The inventor of the internationally renowned Forum Theatre system and ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’, including Image Theatre, Invisible Theatre, Rainbow of Desire and Legislative Theatre, Augusto Boal travelled the world giving workshops and inspiration to teachers, psychotherapists, prisoners, actors, and workers in myriad other fields. He was a visionary as well as a man of his time: the Brazil of military dictatorship and artistic and social repression.

This political man of the theatre, and theatrical man of politics – once imprisoned for his subversive activities – was a passionately creative force in contemporary cultural life. [..] He devised a unique way of using the stage to empower the disempowered, and took his methods from the favelas of Rio to the rehearsal studios of the Royal Shakespeare Company.