Conflicting Signs of Violence In Augusto Baal's Torquemada

Abstract

Severino João Albuquerque The political views of Augusto Boal, Latin America's foremost theorist of the theatre, have brought him much tribulation personally as well as professionally. A dramatist in his own right, Boal saw most of his plays banned. from the presses and the stage by the intolerant censorship which stifled Brazilian art following the 1964 coup. After much personal harassment over the years, Boal was finally arrested without charges by the military in 1971, kept in confinement for several months, and only following intense pressure from noted foreign playwrights such as Arthur Miller, was he released from prison and forced into exile, first in Argentina, and then Peru and other Latin American countries, until his return to Brazil following the 1978 loosening of the military rule.