After the event (”Theater und Sensitives Denken”), Boal talked about the importance of the Theater of the Opressed today and about politics engagement:

"O que eu desejo é que as pessoas deixem de ser passivas. Por exemplo, o que aconteceu agora com a constituição européia. Ela não foi aprovada (pela população) em alguns países e teve de ser aprovada pelo parlamento. Isso não é democracia. É plutocracia, é o poder do dinheiro, é oligarquia, é o poder dos mais ricos. E o que nós queremos é dinamizar as pessoas para que elas não aceitem a realidade da forma como ela parece ser. E para que elas lutem contra as injustiças, seja racismo, sexismo, imperialismo, colonialismo, ou qualquer outro nome que se dê. Essa luta é uma forma plena de vida, não uma coisa de final de semana."

"What I desire is that people stop being passive. For instance, what has happened to European constitution. It was not approved (by the people) in some countries and had to be approved by the parliament. This is not democracy. It's plutocracy, it´s the power of money, it's oligarchy, it's the power of the richest. What we want is to make people dynamic so that they don't acept reality the way it looks like. And so that they fight against injustices, whether under the form of racism, sexism, imperialism, colonialism, or no matter how it's named. This fight is a way of life in it's plenitude, not a weekend activity."