Theatre and action research: How drama can empower action research processes in the field of unemployment

Abstract

Action research on marginalization and exclusion often seeks to examine relations between recognition, respect, and inclusion, but addressing these topics is difficult. Theatre-based action research opens up a new way to communicate and make visible knowledge and experiences from below that have difficulties reaching the public agenda or influencing structures of power. In this article we follow the creation of a play and of scenes that address the life, sufferings, and wishes of unemployed people. The skills of actors, writers, and producers are worked into a critical utopian action research project and used to highlight and enlarge both critique and dreams in life outside the labor market. The article also discusses some of the reactions the plays received and the formation of knowledge linked to these processes.

The Possibilities and Limits of Participatory Theatre: Exploring Belonging and Resistance with Second-Generation Black and Muslim Dutch Youth in the Netherlands

“…The Seed and I then reworked these stories into a script for public performance in the spirit of Boal's Forum Theatre. Forum Theatre breaks the 'fourth wall' -the traditional passive one-way communication with a theatre audience (Quinlan & Duggleby, 2009;Tofteng & Husted, 2011) -by inviting audience members, called 'spect-actors' in Forum Theater, to provide commentary, make suggestions regarding what they are seeing on stage, and even come up on stage themselves to try out suggestions to transform a scene of oppression. During the following five weeks, participants rehearsed the script and, in the last week, put on a public performance.…”

‘The play’s the thing’: A creative collaboration to investigate lived experiences in an urban community garden

“…Brown et al (2017) have pointed out how participatory approaches can contribute to understanding and bring new perspectives to an area of inquiry, and are particularly valuable in stimulating action, producing solutions-orientated work. Kaptani and Yuval-Davis (2008) highlighted the richness of embodied, illustrative data which can be delivered through creative approaches, and Tofteng and Husted (2011) brought attention to the value of performance in disseminating knowledge and experiences which may otherwise go unheard. Our research study in the community garden illustrates how a creative approach can stimulate research participant dialogue around well-being, social and environmental change, and how it can encourage reflexivity in the researcher and in participants.…”

Play-making with migrant farm workers in Ontario, Canada: a kinesthetic and embodied approach to qualitative research

“…While relatively overlooked within arts-informed research debates, there are a growing number of examples of action research projects that integrate the use of drama techniques in working directly with research participants (Conrad, 2004; Gallagher and Wessels, 2013; Guard et al, 2012; Norris, 2011; Nouvet et al, 2017; Quinlan, 2009; Tofteng and Husted, 2011). Increasingly, researchers involved in this work have been integrating the work of late Brazilian theatre director and educator Augusto Boal as adapted from his renowned theatre-based popular education system known as the Theatre of the Oppressed (Boal, 1985, 2002).…”