Prior to his experimentation, and following tradition, audiences were invited to discuss a play at the end of the performance. In so doing, according to Boal, they remained viewers and "reactors" to the action before them. In the 1960's Boal developed a process whereby audience members could stop a performance and suggest different actions for the actors, who would then carry out the audience suggestions. But in a now legendary development, a woman in the audience once was so outraged the actor could not understand her suggestion that she came onto the stage and showed what she meant. For Boal this was the birth of the spect-actor (not spectator) and his theatre was transformed. He began inviting audience members with suggestions for change onto the stage to demonstrate their ideas. In so doing, he discovered that through this participation the audience members became empowered not only to imagine change but to actually practice that change, reflect collectively on the suggestion, and thereby become empowered to generate social action. Theatre became a practical vehicle for grass-roots activism.

He took the Brechtian ideal of theatre as relevant to the social context of the times and as a tool for change to a very logical conclusion - moving the focus of the play into the hands of the audience, who alone can understand the reality of their predicaments - their lives, the pressures they have to bear whether from bosses, the government or members of their own family. Now each individual in an audience is called a 'spect-actor.' The spect-actor can voice his own oppressions and seek to overcome them through a variety of means developed by Boal.