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Abstract

This paper examines the integration of Playback Theatre into a Curriculum Drama course within a Theatre in Education (TIE) Diploma program for adult learners in India. Initially approached with hesitation, Playback Theatre emerged as a gentle and generous bridge between personal storytelling and curricular engagement. Through structured ensemble-building, ritualized storytelling, and embodied playback, participants moved from lived experience to collective inquiry around curricular topics such as water conservation, deforestation, and waste management. Drawing on participant reflections and practice-based evidence, the paper argues that Playback Theatre functions as a foundational aesthetic and relational framework that strengthens process drama, deepens listening, and supports participatory meaning-making in classroom contexts. It also explores the value of introducing Playback Theatre basics to teachers to promote socio-emotional well-being.

Introduction: Reframing Playback Theatre in TIE

In designing a Curriculum Drama course at the TIE (Theatre in Education) Wing of the National School of Drama (NSD), my initial hesitation toward including Playback Theatre stemmed from concerns around coherence within a process drama framework. However, my own grounding in applied theatre practices, alongside a formative dialogue with my mentor Ms. Radhika Jain, prompted a shift in perspective.

Playback Theatre, as articulated by Jonathan Fox and Jo Salas (Fox and Salas 2021), centres on the aesthetic re-presentation of lived experience through deep listening and ensemble responsiveness. Fox and Salas describe playback as a form of public storytelling in which personal narratives are witnessed, embodied, and transformed into spontaneous performance, creating opportunities for dialogue, connection, and collective reflection. When viewed alongside established drama pedagogy, it resonates strongly with process-oriented frameworks that privilege participation, reflection, and collaborative meaning-making. As Drama Worlds: A Framework for Process Drama (O’Neill 1995) suggests, drama learning emerges through negotiated, lived experiences rather than predetermined outcomes. Similarly, Drama-Based Pedagogy (Dawson and Lee 2018) emphasises activating learning through embodied and participatory approaches across the curriculum.

What began as an experimental inclusion evolved into a central pedagogic thread. The cohort consisted of nineteen diploma students between the ages of 26 and 32, many of whom came with prior experience in theatre and some foundational exposure to improvisation and Theatre in Education practices. While the participants were familiar with process-oriented and ensemble-based approaches to performance and facilitation, Playback Theatre as a distinct form, with its ritual structure, aesthetic conventions, and emphasis on deep listening was entirely new to them.

Preparation before Practice

The introduction to playback was scaffolded through two three-hour sessions designed as part of a larger twenty-day Curriculum Drama course. The intent was not to offer exhaustive Playback Theatre training, but rather to initiate learners into the form and explore its possibilities within classroom and curricular contexts. To support this initiation, I designed a progression of ensemble-based warm-ups focusing on body, listening, and narrative, using exercises such as Count to 20, Clap at Once, Jump at Once, Walk–Freeze–Flow–Echo, mirroring, emotional echoing, fluid sculptures, soundscapes, and visual mosaics. The listening-focused exercises (including What I Really Heard and the Three-Level Echo exploring fact, feeling, and subtext) were particularly important in preparing learners for the attentiveness required in playback practice. Narrative readiness was further developed through three-part story explorations focusing on beginnings, conflicts, and resolutions.

Participants experienced this progression as a gradual, intentional process of meaning-making. One participant later reflected on the effectiveness of “the step-by-step build up towards the Playback Theatre form” and noted how it could be adapted into an equally effective classroom convention. Another participant observed that the ensemble “merged altogether with one flow of energy,” which led them to feel more present and connected in the moment. This progression reflects the same emphasis on experiential engagement found in drama-based pedagogy, where learning is co-constructed through active participation and “embodied dialogue to connect students’ prior knowledge and lived experience to a larger inquiry in the curriculum” (Dawson and Lee 2018).

Listening as Learning

Listening formed the core of our practice, extending beyond auditory reception to include emotional attunement and attention to subtext. Several participants identified listening as one of the most significant aspects of the session. One participant reflected that “the emphasis on LISTENING … was uncomfortable at first,” while another acknowledged the complexity and responsibility underlining the process, and shared that they found it “tough to respectfully and genuinely listen to and portray someone else’s emotions.” This participant further observed that playback practice “is a big responsibility and needs to be handled with care.” Together, these reflections position listening as an active mode of learning, one through which participants developed empathy, interpretive awareness, and a deeper engagement with both story and self. In contrast to many teacher-led classrooms, where listening often remains passive, and thinking is seldom made visible, the acts of playing back, echoing, and embodying another’s story can serve as powerful bridges from passive reception to active meaning-making.

Ritual and the Red Thread

Over the years as a Playback Theatre practitioner, I have recognised the metaphor of the red thread as a powerful way of understanding the subtle connections that emerge between stories, participants, and shared themes during a performance or workshop. In my own reflective practice, I have come to associate this idea with the Japanese belief in invisible red threads connecting people through encounter and resonance, as well as with Jacob L. Moreno’s concept of tele (Moreno 1943), which describes the reciprocal and authentic connection that develops between individuals within a group. These associations emerged for me not as theoretical foundations of Playback Theatre, but as interpretive lenses through which I have begun to understand the relational dynamics unfolding within the ensemble and the stories being shared. Participants in the course also responded strongly to experiencing this sense of interconnectedness in practice. One participant reflected that engaging with the concept of the red thread felt “really meaningful, engaging, and enjoyable,” particularly because it encouraged movement beyond conflict toward reflection, possibility, and transformation. 

The ritual structure of Playback Theatre (including the roles of teller, conductor, actors, and musicians) helped make this otherwise intangible thread visible and concrete within the room. The conventions of invitation, attentive witnessing, embodied response, and collective reflection created a distinct aesthetic and relational container for participants to recognize echoes of themselves in another person’s story. Such structuring aligns closely with process drama’s emphasis on framing and reflection, where meaning is co-constructed within a shared dramatic world (O’Neill 1995). I believe in educational contexts, this recognition of resonance and commonality can become a powerful pedagogic tool. In my experience as a classroom facilitator, when learners encounter curricular themes through lived experience and shared human connection, they are often better able to articulate not only what they are learning but why that learning matters to them and to the communities they inhabit.

From Connection to Curriculum

Giri’s Story

Giri, a TIE diploma student, revisited a childhood memory of a tree visible from the window of her family home. As a child, she paid little attention to it, taking its presence for granted. It was only years later, when the tree was felled to accommodate road expansion and redevelopment in the area, that she realised it had been a thriving habitat for local bird families whose songs and movements had quietly shaped her everyday experience of home. The sudden absence of these familiar sights and sounds brought into focus the ecological value of the tree and the importance of maintaining a connection with nature. Revisiting this memory as an adult felt deeply personal, evoking feelings of loss, nostalgia, and a deep longing for home. When the story was first played back, the ending reflected the inevitability of the tree’s removal. However, dissatisfied with this conclusion, Giri chose to reimagine the ending, advocating instead for preservation and coexistence.

 This act of re-authoring shifted the narrative from inevitability to agency. Participants extended the discussion into questions of environmental responsibility, proposing sustainable practices, community accountability, and alternative approaches to urban development. The conversation naturally expanded into an exploration of the causes and consequences of deforestation and the tensions between development and conservation. Here, Playback Theatre functioned as a lived entry point into curricular exploration – what drama pedagogy identifies as a bridge between experience and conceptual understanding (Dawson & Lee, 2017). Through the aesthetic re-examination of a personal story, learners were able to engage with environmental concepts not as abstract curricular content, but as issues rooted in memory, place, and lived experience.

Sooraj’s Story

A second story on water scarcity, shared by Sooraj, another bright TIE diploma student, led participants into collaborative solution-building. Sooraj revisited a childhood memory of visiting his ancestral village, where the community depended heavily on a common well for its daily water needs. During one particularly difficult period of rising temperatures and inadequate rainfall, the well ran dry, creating significant hardship for the villagers. Reflecting on the experience as an adult, Sooraj recognised that what he had witnessed as a child was not merely a temporary inconvenience but a deeper struggle for access to a basic necessity. Revisiting the story allowed him to empathise more fully with the challenges faced by the village community, particularly children and older adults who were most affected by the scarcity. The story was played back by the ensemble and intentionally paused. Sooraj was then invited to reimagine an ending in which children and senior citizens did not have to endure the consequences of water scarcity as they had in his original account.

The absence of resolution in the playback became generative. Through facilitated reflection, Sooraj took the hot seat to examine the conflict embedded within the story. Hot seating is identified as a drama convention (Neelands 1990) in which a participant remains in role while being questioned by others in order to explore motivations, perspectives, relationships, and decision-making. Sooraj responded to questions from the audience and in turn recognised how access to alternative water sources, such as tube wells and mechanised groundwater extraction, was often a privilege available only to those with greater economic resources and social power. Meanwhile, poorer families remained dependent on rainfall and seasonal cycles for their survival. Rather than accepting this inequity as inevitable, teller, actors and audience approached the problem through a solution-oriented lens. The actors consequently created an image of a community rainwater-harvesting reservoir that could provide more equitable and sustainable access to water. 

