4 ideas
Boal argues that Aristotelian tragedy pacifies audiences. The spectator empathizes with a hero whose tragic flaw (hamartia) breaks society's rules, suffers with him through reversal (peripeteia) and recognition (anagnorisis), and is purged by catharsis of the same impulse to defy the order. The result is a citizen who has vicariously transgressed, been punished, and returns obedient to the laws and values of the ruling class.
The spect-actor is an audience member who does not delegate action to a character but steps onto the stage, takes the protagonist's place, and acts out an alternative. Dissolving the line between watcher and performer removes the passivity Boal sees as the core of conventional theatre. The person who watches is also the person who decides and does.
Actors perform a short scene in which a protagonist fails to overcome an oppression drawn from the audience's own lives. The scene is then replayed, and any spectator can shout 'stop,' replace the protagonist, and try a different tactic while the actors playing the oppressors improvise realistic resistance.
Boal sets out a progression of theatrical power. In Aristotle's model the spectator hands both thought and action to the character. Brecht's model returns thought to the spectator but leaves action on stage. The poetics of the oppressed returns action as well, so a staged act of liberation becomes a real rehearsal that makes the spectator more likely to act outside the theatre.