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This article explores the use of an interactive mnemonic device called a "Map of Memories" to navigate the museum theater production Our Footprints, staged in 2017 in the Bergtheil Museum in Durban, South Africa. The Map is an interactive tool used by audience members to explore the exhibits and the performance through connecting their own memories and understandings to what is seen and experienced. The Map, along with the performance, encourages emotional and personal connections to the factual content of the museum exhibitions, with the aim of promoting stronger opportunities for remembering, learning, and new insight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using Augusto Boal's Theater of the Oppressed (1985) playmaking structures, students in an undergraduate education course, Educating for Social Justice, developed forum plays—brief improvisational scenes designed to provoke discussions of power imbalances. The plays focused on "gay rights," a topic the participants self‐selected through guided discussions about injustice. The plays were performed for an English class of tenth‐grade high school students. As a mode of investigating the efficacy of this instructional strategy to spur self‐reflexivity, data about the college students' experiences were collected during each class session and in subsequent semi‐structured group interviews. This article describes the project and the participants' reactions to the invitation to step into the role of ensemble member and play‐maker, as well as the development of their critical consciousness about the effects of cultural bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the applicability of Bertolt Brecht's most radical formal innovation, the Lehrstück or learning play, to a play that is neither written in the Brechtian tradition nor ostensibly a Lehrstück itself. J.B. Priestley's An Inspector Calls (1944) is a popular play often considered "political" by reviewers, yet it proposes no fundamental change to the political landscape its seeks to critique. Brecht's Lehrstück, which dissolves the boundary between actor and spectator, offers a different mode of performance that actively confronts performers with the implications of their fictional counterparts and invites reflection on how the problems presented might be addressed. The article identifies the political shortcomings of Priestley's play and introduces Brechtian categories into the analysis and performance of the play before radicalizing these by transforming An Inspector Calls into a Lehrstück. The process the play undergoes signals the liveliness and durability of this dramaturgical form and offers an example of how Brecht can remain productive in a contemporary theatre context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By using audiences as co-creators of their own experience, participatory theatre becomes imbricated in neoliberal labour practices, characterized by a D-I-Y ethos. At the same time, co-creative audiences are positioned at the privileged centre of a customized, intimate experience that is not only by me, but also for me, and about me. This article explores the tensions between the negative drag of entrepreneurial downloading and the hopeful possibilities for an artistic environment of attentive care. Through analysis of Good Things To Do, a performance created by Christine Quintana and the Good Things collective, it is argued that the dual ontology of theatrical performance, surfaced here through a slippery playful metatheatricality, renders the nature of audience labour ambiguous, assigned an uncertain status between the actual world into the fictional world, between work and play. The playfulness of this ambiguity opens space and potential to escape the sticky web of a neoliberal framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forum Theatre is an interactive theatrical form of the 'Theatre of the Oppressed' (TO). I refer to Forum Theatre in this contribution as a dramatic and participatory research approach which – despite its specific nature – shares many similarities with approaches taken in action research and participatory research. Procedures and methodological steps are presented that have been used in other Forum Theatre projects that have been carried out on social justice topics, such as poverty or social inequality. These steps are illustrated by referencing examples gathered during the projects. One significant aspect of all these projects is the fact that they built bridges between the participants or communities affected by a social problem, the social public and political decision-makers. As the projects were carried out, it became clear that dramatic research with the Forum Theatre not only involves people – each with his or her area of expertise – as partners and co-researchers in active and creative ways, but also contributes in various ways to initiating, stimulating, and advancing social change and social problem-solving, especially when it comes to turning social justice and social and political participation into reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People experiencing homelessness balance competing priorities resulting in reduced capacity to meet the care demands of chronic conditions, including Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM). Arts-based performances present an avenue to expose others to these challenges. This article describes the process of incorporating qualitative research findings in a community-based participatory theater production to expose audiences to the day-to-day realities of living with T2DM while simultaneously experiencing homelessness. We conducted five focus groups and two individual interviews with people living with T2DM who had experienced homelessness with guidance from a community-engaged research team. We then collaborated with a local theater company to present common themes from these focus groups in a co-created play about the experience of managing T2DM while being homeless. We performed a staged reading of the play and assessed audience members’ perceived stigma through a pre- and post-survey to determine if audience engagement within our theatrical production could reduce stigma toward individuals living with diabetes and/or people experiencing homelessness. This theatrical production is titled “Life Heist: Stealing Hope While Surviving Diabetes and Homelessness.” Our work illustrates the feasibility and effectiveness of using participatory theater to disseminate qualitative research findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented which discusses reports within the issue on topics, including an analysis of the work of conceptual artist Lorraine O'Grady, the performative potential of anachronism in Wael Shawky's "The Song of Roland: The Arabic Version" and neoliberalism in participatory plays.

