Critical pedagogy and social change : Theatre of the Oppressed as a Freirean approach

This paper intends to explore the pedagogical potential of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed as an approach for the promotion of educational pro-cesses capable of activating local resources and favoring the construction of re-silient social communities. In particular, here the intention is to analyze how this approach, inspired by the critical/pedagogical thought of Paulo Freire, can stim-ulate social inclusion and active citizenship while promoting development of new professional competences for education professionals operating in contexts of social fragility.The aim is to show that Theatre of the Oppressed can facilitate spaces where people enact their own power more fully, thanks to its participatory frame for better understanding problems and exploring possible ways to confront them and even overcome or transform the structures causing them. This paper concludes that Theatre of the Oppressed’s specific embodiment of Freirean principles makes it a particularly innovative pedagogical approach, a collection of techniques educators might combine differently depending on the situation.