The playback thus evolved from personal recollection to collective inquiry and applied problem-solving. Participants contributed additional ideas around water storage, conservation, and community accountability, transforming the story into a shared exploration of environmental and social justice. Playback Theatre served as a bridge from personal narrative to structured inquiry, echoing McCaslin’s (2006) emphasis on creative drama as a means of extending learning beyond immediate experience. As McCaslin notes, “Through the process of studying a conflict” and the perspectives of those involved, deeper layers of meaning emerge and are interpreted, much like the interpretive process undertaken in developing a theatrical performance. Through the aesthetic re-examination and re-authoring of Sooraj’s story, learners were able to engage critically with questions of resource distribution, sustainability, and civic responsibility while exploring curricular concepts through lived experience.

Discussion: Playback as Pedagogic Foundation

The integration of Playback Theatre with process drama conventions revealed its potential as a foundational layer within process drama as pedagogy. It:

• Supports transition into complex drama conventions
• Anchors learning in lived experience
• Cultivates deep and layered listening
• Encourages spontaneity and co-creation
• Enables collective interpretation and meaning making

Thus, Playback Theatre creates an embodied threshold where participants move from personal story to shared knowledge construction. For TIE practitioners and educators across disciplines, Playback Theatre offers a transferable pedagogic stance. It nurtures empathy, attentiveness, responsiveness, and a generative Yes, and orientation – capacities central to both improvisational practice and contemporary participant-centered pedagogy (Dawson and Lee 2018).

Playback Theatre, in my context, did not function as an isolated form. It became a connective pedagogic thread, linking personal narrative, ensemble practice, and curricular engagement. By inviting participants to tell, witness, and reshape stories, Playback Theatre opens pathways for both understanding and reimagining the world.

Playback Theatre can also be understood as a foundational aesthetic and relational framework that strengthens process drama practice within educational contexts. Its emphasis on attentive listening, collective witnessing, improvisation, and embodied response deepens participants’ capacity to engage meaningfully with one another and with the themes emerging within the learning space. The ritual structures embedded within playback create conditions for trust, reciprocity, and shared inquiry, allowing participants not only to express experiences but also to encounter them as a collective.

In classroom contexts, this supports participatory meaning-making, which is consistent with Lev Vygotsky’s social constructivist perspective. Playback Theatre positions learners as active participants in the co-construction of meaning (Vygotsky 1978) through shared storytelling, reflection, and interpersonal interaction. Stories become sites of reflection, interpretation, and dialogue, enabling learners to connect curriculum with lived experience, emotional truth, and social context. Playback Theatre thus expands the process drama’s capacity to hold complexity, ambiguity, and multiple perspectives within educational spaces (O’Neill 1995).

Conclusion: Weaving the Red Thread Forward

Introducing foundational Playback Theatre practices to teachers offers important possibilities for socio-emotional well-being. In increasingly demanding educational environments, playback can create spaces for reflection, empathy, affirmation, and collective care. The act of being listened to – and witnessing others with presence – can foster connection, emotional resilience, and a stronger sense of belonging within teaching and learning communities. I recently experienced this firsthand during a playback process I facilitated with teachers in my school, HLC International, Chennai, India, where we played back moments from the academic year gone by. Working within the theme of Culture and Chaos, teachers enthusiastically stepped into the roles of tellers, actors, and musicians, sharing and embodying experiences that reflected what they had held back, opened up to, loved, or learned, and what had disrupted them over the course of the year. 

The process created a space for reflection, witnessing, humour, vulnerability, and collective meaning-making, allowing personal and professional experiences to be explored through ensemble storytelling and embodied response. The rituals and structure of Playback Theatre offered a sense of solace and containment, helping teacher-tellers, teacher-actors and teacher-audience feel seen, heard, and held within the shared experience. 

Ultimately, Playback Theatre offers more than a performance methodology. It offers a relational ethic: one that foregrounds listening, human connection, and the transformative potential of shared stories. In weaving together narrative, embodiment, and dialogue, Playback Theatre continues to extend the red thread between individuals, classrooms, and communities, reminding us that education itself is not merely the transmission of knowledge, but the co-creation of meaning through encounter and exploration.

References

Dawson, Kathryn, and Bridget K. Lee. 2018. Drama-based Pedagogy: Activating Learning Across the Curriculum. Intellect.

Fox, Jonathan, and Salas, Jo. 2021. Personal Stories in Public Spaces: Essays on Playback Theatre by Its Founders. Tusitala Publishing.

McCaslin, Nellie., 2006. “Drama as a Teaching Tool.” Creative Drama in the Classroom and Beyond 6 (E).

Moreno, Jacob L. 1943. “Sociometry and Cultural Order.” Sociometry 6, no. 3 (August): 299-244.

O’Neill, Cecily. 1995. Drama worlds: a framework for process drama. Pearson Education Canada.

Vygotsky, L. S. 1978. Mind in Society: Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Harvard University Press.

About the Author

Kritika Dhiwahar is an applied theatre practitioner and teacher educator in India specializing in making language and arts education engaging, reflective, and impactful. A Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching Scholar and alumna of the National School of Drama, she has over a decade of experience facilitating workshops that combine storytelling, process drama, improvisation, and applied theatre. Her work explores the role of embodiment, dialogue, and participatory meaning-making in educational spaces, with a particular interest in teacher development and socio-emotional learning. Through her initiative ReScriptED, Kritika seeks to create transformative learning experiences that invite educators and learners alike to engage with curriculum through creativity, empathy, reflection, and collective inquiry. 

Abstract

Since its beginning, Playback Theatre has been a vessel for storytelling, rooted in deep listening and the holding of essences. It serves as an opportunity for effective collaboration, playful experimentation, and the unfolding of meaningful moments of discovery. There have, however, been shifts in how Playback Theatre is introduced to diverse communities. Drawing from the experience of working with Grade 11 learners at a local high school in South Africa, this article combines reflexive dialogue and theoretical reflection to explore the value of the Participant Performance Model (Fox and Salas, 2021) as an enabler in learning specific content areas. It observes how empowering students to be confident in their artistic choices encourages them to play and respond to their work with care, a quality vital to the sensitivity that Playback Theatre offers. Using a drama curriculum focused on Pan-African Theatre, learners were encouraged to explore their positionality in the field. This dialogue suggests that Playback Theatre can serve as a reflective pedagogical tool, offering deep insights into curriculum teachings. The writers conclude that by sharing these essential ingredients, learners gain agency over their practice and can better navigate their positionality through a creative approach.

Keywords: Applied Theatre, Playback Theatre, Participant Performance  Model, Drama Curriculum, Storytelling

You are invited to join in …

This is an invitation to our conversation regarding an experimentation of the Participant Performance Model (PPM) to enable Grade 11 learners to explore their positionality in Pan-African Theatre. The aim was to use Playback Theatre as a technique for pedagogical purposes. But did it work? Nokulunga Masia engages in a reflexive dialogue with her supervisor Selloane Mokuku, to unravel the discoveries thereof. Both note that playback (Silas, 2013, p. 14 -15) “continues to evolve and develop. New contexts bring new ideas and innovations, some of which have a lasting influence, some that are experimental and short lived.”  

Selloane:	Zazise! What does it mean?
Nokulunga:	It means introduce yourself.
Selloane:	Zazise…
Nokulunga:	My name is Nokulunga Masia, I am an Honours student majoring in Applied Theatre and Physical Performance. I am also a member of MEQOQO Playback Theatre Collective where I have taken the role of being a conductor and a player. Zazise …
Selloane:	My name is Selloane Mokuku but call me Lalu. I facilitate learning at Rhodes University’s Drama Department. I specialise in Applied Theatre. I am also the Artistic Director of MEQOQO Playback Theatre Collective. And I would like us to talk about your 2024 end of the year project.
Nokulunga:	Cool. Which one? Applied Theatre? Zazise! Where I was exploring one’s positionality in Pan-African Theatre through Playback Theatre?
Selloane:	Yes. In fact, I would like us to have a reflexive conversation about it. I am often amazed at the diverse topics that Applied Theatre can tackle, and yes I am aware of Thompson’s argument (2013, p. 20) that “one of Applied Theatre’s strengths is in its status as the outsider, the visitor and the guest.”
Nokulunga:	It’s a huge responsibility.
Selloane:	Indeed, but with the understanding of the core principles of the form, one can navigate their engagements with communities in a more informed manner.
Nokulunga:	This has been a journey of Practice as Research (PaR).
Selloane:	Meaning you were generating new knowledge by doing?
Nokulunga:	Yes, and I note that Fleishmann (2009, p. 133) posits that PaR uses “performance as a way of knowing”. In my case, I was exploring the Participant Performance Model (PPM), and I was curious how the learners could find their positionality in Pan African Theatre, using Playback Theatre. So I did workshops that culminated in a performance.
Selloane:	What did you discover?
Nokulunga:	A lot. First of all, I concur with Waxman (2013), that Playback Theatre includes deep listening, sharing, trust in the power of community, ritual, and that witnessing is fundamental in Playback Theatre.
Selloane:	You are right. I learnt something from Jo Salas at the 2023 International Playback Theatre Network (IPTN) pre-conference hosted by Wits University’s Drama For Life. She facilitated a workshop and there I learnt about the importance of learning about essences in stories.