This paper introduces notions of conviviality as both a research practice and a research outcome through an exploration of the racialised and gendered experiences of migrant mothers and young girls in the current hostile environment for migrants in the UK. We argue that innovative, participatory theater and walking methods constitute a convivial practice, particularly helpful for addressing the everyday lives of migrant families within the current racist climate in the UK, characterized by the effects of the hostile environment on migrant families. Furthermore, the innovative participatory arts and action research methods in this project allowed the creation of relations between research participants and with the research team. These methodological and conceptual tools, we argue can strengthen research that challenges and goes beyond current xenophobic and racist conflicts.The innovative methods support research for social transformation, challenging prevalent racist discourses on migrant families, through building creative groups to express and publicly share their lived experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is aimed at presenting and discussing the theoretical concept of assemblage of memory inspired by and grounded in the creative work done in connection with social research within the framework of participatory theatre. Based on three projects of this kind that I have collaborated on over the last couple of years, all taking memory as their theme, The Method of National Constellations (2014-2016), Prayer: A Common Theatre (2016-2017), and Bieżenki (2018), the concept draws both on artistic, and sociological thinking. An assemblage of memory could be roughly described as a product of creativity, which is constructed using "found" materials, such as stories, images, emotions, behaviours, objects, people even, to compose a new meaningful entity. This is congruent with what became to be known as the assemblage theory, started by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, who suggested that social phenomena, such as collective memory, one could add, should be viewed as dynamic and heterogeneous arrangements of a variety of elements, material and immaterial, natural and artificial, human and non-human, that are dependent on the connections between them rather than their intrinsic qualities. Thus, an assemblage of memory cannot be accessed through text-oriented methodologies that still seem to predominate the humanities (with its focus on the witness and testimony), but requires innovative, creative procedures, which, as exemplified by the above mentioned theatrical projects, are capable of revealing its structure and dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the article, the author discusses the nature of theatrical participation by analyzing his experiences in watching the Nassim Soleimanpour play "Nassim." Also cited are the politics of contemporary theatre in the works of Soleimanpour, the social relationship between performers and spectators, and his conception of theatre as a type of machine.

Using affect theory, I explore how a performer's guiding skills for interactive performing arts improve when the performer takes into account both their own discomfort and that of the audience. I propose an analysis of the work of Myriam Lefkowitz (FR) and Sarah John (AU/DK) using the concept of 'responsible combodying'. This non-dyad approach, which incorporates the qualities of listening and articulating propositions, supports the view that discomfort provides a performer the opportunity to learn and readjust their chosen line of action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research on the use of technology in participatory theatre in education has paid little attention to the moment-to-moment unfolding that characterises the liveliness at the heart of such practice. In this conceptual article, we show how a sociomaterialist perspective can illuminate the contingent co-emergence of people, things and technologies that produces this liveliness of events. Perspectives drawn from actor-network theory are used to illuminate one example of the integration of technology in participatory theatre in an educational context. The concepts of mutability, disruption, maintenance, potentialities and multiplicities are developed as an explanatory framework for future research and practice in these and similar forms of educational activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers strategies on how artists can have freedom to express their skills in performance art in Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia during the 1960s and 1970s. Topics mentioned include the use of participatory forms of performance art in communist politics to allow artists to have interaction with their audiences, the sociopolitical and sociohistorical analysis of the experiences of artists and art production, and the democratization of the art making in the countries.

