The Great Game of Power

• Age: Teens-Adults
• Number: 10-50
• Source: "Games for Actors and Non-Actors" by Augusto Boal

I have used this game in many circumstances, with adults and teens. The rules are easy to understand, and everyone understands the purpose of the game very quickly. This is a wonderful way to begin a dialogue about how people exert power regarding relationships, politics, race, gender, age, status, etc. For a picture of this game in action, visit the Training page on this site.

For this game, you need...

"A table, six chairs, and a bottle. First of all, participants are asked to come up one at a time and arrange the objects so as to make one chair become the most powerful object, in relation to the other chairs, the table and the bottle. Any of the objects can be moved or placed on top of each other, or on their sides, or whatever, but none of the objects can be removed altogether from the space. The group will run through a great number of variations in the arrangement.

"Then, when a suitable arrangement has been arrived at, an arrangement in which, by group consensus, one chair is clearly the most powerful object, a participant is asked to enter the space and take up the most powerful position, without moving anything. Once someone is in place, the other members of the group can enter the space in succession and try to place themselves in an even more powerful position, and take away the power the first person established."