The Beginning 

The beginnings of Playback Theatre as a form, are similar to the origins of theatre in Africa. Both are rooted in storytelling. Playback Theatre co-founder Jo Salas (2013, p. 9) shares that Jonathan Fox’s search for less competitive aspects of theatre, led him to the “values and aesthetics of very early oral traditions.” At the same time, she admits that the form constantly grows given the diverse contexts within which it is being practiced. These diverse contexts “bring new ideas and innovations, some of which have a lasting influence, some that are experimental and short lived” (Salas, 2013, p. 13).

This is a reflexive conversation about the experimentation of Playback Theatre as a pedagogical tool for Drama curriculum with Grade 11 learners in a local public school in Makhanda, South Africa. We will do this through broad frames that introduce the educational landscape within which the project was implemented (getting to know the context); where we will highlight the curriculum content that was being addressed (getting to know the content); followed by a discussion about how the curriculum was innovatively explored through Playback Theatre (getting to explore the content through the context) and lastly, where we will describe how Playback Theatre opened opportunities for learning the selected curriculum topic (getting to gift the context through the content). We will also share insights gained through the experimentation and highlight thoughts for further experimentation.  

As Nokulunga highlighted, she was interested in using the Participant Performance Model (PPM) to inform her experimentation. The founders of Playback Theatre, Jonathan Fox and Jo Salas (2021), created this model for performances that are context sensitive where the tellers and players need a familial relationship and shared cultural or sociopolitical background to create a conducive environment for the performance. 

Getting to know the context 

In this section, we introduce the broad public educational landscape of South Africa. Those are the Department of Basic Education (DBE) and Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET). The former is phased into Foundation (Grade 0 – 3), Intermediate (Grade 4 – 6), Senior (Grade 7 – 9) as well as Further Education and Training (Grade 10 – 12). It uses the Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) as a basis for teaching and learning. In it, creative studies are embedded in Life Skills and encompass music, drama, visual art and dance at the foundation and intermediate level. At the Further Education and Training (FET) level, the creative studies are independent subjects of music, drama, visual art, and dance. Learners can choose one of the creative subjects for further study. The latter encompasses institutions of higher learning (universities).  

The experimentation emerged within the context of the university in a postgraduate Applied Theatre class (Honours). Here, students were tasked into using any of the forms embraced in Applied Theatre, to conceptualise a project that would be community based, educational, performative and transformative. As a product of reform, Preston (2016) argues that Applied Theatre goes beyond traditional theatre practices and is progressive in its active approaches of engagement with the audience. In this conversation, Playback Theatre is therefore recognized as a branch of Applied theatre and has elements of educational and community theatre as well as theatre for social change which informed the decision to choose it as the focus of the project. Moreover, we concur with Feldhendler’s (2007, p. 46) argument that Playback Theatre “aims at encouraging dialogue and creating bonds between people and can be carried out in any location and in any space.” As a result, the intervention took place at a school and was for, with, about and by Grade 11 learners. 

Selloane:	Ok, I understand. So what was your aim?
Nokulunga:	The aim of the project was not only to supplement the learning experience of the Dramatic Arts learners, but to train them in a new skill.
Selloane:	How?
Nokulunga:	Through giving the learners more agency over their learning experience. I hoped to create an opportunity for the learners to reflect and engage with their work in a more personal, creative and meaningful way.
Selloane:	I know that one of the aims of the Dramatic Arts (Grade 10 – 12) in the Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement is to “promote and develop creativity as a rich, diverse and productive resource through dramatic communication, interaction and representation.” (Department of Basic Education [DBE, 2011]).
Nokulunga:	Yes, and this is progressively covered through the four topics described in (CAPS, 2015, p. 12) as “Personal resource development, Acting and performance, Performance texts in context, theatre and/or film production.” One of the specific aims of the subject is to “develop drama skills, techniques and processes to experiment with and shape dramatic elements meaningfully, both individually and with others.” (CAPS, 2015, p. 12). The topic for discussion in the paper was covered in term three and four.
Selloane:	Let’s go back to PPM.
Nokulunga:	Yes, the project followed the ethos of the PPM. Subsequently, the whole Grade 11 Drama class participated in the training, even though only a few learners performed as players, artists and musicians. I knew that the Playback Theatre discipline calls only for a specific number of performers and as such, the rest of the class were tellers.

Getting to know the content 

Here we highlight the curriculum content as presented by the Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement as well as the influences that informed the experimentation. Accordingly, CAPS (2015, p. 12) suggests that curriculum topics are “essentially theoretical in nature, although they can be experienced and understood through practical learning experience”. For example, one of the topics covered in the third and fourth terms includes stylized theatre whereby a choice to teach “at least ONE of the following: Elizabethan theatre or Asian (Japanese/ Chinese) theatre or Pan-African theatre or contemporary American theatre or Expressionist theatre” is given. Pan-African theatre was chosen by the said schools’ drama Department for Grade 11. 

Applied Theatre is an interdisciplinary art form and as its practitioners we get to wear many hats. However, it is important to acknowledge that we are students of the process as well. We therefore note that Thompson (2003, p. 14-15) cautions that as Applied Theatre practitioners, when we arrive in communities we are engaging as visitors offering tools and opportunities to enable discoveries. As such, it was important for Nokulunga to learn about the curriculum as this informed the framing of the training sessions.

Nokulunga:

Some of the insights that emerged from the familiarization process entailed learning that the origins of theatre in Africa stem from practices of rituals, cultures and traditions. Consequently, Oloruntoba-Oju (2012, p. 192) argues that storytelling and theatre were vital tools for sharing information, teaching and gathering for communal bonding. And that music, dance, and oration were important elements of African Theatre; they are a way of life.

Selloane:

I know he often laments the influence of African Theatre, its ideologies and how it impacts how Western Theatre is practiced.

Getting to explore the content through the context 

Educational theatre is one of the pillars of Applied Theatre and is facilitated through a method called creative dynamics, created by Peter Slade and Brian Way (Briones et al., 2022, p. 4). Creative dynamics incorporates improvisational games, play and the engagement of creativity and the imagination of young audiences to create an inclusive and conducive environment for learners to learn through doing. It meets young people where they are and enables them to create and solve problems.

Selloane:	Why did you particularly choose playback as a pedagogical medium?
Nokulunga:	I chose Playback Theatre because through its forms and improvisational nature, it makes use of creative dynamics quite effectively.
Selloane:	Would you say this was to enable an educational and transformative experience with the learners?
Nokulunga:	Yes, the intended outcome was learners would be able to participate in a Playback Theatre performance as either players, musicians or visual response artists and use Playback Theatre as a way to supplement their learning of Pan-African Theatre as well as their positionality.
Selloane:	I know that one of the aims of the Dramatic Arts (Grade 10 – 12) in the CAPS is to “promote and develop creativity as a rich, diverse and productive resource through dramatic communication, interaction and representation.” (Department of Basic Education [DBE, 2011]).
Nokulunga:	And this is progressively covered through the four topics described in (CAPS, 2015, p. 12) as “Personal resource development, Acting and performance, Performance texts in context, theatre and/or film production.” One of the specific aims of the subject is to “develop drama skills, techniques and processes to experiment with and shape dramatic elements meaningfully, both individually and with others.” (CAPS, 2015, p. 12). The topic for discussion in the paper was covered in term three and four.

Maintaining Ritual  

Establishing a creative and working ritual with the learners was important in maintaining a conducive playful environment and a nod to the importance of ritual in Pan-African Theatre (Oloruntoba-Oju, 2012, p. 192). Because the working relationship would be for an extended period of time, a ritual ensured that we engage with each other in a respectful and professional capacity.  Even though creating a comfortable space for the learners was important, it was equally important not to compromise the effectiveness of each training session. It was also important for the facilitator and the learners to be in this creative journey of discovery and creation together, while acknowledging the responsibility that each person has in maintaining the energy of play throughout and working diligently in their roles in Playback Theatre.

Selloane:	What was your ritual like?
Nokulunga:	It was a personal check-in, a body and voice warm up, a focus exercise and a breakdown of the lesson plan for the day.
Selloane:	Who led the ritual?
Nokulunga:	Throughout the training sessions, it was important that the learners have agency over their learning experience. And so the learners were given an opportunity to choose various exercises for the ritual and have input on how to go about each exercise, to see what works for them better.
Selloane:	Interesting that the learners could input. Constructivism theorists would have been so happy to witness you co create with the learning and validating their lived experiences while at the sometime acknowledging what Vygotsky (1896 – 1934) calls Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), essentially what the learners knew and what you knew.
Nokulunga:	True, because that enabled me to scaffold my process well. In addition to the ritual, a code of conduct was created collectively with some of the most prominent points that the learners mentioned: listening attentively, respecting each other and communicating effectively.

Notably, effective communication was a challenge within the first few training sessions. When working with a large group of learners (22 in this project), having their full attention and focus at all times can be difficult, which was the case. The learners would become easily distracted and start engaging in conversations with their friends. Establishing strategies to mediate the unfocused energy, ones based on call and response, such as a group clap or group countdown, were helpful in bringing the group together in moments of disruption without having to shout at the learners. The training sessions proved to be an exercise of patience and an exploration of various ways of teaching, explaining and demonstrating. Letting the learners assist in explaining to their classmates was an important observation that was made and encouraged. The learners could reach each other in a way the facilitator could not in language, gestures and even movements because they know each other better. Leaning into this strategy made the lessons more effective and became a part of our ritual. This made the learners more confident in their understanding and enabled them to be more creative and explorative in their improvisation discoveries.

