Johnstone's teachings
Whilst he was running the Writer's Group at the Royal Court, he began to teach that drama occurs from dynamic levels of status. He came to this realisation as a result of reading several books by Desmond Morris.
Johnstone was the first theatre professional to introduce the term "status transactions" into modern theatre,[citation needed] believing that a high proportion of drama comes from the multiple and tiny ways that people attempt to get what they want by raising or lowering their social status. His teaching included exercises in which students practiced a low-status role by entering the classroom, and acting as though they were accidentally interrupting a very important meeting. The exercise was then repeated by the student. In Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre, Johnstone reports that the increased shows of deference that students acted out often triggered uproarious laughter in the class. He attributes this to a deep-seated human interest in the acting out and renegotiation of status roles.
One of Johnstone's major interests is the use of masks and costumes which represent different emotional states and social roles. He found mask-work to be a powerful learning device. The student's ability to be "in the mask" became so powerful that several fellow instructors reported they were afraid to allow students to use masks in class because some students became overtaken by the mask character. In Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre, he speculates that this effect occurs because masks allow students to let go of their day-to-day identity, especially after the effective exercise of seeing and acting out their new identities before a mirror.
Ian Forrester on 25 Apr 17Forum theatre is a type of theatre created by the innovative and influential practitioner Augusto Boal as part of what he calls his "Theatre of the Oppressed." Boal created Forum theatre as a forum for teaching people how to change their world. While practicing earlier in his career, Boal would apply 'simultaneous dramaturgy'. In this process the actors or audience members could stop a performance, often a short scene in which a character was being oppressed in some way. The audience would suggest different actions for the actors to carry out on-stage in an attempt to change the outcome of what they were seeing. This was an attempt to undo the traditional actor partition and bring audience members into the performance, to have an input into the dramatic action they were watching. Eventually this 'simultaneous dramaturgy' became Forum theatre when audience members were asked not just to suggest different actions, but to come on stage and perform their own interventions.