Applied Theatre Research - Volume 10, Issue 1, 2022

This article describes the critical process drama framework and highlights its potential to disrupt the status quo through an agenda of exploration and wonder. Generated through arts-based research exploring process drama as an enactment of critical pedagogy, the cumulative case study drew upon a document analysis of Cecily O’Neill’s Seal Wife workshop and exploration of the ‘mantle of the expert’ dramatic inquiry form. Developed to enact critical process drama, six key concepts – hope, aesthetic, agency, agitation, action and ambiguity – operate as an interwoven and reflexive framework to inform drama practice. Dynamic, relational and essential, these six concepts enact the theories of critical pedagogy and process drama as dialectical, improvisational approaches committed to transformation and social justice. As educators and artists, we cannot dance forever in the imagination or plod along hopelessly in reality. Through critical process drama participants, can operate critically in new worlds and significantly between worlds. We need to travel between and transform through transitions. In the crack between the light and dark we can dance and dance and dance.

Collaborative playbuilding is an emerging arts-based research design that uses playwriting and playbuilding as tools of inquiry for artists and researchers to investigate sociological questions, dealing with such matters as racial and class conflict, youth offenders, school safety, stereotypes of urban teenage girls, women and obesity, and social justice. Researchers use the design to generate and disseminate data; however, the literature reveals a lack of studies that show how the playbuilding process – the actual structuring and crafting of the performance script – can be used as a primary means of data analysis. In this article, I discuss my study, in which I used collaborative playbuilding to investigate why some African Americans leave the Black Church and choose not to return. I argue that although I conducted my research using traditional qualitative methods (i.e. interviews, questionnaires, observations and a focus group), I relied on the playbuilding process to serve as an act of crystallization, which provided me with creative distance to analyse the narrative data in interesting ways, yielding findings not previously seen in the literature and thus supporting the efficacy of the arts-based design.

The author draws attention to Playback Theatre’s ability to translate stories that speak to social injustice in South Africa. When the Playback Theatre ensemble intra-acts with stories, it encourages affective consciousness through social artistry. This is crucial in highlighting the potential of Playback Theatre to stage stories that steer away from reductionist portrayals. The author undertakes a diffractive analysis of two stories within the performance that concerns the contestation of gender roles and patriarchy in South Africa. Narrative reticulation and intra-actions are employed to reveal how performative translations in Playback Theatre provide an opportunity to magnify issues pertaining to social justice.

This mixed-methods study explored the impact of a theatre-based community mental health and education initiative to address racism. Comparisons were examined between participants who either just saw a musical that centred on the theme of racism, or who saw the same musical and partook in a post-show experiential workshop that used restorative justice practices and drama therapy/applied theatre exercises. The results established that participants who saw the show and attended the post-show workshop (n = 38), in comparison to participants who only saw the show (n = 69), significantly (p = .001) agreed that the combined experience allowed them to reflect on biases and other forms of discrimination. Researchers also discovered that age and gender yielded considerable differences across groups. Additionally, there were five themes that were derived from the applied thematic analysis. Participants reported: (1) increased knowledge; (2) that they felt emotions; (3) that they connected with others; (4) that they experienced personal transformation in the here and now; and (5) that they were inspired to enact change. These qualitative themes supported quantitative analysis, which concluded that, while the theatre experience alone was impactful, the workshop augmented the central message and cultivated participants’ deeper reflections.