Theorising and Practicing Facilitation  

Critical and reflexive facilitation was a vital skill to implement in facilitating this project. As Applied Theatre practitioners, holding and democratising spaces, especially for disciplines such as Playback Theatre, is important for enabling participation and confidence in people to take ownership over their own education and transformation. Planning is important for effective facilitation.

Selloane:	I guess this also speaks to Freire’s concepts of Critical Pedagogy where he critiques ‘banking model of education’ so you did challenge the teacher authority. Where was your working space?
Nokulunga:	We were working in a hall with wooden floors and some of the students were wearing school shoes and were slipping and the prepared warm up was adapted to accommodate the learners. As Preston (2016, p. 2-3) mentions, effective facilitation adds a more nuanced experience grounded in humanness. And so, as a facilitator, it was important to be constantly aware of exercising my agency in curating a better learning experience for the learners, even if it means altering the lesson plan.
Selloane:	Awareness is key.
Nokulunga:	Definitely, my role as a facilitator extended towards being a conductor for the performance. The responsibilities of a conductor in Playback Theatre are to facilitate the direction of the performance by introducing the concept of the performance, prompting for stories and translating the stories into different forms for the players to playback (Fox & Salas, 2021, p. 70). Therefore, the conductor needs to not only manage the energy between the tellers, players, visual artists and musicians but exercise discernment and make decisions that will be driving the performance. This responsibility fell on the facilitator, as an experienced playback performer it would be better to navigate the role of the conductor and alleviate that responsibility from the learners. This is because the goal of the project was to give the learners the opportunity to receive, play and reflect on their studies.

Scaffolding the training  

The founding of Playback Theatre by Jo Salas and Jonathan Fox was partly inspired by the work of Jacob Levy Moreno in psychodrama. In his sessions, Moreno would have patients gather in groups, share stories and have the other group members play out the story (Nolte, 2019, p. 125). This is where the inspiration for how to approach the lesson plans for introducing the principles and disciplines of Playback Theatre emerged. The main themes were storytelling, deep listening, reflecting and playing back stories. 

Subsequently, discussions about the forms of Playback Theatre and physically embodying the forms were made. In this way, the learners were able to theorise the discipline, understand the structure of the forms and the different roles in playback theatre. Afterwards, we put their knowledge into practice. As a way of exercising ownership over their learning experience, the learners were given the option to choose which role they wanted to play based on their strengths and interests (music, visual art, playing) and what they felt comfortable and confident in doing. New negotiations had to be made, and this included delegating diverse roles within playback.

Getting to gift the context through the content

Similar to the roots of Pan African theatre, Playback Theatre relies on the gathering of people in community and the exchange of stories using various expressions or arts. Oration, music, and dance are core fundamentals of African Theatre and Playback Theatre encompasses all of these elements, including visual arts and other forms of expression such as puppetry or shadow work, to tell stories. As such, through Playback Theatre, the learners were given the opportunity to explore these core elements of Pan African theatre and personalise their expression of these elements.

Selloane:

Would you say the performance was the gift?

Nokulunga:

The product of the project was Zazise! performance. In accordance with the PPM, the Grade 11 learners performed for their classmates. The performance was an opportunity for the learners to engage with each other in their understanding of Pan-African Theatre through the lens of Playback Theatre in their personal capacity. In this way the act of learning and discovering is shared and together. And I would say a gift.

Experimentation insights by Nokulunga

As Applied Theatre practitioners we are advantaged because of our interdisciplinary nature. This advantage allows us to collaborate with people who are more knowledgeable in various areas of our practice and who can offer valuable insight to improve our work as we are not all knowing.  

As Thompson (2003, p. 14-15) mentions as Applied Theatre practitioners, we are coming into spaces as visitors, so it was important that I meet the students where they are, regarding knowledge on theory and practice for effective collaboration. Transparency and patience with explanations and repetitions was important in this regard.  

In addition, after establishing the different roles, the learners took ownership over their roles in the way they engaged with the practice. Giving the learners the liberty to choose their roles showed that I had confidence in their abilities to decide and work. In this way they felt more confident and were willing to learn and constantly seek ways to improve their practice. The interactive training sessions meant learners were constantly contributing to discussions, reflecting and finding their way of interpreting the form through Pan-African theatre. The learners then more openly shared their challenges and resonance with the theme. For our performance, the learners suggested the conductor say, “Zazise!” as a way to prompt them, instead of saying, “Players, let’s watch”. This suggestion elevated the energy of the performance.

In alignment with the Dramatic Arts (Grade 10-12) curriculum the learners developed their drama skills. Through training in techniques such as improvisation, storytelling, listening and responding, ensemble work, the learners were able to give back to their educational journey by allowing themselves to engage with their studies personally and reflexively with each other. The learners customised and curated this Playback Theatre performance. While maintaining the traditional structures and forms of Playback Theatre, the learners were able to be innovative in the ways in which they expressed themselves. The performance invited the tellers, who are the learners, to reflect on their studies and share personal stories about their educational journey, positionality, identity or reflections on Pan African Theatre.

Curiosities

On the 9th of May 2026, Selloane and Nokulunga participated in an online playback discussion titled, “What makes good Playback Theatre practice?” presented by Playback in the Port. One of the speakers, Ricardo Gonzalez, a practitioner with over 20 years of experience, noted that Playback Theatre as a practice requires curiosity and context. This curiosity is in search of essences and truth, not only from the stories being told but from the players’ performances as mediums for these stories. Context gives us the parameters for which we can expand our search; it gives us an understanding and insight that is required to hold each individual story. 

As practitioners, technique and structure are important. As players, we are given the responsibility of holding other people’s stories. To honour their memories, we need to understand the way in which people want to tell their stories. By prioritising the teller, we can refrain from falling back into performance habits that fall outside of Playback Theatre’s parameters. 

Selloane:	What did you learn through the Zazise! project?
Nokulunga:	Through this practice I received insight on how to facilitate more effectively, coordinate, direct and synthesise theory into practice. Playback Theatre became a tool for educational theatre, personal and communal transformation.

Conclusion

Playback Theatre, as an art form, is not offered in the dramatic arts in schools and so this project was an offering and an introduction of Playback Theatre to the learners. As Applied Theatre practitioners we impart tools for people to aid not only themselves by their community and so by planting this seed of Playback Theatre within this community of learners, one hopes that it has widened their awareness of the possibilities of what theatre and expression can mean and be explored. The learners engaged with the fundamentals of Playback Theatre, such as deep and intentional listening, capturing essences, improvisation and ensemble work, which can be imparted in various other disciplines in their creative journeys.  

We look to the future with hope that this pedagogical practice will continue to be fostered through more collaborations. “Playback Theatre inspires divergent yet connecting stories on a local level” (Fox cited in Prentki and Preston, 2009, p. 242). Zazise! was an engagement of practice as research through the lens of Playback Theatre as a pedagogical tool for reflection. This project was an offering to the Grade 11 Drama students, and it served as an opportunity for them to engage in their studies, reflect and express themselves through Playback Theatre.

References   

Briones, E., Gallego, T., Palomera, R. (2022). Creative Drama and Forum Theatre in initial teacher education: Fostering students’ empathy and  awareness of professional conflicts. Teaching and Teacher Education, 117, 1-12.   

CAPS; //www.education.gov.za/Curriculum/CurriculumAssessmentPol icyStatements  

Feldhendler, D. (2007). Playback Theatre A method for Intercultural Dialogue. Scenario, 1(2), 48-59.

Fleishman, M. (2009). Knowing performance: performance as knowledge paradigm for Africa. South African Theatre Journal, 23(1), 116-136. 

Fox, H. (2002). The Beginnings: Reflecting on 25 years of Playback Theatre. In H. Fox (Ed.), Centre for Playback Theatre.  Retrieved September 23, 2024, from //playbackcentre.org/

Fox, J. & Salas, J. (2021). Personal Stories in Public Spaces. New York: Tusitala Publishing.  

London Playback Theatre. (n.d.). What is Playback Theatre? Retrieved September 3, 2024, from //www.londonplayback.com/about

Moreno, J.J. (1980). Musical Psychodrama: A new direction in music therapy. Journal of Music Therapy, 18(1), 34-42.  

Morgan, H. (2021). Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences Theory and his Ideas on Promoting Creativity. In F. Reisman (Ed.), Celebrating Giants and Trailblazers: A-Z of Who’s Who in Creativity Research and Related Fields, 124-141, London, UK: KIE Publications. 

Nolte, J. (2019). J.L. Moreno and the Psychodramatic Method. New York: Routledge.

Oloruntoba-Oju, O. (2012). Pan Africanism, Myth and History in African and Caribbean Drama. The Journal of Pan-African Studies, 5(8), 190209.  

Owusu-Ansah, F. (2021). Image Theatre as a Conduit for Academic Research. Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed Journal, 6(5), 1-15.  

Presto, S. (2016). Facilitation: Pedagogies, Practices, Resilience. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.  

