Legislative Theatre: Art for Community Conflict Resolution. From Desires to Laws

Abstract

This paper argues that Legislative Theatre, as an artistic methodology for active citizenship, creates a process of collective reflection to produce solutions to community conflicts. Boal used this tool of transitive democracy to conceive legal proposals in favour of marginalised groups. Thirteen of these proposals were approved by the legal system in Brazil. The analysis of a Legislative Theatre workshop in Spain using Boal’s methodology allowed the identification of some interesting elements but also the limitations of the tool. Aspects including the ideology of the audience, the scope of the legal proposals and the role of the joker are seen as important. Other conditioning elements and positive aspects are also discussed.