Theater of the Oppressed as Assisted Regeneration: Challenging the "Expert" and Building a Psychology from and for the People

Theater of the Oppressed inspired a street theater project that began in Mexico City with graduate counseling psychology students. The theater provoked a Pedagogy of the Oppressed, challenging the students and the epistemologies of clinical psychology as the ‘experts’ and giving epistemological and ontological power to the participants. This article argues a depth psychological comprehension of oppressor-oppressed relationalities and integrity to assisted regeneration are necessary for Theater of the Oppressed projects to have a liberatory function. Public, spontaneous dialogue with embodied representations of social issues such as domestic violence has enduring collective healing potentials for the participants and for the facilitators.