Open to suggestion: Locating new understandings through performance in decolonizing research

This article interrogates the contributions made to cross-cultural verbatim theatre play by performers, as the text progressed towards publication. The play’s content concerns an Aboriginal massacre and the building of a memorial to commemorate that atrocity. The article begins with a discussion on the evolution of the play, Today We’re Alive, from a focal point in a doctoral thesis to its second-draft development as a touring show for schools located in the region from which the play’s content emerged. The success of this version suggested that the inclusion of more divisive material might not compromise the play’s reconciliatory intent. Particular choices made by the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal actors during the different performances demonstrate the potential for verbatim theatre in the decolonizing space to illuminate emotional and relational undertones that may be too inchoate or too suppressed to articulate.