Boal Quotes & Sayings

Theatre is a form of knowledge; it should and can also be a means of transforming society. Theatre can help us build our future, rather than just waiting for it. — Augusto Boal

Film-makers are always going to be interested in making movies that plug into society around them. That's what a vibrant, artistically alert community should be doing. After all, it would be sad if we only made films about alien robots. — Mark Boal

It is forbidden to walk on the grass. It is not forbidden to fly over the grass. — Augusto Boal

[T]he radical geographer Iain Boal had prophesied, The longing for a better world will need to arise at the imagined meeting place of many movements of resistance, as many as there are sites of closure and exclusion. The resistance will be as transnational capitalism. — Rebecca Solnit

I've always been a fan of books that create an interesting blend of fact and fiction - whether it's Norman Mailer, or 'The Short Timers,' or 'In Cold Blood.' I'm a fan of that genre. — Mark Boal

Theatre is a weapon. For that reason it must be fought for. — Augusto Boal

The theater itself is not revolutionary: it is a rehearsal for the revolution. — Augusto Boal

The poetics of the oppressed is essentially the poetics of liberation: the spectator no longer delegates power to the characters either to think or to act in his place. The spectator frees himself; he thinks and acts for himself! Theatre is action! — Augusto Boal

In the case of 'Zero Dark Thirty,' about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, an issue that is central to the film - torture - is so important that I feel I must say something. Mark Boal and Kathryn Bigelow have been irresponsible and inaccurate in the way they have treated this issue in their film. — Alex Gibney

One big, glaring difference I can think of between Iraq and Vietnam is the news coverage. During the Vietnam War era, you had TV coverage of the war saturating the airwaves every night, and that coverage wasn't put through a military filter at all. — Mark Boal

Empathy is the most powerful weapon [ ... ] — Augusto Boal

You're trying to dramatize events to tell a story most effectively. That doesn't mean the events aren't true, it just means you're making them as dramatic as you possibly can. — Mark Boal

For better or worse, most of my writing life has been about people that work behind the scenes. I'm interested in finding extraordinary moments in otherwise normal people. — Mark Boal

I had an eye-opening experience in Baghdad at the end of 2004 and I thought that the story of these guys who have one of the most dangerous jobs in the world would be an interesting way to look at the war in a broader sense. — Mark Boal

Theatre is the most perfect artistic form of coercion. — Augusto Boal

The Theatre of the Oppressed is theatre in this most archaic application of the word. In this usage, all human beings are Actors (they act!) and Spectators (they observe!). — Augusto Boal

9/11, the wars and terrorism have affected all of us in different ways: people who lost family on 9/11, the people who lost family in the wars and people who lost family in various terrorist attacks that have occurred since. — Mark Boal

So to be standing here, this was really, truly, honestly never part of anything we even imagined in our wildest dreams. — Mark Boal

Passage of time can be mind-numbing to figure out in a screenplay. It's the easiest thing to do in prose, not just by writing 'four years later', but you can shift time in a sentence or two. — Mark Boal

This is the guy that's KSM's nephew? What's his issue? DANIEL He's being a dick. BRADLEY If he's trying to outsmart you, tell him about your PhD. — Mark Boal

I think as a filmmaker you try not to have any expectations other than that the film have a fairly substantial beginning, middle and end. — Mark Boal

Theatre has nothing to do with buildings or other physical constructions. Theatre - or theatricality - is the capacity, this human property which allows man to observe himself in action, in activity. Man can see himself in the act of seeing, in the act of acting, in the act of feeling, the act of thinking. Feel himself feeling, think himself thinking. — Augusto Boal

I write on a computer, on a laptop or whatever. — Mark Boal

I had no idea what it would be like to be a bomb tech in Baghdad until I got there so I didn't know what to expect. It was very eye-opening. — Mark Boal

Anyone can do theater, even actors. And, theater can be done everywhere, even in a theater. — Augusto Boal

There's this movie, 'Zero Dark Thirty' about the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Some have complained that too many 'secrets' were dished out by the intelligence and special operations communities to director Kathryn Bigelow, screenwriter Mark Boal and their crew, part of a broader pattern of using intelligence for political effect. — Michael Hayden

Ever since 9/11, I found myself interested in chronicling the war and the war on terror and the way that this giant machinery was affecting individuals. — Mark Boal

Theatre is the art of looking at ourselves. — Augusto Boal

It is not the place of the theatre to show the correct path, but only to offer the means by which all possible paths may be examined. — Augusto Boal

The fact is that war films, by their very nature, are pitched at a high dramatic range. — Mark Boal

We are all actors: being a citizen is not living in society, it is changing it. — Augusto Boal

The theater is a weapon, and it is the people who should wield it. — Augusto Boal

I actually think every war movie is an antiwar movie in its own way - with the exception of some of the propaganda movies. — Mark Boal

I mean, journalism is very detailed ... you try to get down in the weeds and sort out exactly what happened. And I don't think that a feature film is really a place where that happens. — Mark Boal

For weeks after 9/11 you could smell the dust and pulverised concrete in New York, and the National Guard came in, so there was a military presence on the streets. It was intense. Overwhelming. Heartbreaking. — Mark Boal

Nothing is going to remain the way it is. Let us, in the present, study the past, so as to invent the future. — Augusto Boal