Rehearsing for the Revolution: Theater as a Tool of Democratic Imagination

These days, the urgent work of survival often edges out space for strategic visioning, let alone political imagination. But if nonprofits and movement activists are to do more than simply endure this moment, they must create space to collectively dream—and rehearse—different ways of living, working, and resisting. This is not a luxury. It is a necessity.

We must devise new strategies of dissent—and rehearse for the revolution.

Theatre of the Oppressed (TO), a tool for artistic activism originating in Brazil and now practiced around the world, is one creative and timely strategy for political and social action.

A Practice Born to Resist Authoritarianism

TO was born out of a political crisis: it was, in part, a response to the military dictatorship in Brazil in the 1960s, created by activist Augusto Boal and his artist comrades. Before developing this participatory process, Boal approached activist art from a traditional lens: Art should deliver a political message, counter a dominant narrative, or offer a solution to society’s ills.

In its legendary origin story, Boal and a group of actors hailing from Sao Paulo toured a play inspired by the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST). In the play’s conclusion, the farmworkers—whose land had been unjustly seized by the dictatorship—rose up in armed revolution to take back their land.

After one performance, held outdoors on a farm, the audience erupted with cheers. Some reportedly stood up and said they were ready to follow the example: “Let’s do it, right now!”

Through games and exercises, communities come together, build solidarity, and share their stories about challenging injustice and oppression.

The actors, taken aback, clarified that the rifles in the play were only props. A farmworker replied that real guns weren’t a problem—they had some in the shed. The troupe quickly backpedaled, insisting they had a train to catch.

The audience was incensed. Their message to the performers: You tell us to risk our lives for justice, but you won’t stand beside us. You don’t even believe your own story.

That was the moment, according to Boal, when these artists came to understand that art which sees audience members merely as passive observers could itself be as oppressive as landlords or bosses handing down racist, classist, or sexist rules and laws. TO developed from that understanding, as a tool to imagine and co-create solutions to injustice in a collective practice, in real time, on our feet.

Everyone Is an Actor, Activist, Policymaker

TO is practiced in many different ways, but the core process looks like this: Through games and exercises, communities come together, build solidarity, and share their stories about challenging injustice and oppression. These stories are developed into short plays, developed and performed by community members. Performances take place in free, accessible settings like libraries, community centers, schools, or shelters. Audiences include neighbors and friends also directly impacted—whether the theme is housing justice, access to healthcare, racist immigration policies, and so on—as well as activists and advocacy organizations.

But a TO process doesn’t stop there. The goal is not only to raise awareness or to shift dominant narratives; it’s also to generate, rehearse, and commit to strategies for collective action. During each performance, actors and audiences collaborate to think critically about the social justice problems posed in the play, and brainstorm possible resolutions together. The audience becomes “spect-actors,” improvising and testing out alternatives—whether through individual interventions, collective action, or policy change—followed by further analysis, debate, and iterations. This is called Forum Theatre: transforming the community arts space into a forum for shared experience of problem solving.

In this liberatory practice, “revolution” carries a double charge—we revolt, and we revolve. Forum plays created by young people in drop-in centers, for example, sometimes uncover harmful dynamics in the very institutions that serve them. When staff see these performances, they reflect on that harm and work with young people to find new ways to confront oppression within their walls. Like a double helix, artistic growth and political consciousness twist into one resilient strand—a structure that keeps the work rigorous and joyful, even in hard times.

A New York City Example

Theatre of the Oppressed NYC (TONYC), with which we are both affiliated, was founded in 2012 with the intention of opening up space and building capacity for communities to practice TO as a form of resistance to oppressive systems. Just over a decade ago, TONYC began experimenting with a new iteration of the TO methodology: a participatory democracy model called Legislative Theatre.

In Portugal, community activist groups have brought performances into the chambers of Parliament as a form of protest.

In Legislative Theatre, the plays created by community groups directly address unjust public policy and practice, and the improvisations by spect-actors offer the opportunity to test new laws, rules, and resources to address those problems. Through this process, TONYC helped to shape city policy and practice between 2013 and 2019.