Prentki, T, and Preston, S. (2009), The Applied Theatre Reader, New York: Routledge 

Salas, J. (2013). Improvising Real Life, Personal Stories in Real Life. 20^th Anniversary Edition. New York: Tusitala Publishing 

Thompson, J. 2003. Applied Theatre: Bewilderment and Beyond, Peter Lang AG, European Academic Publishers, Switzerland 

Waxman, S. (2013). The Power of Playback. Friends Journal. Retrieved October, 8, 2024, from //www.friendsjournal.org/issue category/2013/may-2013/.  

About the authors

Nokulunga Masia is a performance artist and facilitator driven by the desire for storytelling and storymaking. She is currently completing her master’s degree specialising in Applied Drama and Theatre. Masia has occupied various roles in the creative space, namely as a stage and film actor, physical and live art performer, and Applied Theatre practitioner. Her personal works are driven by the philosophy of enabling others to question, reflect and act upon social injustices or personal inhibitions.

Driven by her passion storytelling, Masia has had the opportunity to attend and perform at the International Playback Theatre Network Conference hosted in Johannesburg, National Arts Festival, Cradle of Creativity Festival, ICA Live Art Festival, and the Rhodes University Drama Department Young Director’s Season, Rhodes University First Year Orientation Show RU Make Sure? and as a part of the MEQOQOQ Playback Theatre Collective (@meqoqocollective_).

Notably, she received a Standard Bank Ovation Award Bronze at the 2023 National Arts Festival for Pent(s) Down HAHA! Written by Lalu Mokuku and directed by Luvuyo Yanta.

Selloane Mokuku is an Applied Theatre practitioner and facilitates learning at Rhodes University. She is an artistic director of MEQOQO Playback Theatre Collective (@meqoqocollective_). She is a storyteller, playwright, facilitator, performer and academic with a vision to use the arts for justice and enhancing botho (humanity). She co-conceived and co-implemented KOKO. KNOCK KNOCK. NGONQO! Mental Health and Wellness Project; a trauma and playback theatre informed intervention for students. She is a member of the South African Playback Theatre Association (SAPTA). She is the co-author of award-winning play, DIPALO (2020) with Ginni Manning published by ASSITEJ SA (//assitej.org.za) Her latest children’s book (Jacana); Butterfly Heart addresses loss and grief. She co-wrote NOMPILO the play and children’s book (Cover2Cover) about sexual assault with Omphile Molusi. 

Abstract 

This article analyzes the Lang Playback Viet Tour, a series of eleven Playback Theatre performances developed in Saigon in 2026 through supervision and individual coaching of two newly formed Playback groups. After each performance, audience stories and their recurring ‘red threads’ were documented and compared. Despite involving different audiences, performers, and themes, the performances revealed a coherent collective narrative arc moving from social identity and family roots toward grief, repair, gratitude, openness, and integration. Referring to theories of limbic resonance, emotional contagion, and group psychology, this article argues that Playback Theatre can function as a relational container in which individual narratives become collective narratives through deep listening, embodiment, and spontaneous co-creation. Situated within the socio-historical context of Vietnam’s post-Đổi mới generations, the study proposes narrative reticulation as a framework for both performance analysis and locally rooted Playback community development.

The premise 

The Lang Playback Viet tour was not planned from the beginning. The tour is a result of several months of practice by the 2 groups in Saigon under my supervision.

In April 2025, I offered the first core training in Saigon; the second one took place in September 2025. The result of those 2 core trainings is 2 newly formed groups of practice including 14 people. Their names are Wee and Lap Lanh (Sparkling in English). After the core training, we still connected with each other through a rhythm of supervision. They continued practicing with all the resources they’ve got from the training, then organized open rehearsals with the audience with me watching them online. In September 2025, I collaborated on a Level 2 training with Michael Cheng from Singapore; some of Wee’s members went there with me, hoping to upgrade their level.

After this training, they continued practicing on their own under my supervision. Then by the end of this year, they had the chance to perform for several different events: a science fair, a Non-violent communication retreat, a high school, and a college. Challenges came for the first time within the group in a high school. Some of the group members didn’t agree on the process, nor on the ambience created for the show. Some of them felt disrespected by the students, who were noisy. Others felt this is typically the age-specific behavior that they need to deal with without forcing them or giving them moral lessons. They started to feel distance. Besides, some of the practice processes didn’t satisfy everybody, but they haven’t had the chance to talk clearly about it.

Then they did another open rehearsal. I watched it and saw immediately the connection issue. But at the same time, I found out something else: this is exactly the time when each person needs to do “their Playback Theatre.” As long as they practice Playback, they have different visions and interpretations of what Playback is and how they see Playback in their life. Putting every need in the same basket and trying to keep going as a group at that moment seems labored and unsatisfying. It makes me understand the first starting point of the segregation in my old group. At that time, I couldn’t do anything but let the group stay in stagnation for a very long time until our stop. Then I decided to go into individual coaching with each member to find out their true needs and styles, yet I had a vague idea of their needs in terms of Playback skills based on my observations. So I discussed with them and chose an outcome for their individual program. At the same time, a few members of the Lap Lanh group expressed their interest in individual coaching, and we added 2 other performances.

We finally got this program:

• Playback performance focusing on the artistic dimension: emphasizing the use of stage design and light.
• Playback and music concert: integrating story sharing and enactment in a private music concert.
• Playback within a small women’s community for women’s mental care.
• Playback in a foreign language: how to embody the story when you don’t understand the language.
• Playback Theatre and Cai Lương (Vietnamese traditional musical theatre): emphasizing archetypes with the theme of lullabies.
• Playback Theatre for social causes with vulnerable communities: homeless people in a center for social aid and young people in a juvenile detention center.

Plus 2 open rehearsals from the 2 groups, and one performance in a talk show on Playback Theatre.

We ended up with 11 performances ahead, led by those who went through this individual coaching program. I also suggested they collaborate with different people in the 2 groups based on their connection and their similar “energy and needs.” I joined in every performance in a different role: conductor, actor, or musician, depending on the performance.

Narrative reticulation

After each performance, I wrote down all the stories we heard in order to find out the red thread of each performance. Even though the narrative reticulation is more or less strong for each performance, we are still able to find out the red thread and the dialogue of each performance.

Here’s the list, put in chronological order :

Date	Chosen theme	Format	Red thread
March 28	Nghề – Nghiệp (Career & Karma)*  *the Vietnamese word for profession or career has two parts (Profession – Karma). We use as an common expression to talk about the way we choose and live with a profession might not only come from our will but also from our karma (spiritual meaning – what we need to do in this life to pay what we have done in the past).	Playback performance focusing on artistic dimension : emphasizing the use of stage design and light.	Our social identities and the way we choose them.
March 29	The ordinary things	Open show : classical format	Our family identity. Cherish our childhood memories with family
April 1st	Let share about our not perfect self	Playback and music concert : integrating story sharing, enactment in a private music concert	The quest for our truth of self
April 4th	Little women stories	Playback within a small women community for women mental care	Inner child’s grief, parent attachment
April 5th	Open theme	Classical format	Treasure our family after upheaval
April 5th	And again	Open show : classical format	Discover again unexpected events in life
April 7th	Oh ! How strange !	Playback in foreign language : how to embody the story when you don’t understand the language	Life is an adventure
April 8th	Ầu Ơ dí dầu (Lullaby singing)	Playback theatre and Cai Lượng (Vietnamese traditional musical theatre) : emphasizing on archetypes with the theme of lullaby.	We of today are the flow from the past

I got goosebumps when I read all the red threads and looked back at all those stories. The 8 performances are connected in a magical way, so I decided to make a small performance putting everything together in this order, where each group will play again the red thread of their performance. Then, we made our wrap-up performance called “We have never been alone,” taking place on April 13th.

In between, we performed in the center for social aid for homeless people and in the juvenile detention center. Those experiences were too strong to integrate into the wrap-up performance. However, I could see the red thread as “After all, I am a human being.”

After this experience, I wonder how the stories in several performances could connect with each other that strongly. The audience was not the same in every performance; we had a very small number of people that came to different performances (the majority of them are the group members who want to learn from their peers’ performances). There was not the same group of performers for every performance.

Below are all the elements present in this tour which, for me, contribute to the tour’s narrative reticulation. I realize that I can organize them in the actual NR framework to make it clearer.

• Stories reflect who we are and where we are in our lifetime
• Collective unconsciousness 
• The voluntary and enthusiastic spirit 
• Team connections 
• Role of guide – director – Playback actor coach 
• Intensive communication campaign 
• Social dimension of the contemporary Vietnam 

An analysis based on NR framework 

1. Atmosphere 

An intensive communication campaign 

After planning all the individual programs, I realized that we can definitely make it a Playback tour—it was almost 3 weeks before the start of all the shows. We started to communicate about the tour on March 10th. The first performance was on March 28th.

For over 3 weeks before and during the tour, we kept posting about the performances, not in a very regular rhythm, but we could draw attention from the Saigon audience. This public communication also helped to draw the attention of the performers. They saw it like “standing out from the dark.” They are not only following a course, but they publicly show their knowledge to an audience.

In social-emotional & ethical learning, “heedfulness” is a term about this state of focusing our attention on what we will do and of taking it as a very important task. I guess this state of mind helped them to overcome their fear and reach their personal goal.

In general, the atmosphere created in this tour was intense and concentrated. The performers put all their time and effort into the performance.