This article considers the audience participation in Jean Genet's controversial play The Blacks (1959) as it was staged in the New York premiere in 1961 and revival in 2003. The Blacks casts its audience in a painful, confusing, even humiliating role, a role that was aggravated by the 2003 revival's production strategies, yet the play has been remarkably successful throughout its history. I consider the aspirations and limitations of audience participation as a form of political engagement, as well as Genet's suspicion, articulated in his recently published "Preface to The Blacks," that theatre cannot contribute to the liberation of oppressed groups. The American career of The Blacks clarifies some of the reasons we fail to end racism, including the potential pleasures of participating in our own racially inspired humiliation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participatory theater offers a potential answer to the increasing demand for local, bottom-up and non-conventional approaches to building peace. Despite this potential, scientific research on participatory theater in peacebuilding is scarce, and when and how it works at best remains unclear. This article provides insights into when and how to appropriately utilize participatory theater as a peacebuilding tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines Jacobs-Jenkins' version of Dion Boucicault's 1859 melodrama "The Octoroon: Or, Life in Louisiana, which encourages speculation on how racism and audience participation have remained unchanged since the mid-19th century. Topics discussed include comparison between Jacobs-Jenkins' version and Boucicault, and discrepancy between "An Octoroon's treatment of race and gender, masculine blackness and feminine blackness in the Boston production.

The article focuses on film scholar Laura Mulvey's idea of repetition and return as a process of cinematic analysis and use it as a lens for viewing theater. It examines the rehearsal period for Martin Crimp's play "Cruel and Tender" in its 2013 production in French by Brigitte Jaques-Wajeman. It discusses Mulvey's argument that identifying and focusing on particular scenes and frames and watching them multiple times allows spectators to see another world open out behind the flow of narrative.

The article focuses on director Thomas Ostermeier's depiction of a childlike Hamlet in his adaptation of William Shakespeare's "Hamlet." It explores how the director is able to portray this childlike qualities, in ways that resonate with the present confused state of mind. Also discussed are the director's application of certain surrealistic techniques, and the ways that these techniques involve the spectator in the eponymous character's mentality.

The article examines a new model for creating interactive theatre developed by Sojourn Theatre for its play "How to End Poverty in 90 Minutes." It notes that the model promotes robust political dialogue while managing the risks commonly associated with participatory performance. The three central components of Sojourn's model that other theatre-makers might follow when creating their own interactive theatre are discussed.

In this article, we question the unilateral discourse of benefit of participation in participatory refugee theatre in the context of a growing socio-political climate of polarisation and stigmatisation of refugees in European countries of resettlement. By integrating critical voices from the fields of applied theatre and refugee research, we analyse the micro and macro dramaturgy of a Berlinbased participatory refugee theatre project. Through this analysis, we explore how refugees' participation entails opportunities for empowerment, agency and giving voice, but also risks disempowerment and silencing in the interconnected relations between the participant, theatre maker, audience and the broader socio-political context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before embarking on their most ambitious project to date, a cosmically-themed participatory theatre event with interactive 3D visuals housed inside a bespoke dome structure, the interactive artists Andrew Johnston and Andrew Bluff joined the director of Stalker Theatre, David Clarkson in a round-table discussion. They reflected on what it was like to combine physical performance with interactive graphics in a childrens theatre show and discussed how the 360° format might be used to explore the cosmos in their upcoming Big Skies production. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

"Unwrap your chocolate, place it on your tongue, close your eyes, and let your tongue choreograph the dance of chocolate,' instructed Alice B. Toklas in This Is Not A Theatre Company's A Serious Banquet. Music wafted over the dinner guests to accompany their site-specific dance. Many immersive and participatory performances include food and/or drink. In most cases the food and drink is not simply an attempt to lower inhibitions (although it can serve that function too), but an attempt to create multi-sensory, multimodal, semi-synaesthetic, embodied engagement; it is an attempt to create theatre that can be tasted, smelled, and touched. What does it mean to "taste" theatre? What does it mean to "taste" meaning, or emotion; to apprehend the world through taste? Asking partakers to eat and drink during performances literalizes the Sanskrit aesthetic theory known as rasa. The Sanskrit term "rasa" has been variously translated as juice, flavor, extract, and essence. In the context of performance theory it is the "aesthetic flavor or sentiment" tasted in and through performance. The Natyasastra, the Sanskrit aesthetic treatise attributed to Bharata, notes that when foods and spices are mixed together in different ways, they create different tastes; similarly, the mixing of different basic emotions arising from different situations, when expressed through the performer—or, in the case of immersive and participatory theatre, through the smell of garlic, the taste of chocolate, or the gentle touch of a hand—gives rise to an emotional experience or "taste" in the partaker, which is rasa (Bharata 55, emphasis mine). Rasa posits the interactive audience as participant and partaker – and co-creator --of the event. Rasa is active, sensorial, experiential, and embodied. It is, then, a theory of aesthetic immersion and participation. As such, it is crucial for understanding and describing the modes of engagement in immersive and participatory theatre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including immersive and participatory theater that involve eating and drinking, taste as a mode of encounter for challenging art forms, and robot chef M. Clavel by artist-scholar David Szante.