One example: In 2014, a group of LGBTQ+ youth created a play based on their experiences. In the play’s opening, a transgender woman was involved in a domestic dispute, and the neighbors immediately called the police. When police arrived, they accused her of holding fake identification, as the gender marker on the ID didn’t match her name and presentation. The police then searched her apartment and arrested her after finding hormones, which they mistook for drugs.

When analyzing the policy problems in the play, the audience immediately noted that everyone should be able to access identification that accurately represents them—in addition to many other problems including racist, transphobic policing.

In attendance was Councilmember Carlos Menchaca, chair of the Committee on Immigration at the time, who was in the process of drafting new legislation to create a municipal identification card. The audience tested their ideas onstage, leading to a proposal that the new ID should allow applicants to state their preferred gender marker without having to show proof of medical procedures, or even leave the gender box blank. This became part of the bill voted in by City Council, transforming millions of New Yorkers’ interactions with public institutions.

Experiences like these inspired TONYC and partner organizations to continue using Legislative Theatre for political change, but TONYC quickly found that sustaining the momentum for political change between performances demanded a new strategy. TONYC closed that gap with its Rapid Response model—a standing troupe of community actors ready to leap into marches, press conferences, council hearings, and other urgent actions when needed, tailoring Forum Theatre-style interventions to the moment. Their effectiveness depends on TONYC’s deep, ongoing ties to campaigns such as the campaign to close Rikers Island jails, because social change never happens in isolation.

At a march for universal basic income (UBI) for instance, warm-up games sparked energy, and a short forum play—initially questioned by attendees, who expected yet another speech—ultimately pulled both campaigners and passers-by into a dialogue that linked everyday injustices to the promise of UBI.

Practicing Democracy in the Streets and Inside Our Organizations

As TONYC grew and continued experimenting with creative policy reform and emergent strategies, the organization realized it must apply the same liberatory methods internally as it does onstage and in the streets. Today, TONYC is one of many nonprofits seeking to develop robust, inclusive democracy in their organizational structures and governance.

Artists, activists, and organizations are rejecting the idea that we are powerless. Instead, they are recognizing that movements have many tools at their disposal.

Between 2022 and 2024, TONYC collaborated with the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives to transform their traditional structure into a worker-led nonprofit organization. The result is a democratic culture built on interlocking “circles,” where roles remain clear, yet power circulates.

The tools that ignite protest and revolt can also cultivate a resilient, joyful, movement-aligned democratic culture.

Part of a Movement

TONYC is far from the only nonprofit arts and social justice organization using TO for political action in the United States. zAmya Theatre in Minneapolis engages TO in housing justice work; WorkersTEATRO in Chicago implements TO as a way to support workers fighting discrimination and exploitation; and Outcast Theatre Collective in Tampa practices TO with community groups facing institutional racism.

Internationally, TO and Legislative Theatre in particular are gaining momentum as people-powered tools for social action. Legislative Theatre has been used in Zimbabwe, to shape climate policy; in the United Kingdom, to address gender-based harassment in public spaces; in Brazil, to advance domestic workers’ protections; and in Austria, to develop new legislation on disability rights.

These examples include social action both in collaboration with, and in opposition to, formal political structures. Indeed, in Portugal, community activist groups have brought performances into the chambers of Parliament as a form of protest, to demand more imaginative and just solutions to a breakdown in the care system.

These efforts are part of a vast ecosystem of arts-based and participatory democracy practices, all working to resist the closing space for community-driven, creative social action.

What’s Next?

Today, democratic practices are under threat due to rising authoritarianism, but movement leaders and activists cannot afford to shrug off imaginative or creative social actions. TO creates space for movement participants to reengage in social action on a hyperlocal scale.

At this moment, TONYC is seeing renewed interest in creative dissent and participatory processes, with workshops packed with activists hungry for new tools. This points to the urgency of finding new ways to practice, and even celebrate, democratic practices right now.

In short, artists, activists, and organizations are rejecting the idea that we are powerless. Instead, they are recognizing that movements have many tools at their disposal to help people feel, and ultimately become, more powerful. Ordinary people are not victims of this current landscape; we are essential to shaping that new landscape. We revolt, we revolve, we reimagine.

To paraphrase Augusto Boal, the theatre is a weapon, and it’s the people who should wield it.