Brazilian theater director Augusto Boal dies

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Sat May 2, 7:51 pm ET

RIO DE JANEIRO – Augusto Boal, the Brazilian theater director and playwright known for the interactive genre called the "Theater of the Oppressed," died Saturday. He was 78.

Boal died of respiratory failure following a long battle with leukemia, according to Elisa Nunes, a spokeswoman for Rio's Hospital Samaritano.

Boal, who studied theater arts at New York City's Columbia University, created Theater of the Oppressed in the early 1960s as a way to establish a dialogue between audience, playwright, director and actors that encouraged political activism.

Seen as a threat to the dictatorship that ruled Brazil between 1964 and 1985, Boal was arrested, jailed and tortured before being exiled to Argentina.

He returned to Brazil after the fall of the military regime.