The voluntary and enthusiastic spirit of the team 

Since most of the performances (except for the 2 open shows) are considered a “debut” for each group’s leader, they appreciated each other’s courage, so they supported each other whether they took part in the performance or not. We never organized meetings for assigning tasks during the tour, but everyone took part in the logistics whenever they could (from managing the audience to taking pictures, posting on social media afterwards, etc.).

This voluntary spirit made the general ambience truly pleasant and smooth. One of the most frequent comments we got from the audience was about our strong connection. They felt the “village spirit,” a “community sense” in an organic way. Not only the audience, but the two team members felt it too. Connection was an important keyword of this tour.

2. Stories 

Stories reflect who we are and where we are in our lifetime

Before rehearsing offline with each leader and each group, I worked with them beforehand online, where we explored their skills and decided on a direction for the performance. The performance theme and aim often came from these working sessions.

The stories told in the performance resonate very much with them. The red thread that we find out after the performance reveals the leader’s inner state. It shows the interconnection between one’s inner state and the group, which probably happened through a deep listening and embodiment process.

I’ve been researching some theoretical framework to explain this implicit, wordless interconnection. Here are a small list of them : 

Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini & Richard Lannon (A General Theory of Love, 2000) coined the term limbic resonance to describe exactly this: the capacity of two mammals to tune into each other’s emotional states, creating a loop of mutual influence that happens largely beneath conscious awareness — described as “a symphony of mutual exchange and internal adaptation whereby two mammals become attuned to each other’s inner states.”

A recent integrative review on psychological contagion proposes a Cascading-Resonance Model describing how emotions, perceptions, and behaviors spread through three interconnected levels: individual resonance, interpersonal synchronization, and group-level cascade (Houran et al., 2025).

Bion introduced a theory of the group aspects of the mind in terms of proto-mental states — individual mental states that spontaneously evolve into collective psychological states. These are the proper observandum in a group setting: collective cognitive/emotional experiences that can be detected and described.

Gallese argues that humans understand emotions through a simulated shared body state — the observer’s neural activation enables a direct experiential understanding, what he calls “unmediated resonance.” The other we see or hear becomes the “other self” in our minds.

And in terms of transmission mechanism: emotional contagion is a primitive, automatic, and unconscious behavior — when a receiver interacts with a sender, they perceive the emotional expressions of the sender and come to feel reflections of those emotions.

From individual narrative to collective narrative 

The 8 red threads, read together, reveal not 8 separate themes but a single collective narrative arc : the hero’s journey (Joseph Campbell) of completing the first cycle of individuation (Jungian term).  The journey goes : 

Social persona → family roots → true self (descent inward)

Grief and wound → repair and gratitude (the crisis and turning point)

Openness to life → adventure → integration of past and present (return and incorporation)

Now, if we look at the age of the performance leaders in this tour, they are all between 25 and 40 years old. They all have built a career, relationships, and social identities… However, they don’t feel like their own. The reason why they came to Playback and stayed until now is because they can discover other parts of themselves, from their body and emotional language to their personal stories through the lens of others. They are in what James Hollis called “The Middle Passage”—Who am I apart from my history and the roles I played?

Playback Theatre becomes a “safe container” for them to explore their true personhood.

The age of the Playback audience in this tour is quite similar to the performers. Now, we will look at the social-historical dimension. 25-40 years old means they were born from the second half of the 80s until 2000. The 8x and 9x generations are the direct children of Đổi mới—the radical economic and social reforms launched in 1986 that opened Vietnam to the world after decades of war, reunification, and self-isolation.

These generations land on the shift from a collective identity towards greater individualism due to global economic and cultural integration. With new consumption patterns and a new emphasis on education (especially on English and other foreign languages), new kinds of citizens emerge, with stronger self-perception and more individualism.

However, at the same time, the intergenerational trauma from the war is still very strong. Their parents lived through the Vietnam war and the fall of Saigon, but most of them never had access to any psychological support. They suffer from those years of trauma in silence. Our parents rarely talk about their pain caused by the war. Their memories of the war are often considered as their main motivation to learn their best at school, to work, to become rich, etc. Their inner state is much less important than their external context.

This parental transmission of collective trauma (unprocessed fear, grief, hyper-vigilance, survival strategies) causes a lack of connection with their children.

The 80s, 90s, and 2000s generations were born and raised in this tension between past and present, between collective trauma and the individualistic shift.

The final red thread of the whole tour was the image of this generation, often lost in tensions between past and present, but never stopping trying to find their true self. This hero’s journey was revealed in the last wrap-up performance, where the 2 team members and audience described it as “a dream of liberation.” This tour has built a metaphorical collective dream of finding their way to their true self. Living this dream together, even in a fictional context of theatre, was a deep empowerment for each one of us.

3. Spontaneity 

The whole process of this tour was spontaneous. As I mentioned earlier, there’s no structured and planned process; we just “go with the flow.” This relaxing state comes from a starting point: they consider the tour as an opportunity to learn and to be themselves.

This comfortable state of mind helps us to be more mindful during the trip. The results don’t really matter. The only pressure is to get enough people in the audience for every performance. We even wanted to try ticketed performances. 4 performances were ticketed at a high rate (300,000 VND = 10€) for a new practice. Depending on the format, we still reached our target (around 25 people for ticketed shows, except for the women’s circle which the leader wished to have less than 10 people). For open and free shows, we got between 30 and 40 people.

This situation is very comforting for us, as this is the first tour mixing free and paid shows in such a short period of time. It’s only been a year since Playback theatre was introduced in Saigon.

The collective spontaneity also comes from our “Yes, and” spirit. The last show was planned 3 days before; we had one afternoon of rehearsal with a semi-completed team, and 2.5 hours to set up the place for an ambulant show both outdoor and indoor. For Vietnamese people, spontaneity is often linked to flexibility—the capacity to adapt to any situation—likely an inheritance from our ancestors. There were some touching moments where they truly connected with themselves and with the story, where there was no “I, me” but only “Us, our.”

After the show, an audience member wrote a remarkable article on our work : //open.substack.com/…/nhin-chuyen-cua-ban-than… (only in Vietnamese). I am allowed to translate a small part at the end of her article here : 

“To be told, to be heard, to be seen, to be cherished, to be bathed in the spotlight, to be valued—and for a fleeting moment, I believed I would be set free. I once looked at my own story through the eyes of an outsider, only to joyfully realize that the ‘big picture’ turns everything into a mere dot on the journey of life; it offers a new perspective on my deepest anxieties, or perhaps, a sense of self-acceptance intertwined with forgiveness.”

The performance closed with an unhesitating round of applause. I wondered how one could listen to the audience with such absolute mindfulness and then recreate [those stories] immediately after. Your improvisational skills must surely be the spark for the inner improvisation within each of us. I saw determination in your eyes, a wholehearted commitment to a faithful recreation, the shifting nuances of emotion, and a profound respect for every presence. »

4. Guidance 

From the beginning of this work, I only trusted my intuition based on past experiences in Playback and in the theatre field. After this trip, I see other faces of a playback trainer which can be a foundation for a new model of training in Playback.

• The needs detective: As I mentioned earlier, I found out their connection issues came from unfulfilled needs. But this step, for me, is crucial for the group practice. People are first seduced by the community and service sense in Playback. But we can’t fully serve people if we are not satisfied with ourselves. The more we only do Playback to serve people, the more we feel the heavy weight of it. Like the performance, Playback practice for me is also a dialogue between our inner and outer world, between ourselves and others.
• The impeller: Seeing the problem is not enough. Getting people to trust the process is another task. Encouraging them to go find their needs and fulfilling their needs are another two tasks. We need to be the constant impeller to motivate them, not only with words, but also with concrete actions. Individual sessions make space and time to work with their fear, struggles, hesitations, etc.
• The eclectic Playback coach, director, performer: I’m lucky enough to experiment with Playback in several fields for different communities. Knowing core values, ethics, and fully understanding the foundational practice of Playback gives me the freedom to play with the formats, emphasizing the existing resources from each one of them. From the role of coach in individual sessions, I switch to the role of director (like a stage director), who gives advice on the format, helps them to design their performance, and leads the rehearsal with the performance team. Finally, I switch again to the role of performer on stage. I took the role of conductor, actor, and musician for different performances.
• Trust: Another dimension is trust. They trusted me to overcome their fear. Without this trust, no relationship can be built.
• The local expert: I can’t succeed in this work without a strong knowledge of the team members and local audience. Knowing the language, knowing their habits of cultural and artistic consumption. This knowledge gives me important insights to guide them.

My further thought is that the core training is foundational and essential to understand the core values and core method. However, when they want to skill up, all the other levels should be reviewed to fit with the local context and their own perception/development. For me, the needs-based approach should be valued as much as the skills/techniques-based approach. Also, can it be a sustainable way to build a community? For me, Playback Theatre practice needs to be essentially experiential and rooted in the local context—socially and culturally speaking.

How to develop a partnership with other trainers ? 

Of course, I am not the one who ‘knows everything’. I tried to meet other trainers for the topics that I think the group needs in itself. But the knowledge should be co-created between the foreign trainer and the local trainer without any hierarchy. 

