This item is not in the library — it is a part of: A. Boal, Games for Actors and Non-Actors.
Very difficult, very delicate. Each actor must think of an oppression she has actually experienced or is still experiencing. Then everyone closes their eyes and assembles in the middle of the room. Whoever wants to start utters a sound (a cry, groan, shout, lamentation, etc.) which must be the translation into sound of the oppression she has in mind. The Joker takes this first person by the hand and leads her on a journey around the room, eventually stopping in a corner. Same with the second person, who has started a different sound. Three or four others follow, each in their own way, with their own call. It is important for the Joker to choose quite different sounds to inhabit the four corners of the room. Then the four let loose their cries together. Those remaining in the middle listen to the four and each choose the sound which best suits their own oppression; four groups form. After this everybody opens their eyes, and they make four circles, and, in their separate circles, each person recounts to the others the oppression she was thinking of, the episode which was in her mind. It is no magic that within each circle, the story is almost always about the same type of oppression, on the same theme.
The wording above is by Augusto Boal (translated by Andrew Jackson), as written in Games for Actors and Non-Actors (Boal 2002, 125)
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