This article addresses the field of headphone theatre, drawing on Lars Elleström’s framework of the modalities of mediation to elucidate the audience experience of sonic virtual reality. Located within a wider turn towards affective and multimodal encounters in digital culture, headphone theatre stages the act of listening, drawing attention to the performance of the listener’s perceptual apparatus as they realize and render the sonic environment. This article examines the audience experience of three headphone theatre productions that took place in London in 2014: David Rosenberg and Glen Neath’s Ring (2014), Lundahl and Seitl’s Symphony for a Missing Room (2009-), and David Rosenberg and Frauke Requardt’s The Roof (2014). In these productions, the spatiotemporal, sensory, and material modalities (Elleström) combine to facilitate an immersive yet self-reflexive engagement that emphasizes the listener’s visual imagination, auditory processing, and haptic engagement. As the use of binaural sound triggers the body to react to an imagined environment, headphone theatre accentuates the mediatized synergy of body and world, and reveals the performance of perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores different modes of engagement invited by digitally informed practice in one-to-one encounters. Focusing on Blast Theory’s Karen and Dries Verhoeven’s Wanna Play? (Love in the Time of Grindr), the article expands on economy/economies at play in a time that attention has turned into a scarce resource. The artistic tactics implemented to manage and capture audience members’ attention vary from multitasking, to joint collaboration, to focused concentration on one or more streams of information. Through face-to-face and face-to-screen exchanges participants are invited to pay attention to processes and interfaces (‘fluff ’)as much as content and concrete ideas (‘stuff ’) (after Lanham (2006)). Performance practice evidences how it responds to information-intensive environments that challenge or stretch individuals ’ habitual behaviours either remotely or in close proximity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article details key findings from a longitudinal study conducted in collaboration with Kids Company, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The focus of this article is the role of the ‘teacher as witness’ to the impact of a participatory theatre project with vulnerable young people. This research argues that the opportunities afforded by challenging pre-emptive constructs of vulnerable youth held by a teacher, can enable changes that take place within a workshop, which can often remain temporary and confined to the space and time of a project, to transition back into the wider school environment. Drawing upon the concept of witnessing discussed by Felman, and Laub [1992.Testimony: Crisis of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History. Abingdon: Routledge], Rymaszewska [2006.Reaching the Vulnerable Child: Therapy with Traumatized Children. London: Jessica Kingsley], Gerhardt [2004.Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Baby's Brain. East Sussex: Routledge] and Coady [2002.Testimony: A Philosophical Study. Oxford: Oxford University Press], this article proposes that witnessing change can offer a means of sustaining impact. Insights into this proposition are offered in an example case-study analysis of a project I conducted within a Kids Company-supported primary school setting in Lambeth, south-east London. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Suaahara, a nutrition-enhancement program in Nepal, conducted participatory community theater (CT) dramas with the goal of improving nutrition-related practices. To evaluate CT, a pre/posttest with randomized intervention and matched control sites was used. Dramas were conducted in Nawalparasi, Bajhang, and Sindhupalchowk Districts to represent the mountain, hill, and terai/plains regions. Within each study district, two intervention sites were randomly selected and two matched comparison sites were identified for inclusion in the study. At both baseline and endline, 600 individuals aged 18–59 (100 men and 100 women/district × 3 districts) were interviewed in the control sites and 600 in the intervention sites (1200 total respondents). Multivariate logistic analysis controlling for background characteristics found that CT attendance was significantly and positively associated with improved nutrition-related knowledge (adjusted odds ratio ratio [aORR] 10.2,p < 0.001) and communication (aORR 2.4,p < 0.001), hand washing after cleaning a defecating child (aORR 1.49,p < 0.05), feeding children eggs (aORR 1.83,p < 0.01), and feeding children meat and/or fish (aORR 2.10,p < 0.01). This is the first study to rely on a pre/post matched intervention-control design to assess CT effects in a low-income setting. By testing the “difference-in-differences”—or the difference between intervention groups at baseline and endline minus that between controls at baseline and endline—the argument that the effects can be causally attributed to the intervention itself is strengthened. These findings support the continued and expanded use of CT to improve nutrition-related knowledge, communication, efficacy, and feeding practices as a valuable community-based, public health approach. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]