Final words 

Beyond the narrative reticulation’s analysis in this tour, this is for me a very significant example of building and leading a Playback community. Once again, the narrative reticulation theory can serve as a bigger framework besides the performance.

References

Bion, W. R. (1961). Experiences in groups and other papers. Tavistock Publications.

Gallese, V. (2001). The “shared manifold” hypothesis: From mirror neurons to empathy. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 8(5–7), 33–50.

Gallese, V. (2003). The roots of empathy: The shared manifold hypothesis and the neural basis of intersubjectivity. Psychopathology, 36(4), 171–180. //doi.org/10.1159/000072786

Lewis, T., Amini, F., & Lannon, R. (2000). A general theory of love. Random House.

Houran, J., Dagnall, N., Sapkota, R. P., & Lange, R. (2025). The spread of mind: Psychological contagion in theory and critique. Frontiers in Psychology, 16, Article 1631927. //doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1631927

About the author

Hoa My is a theatre actor, director and trainer based in both Vietnam and France. Her Playback acting work is largely influenced by Jacques Lecoq, especially the neutral mask. Since her graduation in Playback Theatre Leadership in 2024, she founded Làng Playback Việt (Vietnamese Playback Village) where she’s been training and supervising other local playbackers and promoting the practice throughout Vietnam. In France, she focuses her Playback work in the special needs education field with teenagers, adults and seniors. She founded the SO-O association in her city to promote theatre as a means for well-being, where she teaches both children and adults. 

In Playback practice, she is a conductor, actor and musician.

Abstract

In this article the authors describe what happened when they were invited to be guest conductor and guest musician for two Playback Theatre performances in London in 2024. The shows were part of an oral history project celebrating the contribution made by Malaysian nurses to the UK’s National Health Service, especially in the 1960s and 70s. True Heart Theatre, a playback company based in London, was one of the project partners. The authors describe the factors that made this a unique collaborative experience from the outset, and they record the radical departures from the usual performance arc that occurred in the second show. The authors subsequently undertook a series of reflective peer supervision conversations to explore and process what took place. This article has been written to explore and better understand what was an exceptional experience for them both.

Background – The Malaysian Angels of the NHS project

From the 1950s onwards, thousands of young Malaysians responded to the call to travel, work and train as nurses in Britain. Many went on to settle in the UK, dedicating their working lives to the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), and a significant number chose to make the East End of London their home. To this day members of this immigrant community continue to meet informally in events organised by the Malaysian Lunch Club and Newham Chinese Association. 

In 2019, Gill Tan from the Newham Chinese Association (and a former Malaysian nurse herself), met with Agnes Law, the then director of True Heart Theatre (THT). Gill spoke about her interest in collecting stories from her former nursing colleagues, given that their experiences and contributions had largely been unrecognised. True Heart was seeking to connect with community partners and Agnes spoke about the potential benefits of using Playback Theatre.  Gill agreed that playback could be a useful and creative tool to collect these stories. 

Agnes met with the nurses (many now retired), at a Christmas luncheon to pitch the idea. She facilitated a playback workshop for them and their families at the University of East London.  Unfortunately, because of the COVID pandemic, further collaboration and development had to be temporarily shelved. 

Gill Tan and her colleagues resumed their efforts and in 2023 Newham Chinese Association was awarded a grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to run the Malaysian Angels of the NHS Project. THT was formally invited to be a project partner. The commission included devising a short, scripted play based on the oral histories of some of the nurses. This was to be presented at two launch events and would be followed by a more conventional playback show where the audience would be invited to share their responses to the play and other personal stories.

Context for the playback – differences from the start

From its inception it was clear that this playback gig was going to be different from anything any of the performing team had previously been involved in. What eventually occurred at the two project launch events that took place in the summer of 2024 featured several departures from what normally happens in a playback event. In defining these differences, Jo Salas’s description of the playback performance arc is taken as an overall frame of reference and comparator (Salas, J. 1999, chapter 3).

1. Guest conductor and guest musician

Practical circumstances led THT to invite Agnes Law as guest conductor (GC) and Steve Nash as a guest musician (GM). The guests knew each other (as trainers with the former UK School of Playback Theatre) and both had some prior involvement with THT. For the GC this was at a significant level – she had formerly been the Company’s director. The GM had previously collaborated with several members of THT in a variety of initiatives. 

“It began with a WhatsApp message from Andy in April 24. Could we have a chat about a playback project with True Heart Theatre in London in June, for which they needed a guest musician? Such calls always bring a welcome sense of recognition and affirmation – and yes, a little flutter of flattery. Almost immediately, I wish to say ‘yes!’  But for now, this is only a ‘yes in principle’. How might it become a solid commitment?”

Guest musician

The GC was able to attend one of THT’s rehearsals in the lead up to the launch events, where she learned that before the playback show there would be a scripted performance segment by the playback performers, and that the room, stage and audience layout would be unusual. Time and distance meant it was not possible for the GM to attend rehearsals in person. However, robust and regular updates were shared with the two guests by the project director, including copies of the script and video recordings of THT’s development of it. 

“As a conductor, I had to clarify with the performers which playback forms are available to us and how to stage them on a differently shaped stage. There wasn’t time to rehearse as thoroughly as I would normally wish to. I shared with the group how I might introduce the show (playback segment) and the overall shape of the show, including the beginning and ending. The discussion with the group went very smoothly. In my view, we had a group of playback performers who have shown tremendous teamwork skills, and they were committed to making this project a success.”

Guest conductor

2. Scripted theatre component

Having two guests in the key roles of conductor and musician was a novel experience for everyone involved – but it wasn’t the only distinctive design element.

The launch events would feature a scripted performance piece that would take place immediately before the playback show, with set text, choreography and music. Andy Yau, THT’s director for this project, had devised the 15-minute play with THT members over several weeks. It was based on the oral history accounts of former Malaysian Nurses and excerpts of some of the voice recordings were woven into the script. 

The playback performers would be immersed in two different dramatic genres – scripted and improvised – in close succession. The shift from presenting a scripted show to passive audience members and then offering an interactive playback component was an unusual dynamic for everyone in the team. The GC was acutely aware of this, given that she too would be an observer for the scripted show.

“The performance itself involved a short piece of scripted theatre alongside a playback event. Being musician for a rehearsed play requires different (or at least additional) skills and it’s not an area in which I have much practice” 

Guest musician

3. Staging

The room layout for both launch events would not enable seating for a traditional front-facing audience, and this resulted in an unconventional stage area for the scripted play (see Figure 3 below). The launch events were working to a tightly packed agenda – there would not be time to start moving chairs around – and so the playback would need to utilise the same performance space.

As a result, actors, the musician and conductor had to think carefully about how to adapt their usual playback forms, enactments and rituals.  Ensuring good sight lines and voice levels for the tellers and the rest of the audience were key concerns for the GC. There was very little time to assess the performance space in advance.

4. Timing and other technical aspects

The agenda for the project launch events would include speeches from community leaders and local dignitaries, poster displays, and samples of Malaysian cuisine. The second event would also feature presentations and displays of Malaysian and Southeast Asian culture.

Given the busy programme at the launch events, the time for the playback component was considerably shorter than the typical 75 minutes or so. At the first event there would only be about 30 minutes for playback, and fat the second it would be around 45 minutes. This was a key characteristic that the whole team – and especially the GC – needed to keep in mind. In addition, there was an awareness that as often happens with a long and rich agenda, timing might slip. 

“We have no control over when things start but we have a sequence of things with lots of people behind the scenes to try to get the programme going. We are left on our own and the stakes are high. To stay present in my role and for the audience as a conductor, I have to trust the synergy, the spontaneity and the skill set of the playback team to carry through” 

Guest conductor

The actors would be using wireless lapel mics, and the shows were being filmed, two additional factors that would require time and attention and potentially introduce distracting technical issues. 

5. The audience

The target audience for these events – the nurses and other health professionals from Malaysia – had been included and involved in the overall project development from the start.  The scripted play was devised around oral history interviews that had been undertaken with this immigrant workforce and some of their voices would be featured in it.  They would be witnessing the play along with their family members, allies, community leaders and NHS managers, and then the playback segment that would follow would hopefully succeed in honouring their hitherto hidden histories and unheard voices.

“Given that the performance would be focused on the narratives of nurses from Malaysia, there was from the outset an expectation that the music would chime sensitively with the culture of this community.  Would I be able to do this? As a latecomer to the process, an outsider to both the Company and the community they were working with, and someone unused to creating music for scripted theatre, could I offer something meaningful?”

Guest musician

“What do I have to offer as a conductor to prepare and engage with my audience? My own immigration experiences to the UK came to mind, and my heritage, being a Southeast Asian woman, helped me relate to the cultural references in the scripted play.  As a conductor, how much do I know about the audience to help me warm up the audience for a playback show?”

Guest conductor

On the day of the first event, the GC was invited to join with invited guests before the performance. She was able to take in the atmosphere of guests, introduce herself and have conversations with those present. She was able to take in the stories of some of the oral history interviews that were presented in the posters displayed around her. This preparation on the day was helpful to get to know her audience before the playback began. 

Showtime! 

