Theatre Forum
Why is it effective?
“I hear, I forget”
“I see, I remember”
“I do, I understand”
Originally developed by Augusto Boal, these sessions become a theatrical debate, in which experiences, ideas and strategies are rehearsed and shared. As participants take to the stage all involved learn form watching and playing and seeing first hand how others tackle the difficult situations with which they are presented. Enviably the differences in the approach taken, lead to differences in outcome. This type of interaction allows direct involvement with the subject matter, and allows the participants to replay, experiment and if necessary adapt and modify their interactions, until an outcome with which they are satisfied is achieved. This approach encourages many different possibilities and courses of action to be played out, and engenders a high degree of buy-in from the participants.
Information about Theatre Forum technique
This interactive technique offers participants the opportunity to:
- Tackle tough skills based issues
- Develop scenarios specific to the workplace
- Follow the journey of characters in the scenarios
- Comment, question, change and control scenes and endings
- Try out behaviours and reflect on their effectiveness
- Observe others’ behaviour and the impact of their behaviour / actions
- Obtain and provide feedback
- Stop, Pause and replay aspects of the scenarios, try out alternative behaviours/strategies, question or alter the behaviour of ourselves or other characters, or let other characters take your place
- Interact directly with characters and make suggestions as to how to resolve scenarios/improve effectiveness and result in a win-win outcome
- See what happens as a third party – allowing observers to be outside the emotional stresses we can suffer in the middle of situations and conflicts
- Learn by taking part or observing
- Use your inner resources to create best practice and see it played out immediately before your eyes
Rules of Engagement
Any of the participants can stop scenes at any point to elicit help, make suggestions, ask questions, ask for feedback, replay the scene or take time out to reflect.
If the observers feel the “actor” might usefully have tried a different influencing strategy, they can stop the action, take the actors place and try their own idea.
Other characters can stop the scenario and state what strategy might have worked for them.