On 25^th June 2024 the first launch event went ahead in the conference room of Newham University Hospital where some of the nurses/health workers had worked, and whilst the atmosphere was warm and welcoming, it was still a semi-formal, public-sector setting.  About 60 people were in the audience and we heard stories about travelling far from home, culture shock, racist attitudes towards (and exploitation of) immigrant workers, working life, and the camaraderie of shared lives in a new country. From an artistic and technical perspective, everything went pretty much to plan, and we breathed a collective sigh of relief as we looked ahead to the second event. Overall, there was a very warm reception from the audience, and we had demonstrated that Playback Theatre has its place in an oral history project.

The second event was held nearly a week later at Bryant Street Community Centre in East London. Compared to the first show, it felt very different. The venue was a big, busy, church hall and a familiar community space for many who were present, creating a much livelier and more informal atmosphere. The audience was more than twice the size (over 150 people) and alongside the Malaysian nurses, their friends, family, and project stakeholders there were many community leaders, local dignitaries and local citizens. 

Honouring community

This section focuses on what occurred at the second event.

“My preoccupation was how might I recreate ‘the same magic’ or freshness for the second show. I felt I couldn’t take the same approach to get to know my audience before the second show. Inside the church hall, stalls were set up and the audience could get up and move freely, buy lunch, spice jars, and memorabilia, and interact with one another. The poster display boards were also in the hall, and there were families, children and elderly people all sitting together. This was an actual community event for the people in East London. I was excited about spending the afternoon among others and nervous in anticipation of the playback show. Perhaps because of the first show’s success or simply my nerves, the stakes felt greater for me as a conductor in the second show.”

Guest conductor 

Once again, the scripted piece created a mood that was attentive, light-hearted, curious and friendly. The playback event began with the GC giving some simple greetings in Malay (with helpful intonation corrections from a Malaysian audience member), and a brief explanation of what happens in a Playback Theatre performance. Most of those present had not previously seen playback, but a small number had been present at the previous launch event two weeks before.

The first moment was from a female teller of European background, who shared her recent positive experience as a patient in the NHS. Then a young man raised his hand. His grandmother had been a nurse from Malaysia. He gestured over towards the poster display and revealed that she was in one of the photographs. He came to learn about his grandmother’s history and her contribution to the NHS, something she hardly spoke about to him. 

“As a conductor, I couldn’t let this opportunity slip past me, so I asked the teller if he would get up from his chair and show me where his grandmother was in the poster. He willingly said yes, walked with me towards the poster board, and pointed his grandmother out to me.”

Guest conductor

The GC’s decision to explore the space together with this young man and complete his interview from a different part of the room (neither from his place in the audience nor from the teller’s chair) was a novel but entirely natural disruption of the usual playback ritual. His pride for his grandmother became very visible and present and the whole space was opened as part of the stage. This surely paved the way for a more significant disruption that was to occur a few moments later.

The next raised hand belonged to an older woman wearing a traditional Malaysian dress: the sarong kebaya. The GC brought two chairs out and invited her to join her at the front of the hall. The musician and two of the actors were standing close by. The teller, spoke about coming to London as a 20-year-old in 1964, 60 years ago to train as a nurse. Despite a successful life and career in the UK, she shared that she still holds deep regret about being so far away from her parents and never returning to live in Malaysia; a regret that feels more intense now that both her parents have passed on.

The GC called for a playback form called Music, Movement and Poetry to capture the essence of this story. Because of the unconventional stage layout, actors’ roles were quickly assigned. On hearing ‘Let’s watch’ the GM started with guitar and singing, and then two actors joined the enactment with a beautiful movement and dance rendition. Audience applause spontaneously erupted before the poetry element was delivered by a fourth performer. The teller was clearly deeply moved, and she said that she felt as if her father was in the dance with her, and that she now felt at peace with herself.  

Tears were visible on many faces. This story had brought resonance to many in the audience and to the performing team, the majority of whom were immigrants to the UK themselves.

Breaking ritual

After thanking the teller for her story and inviting her back to her seat, the GC took a conscious breath and walked the whole length of the room and back. She acknowledged the silence and asked what was going on for those present. 

An older white man raised his hand and said how grateful he was for the contribution of all the Malaysian Nurses.

What occurred next was bold, brave and beautiful.

Instead of responding to this sharing as the next story, the GC suggested that all the former Malaysian Angels in the audience stand up so they could be seen and applauded. Thinking on the spot, she then invited these retired nurses to join her ‘on stage’. In their traditional, brightly coloured sarongs, they sashayed through the performance space to lively music provided by the GM and actors, joyfully beaming at the appreciation and attention they were receiving. In this simple act they transformed the central stage area into something that was more like a fashion show runway. As they reached the other end of the space, the celebratory moment continued as the nurses had the spontaneous idea to invite all the dignitaries and community leaders to join them. Together they played up to the many cameras that were pointed at them, and they posed for one photograph after another.

The GC, GM and the rest of the team were intuitively united in their awareness that a) this was an extremely unconventional development and b) there was no chance of settling people back on their chairs again to continue with more playback. The GM turned to one of the actors and whispered, ‘is this punk playback?’  a concept they’d both heard about at the IPTN Conference in South Africa, and which seemed to aptly describe the joyful anarchy that they’d both just been part of (Jablonka and Gleeson, 2023). It was clear to everyone that this part of the proceedings had reached an obvious climax and was almost over. After the photo session, the GM invited the nurses back to their places in the audience and thanked everyone to mark the end of our playback show. 

The host of the overall event took back control and the programme moved on with traditional dancing and Tai Chi presentations that included the Malaysian nurses. The THT team decamped to their dressing room and excitedly started to attempt to make sense of what had just happened.

Later, whilst sitting in a restaurant for a celebratory meal with the performing team, we began to de-role from our positions as GC and GM and began comparing notes about what had taken place. On the one hand, along with the whole team, we shared a conviction that we had dared to do something radical in the service of our audience – an immigrant community whose stories had at last been heard and made visible. On the other hand, we were still puzzled by our awareness that we had completely abandoned what usually happens in the closing stage of a playback performance ritual. 

Discussion 

The lively conversation that began immediately after the second show prompted us to continue talking via a series of Zoom meetings that took place between autumn 2024 and spring 2026. We used a dialogic approach to explore what had happened and how we felt about it, and to discuss our unusual conducting and artistic interventions. Below we try to summarise the various factors we considered in our reflections, along with the key thoughts and themes that emerged from this rich learning process.

1. Daring to be different – finding a language to describe our learning

Our awareness of our roles as GC and GM, the variations from the usual way of doing things in the overall set up, and the way the second show unfolded had initially led us to be concerned that we had somehow transgressed the playback ritual that we had both been trained in. Had we done a disservice to playback?  We found that the headings of Narrative Reticulation (Fox J., 2018) provided a useful theoretical lens for our reflections about what had occurred. Focusing specifically on the elements of guidance and atmosphere enabled us to explore the artistic choices by the GC, choices which at the time felt like radical departures from the playback norms.  

2. Impact of the scripted play and limited timing

In both events the scripted play set the context and mood for the playback stories that followed. But the audience for the first show included more medical professionals and hospital managers, and the playback segment was much shorter than usual (around 30 minutes) The stories resonated closely with the themes of the scripted play. The former nurses in the audience reminisced about their own experience. One described the cultural shock on arriving to UK to train and work. 

The second playback show provided an opportunity to experiment with a different approach, especially for the GC. We had to contend with factors beyond our control (poor acoustics of the hall, heat in the room, the greater diversity of the audience in terms of age, gender, social identity and language). These factors affected the atmosphere and could have inhibited the spontaneity required for the audience members to volunteer their stories. But the playback segment was longer (about 45 minutes) and the GC made a conscious choice to warm up the audience by using Malaysian greetings to break the ice and build rapport at the start of the show. 

3. Opening the space 

Early in the second show a young man had raised his hand to tell us about his grandmother whose photograph was featured in the poster display. This was the first time in either of the two shows that a family member had volunteered a story. This felt like a critical point – we were hearing from a third-generation descendant of one of the Malaysian nurses. The GC followed her gut response and invited him to walk with her over the poster board. In our discussions, the GC wondered if she’d sensed that some of the audience had lost concentration due to already having been seated in a stuffy hall for a long time. Walking the teller over to the poster display at the back of the room and opening up the space in this way was an act of spontaneity that was dramatic and unexpected.

The unconventional staging, which we had initially seen as challenging and potentially problematic, had in some ways offered the GC and performing team a different perspective on undertaking a playback show. Perhaps the GC’s innovative response to this inter-generational story, paved the way for the next story to emerge. From hearing from a grandson speaking about his grandmother, to hearing an elderly woman speaking about her own parents, there was an obvious narrative connection of both association and inversion (Centre for Playback Theatre, 2016). 

4. Celebrating community 

The marginalisation resulting from being othered in contemporary British society was present in the scripted play but had largely been unspoken during the playback segments. Then these silent family regrets, the loss of familiar surroundings, living a new life in a foreign land were encapsulated in one personal story told, articulated so vividly by the 80-year-old teller in the second show.  Her story resonated with so many of the audience – and with the actors.  

What to do after such a seminal moment? The GC found herself slowly walking the length of the room and looking at the audience in silence. This empathic act of spontaneity created the atmosphere for an audience member to raise his hand and voice his appreciation of the Malaysian nurses and everything they had contributed to the NHS and the local community. 

Instead of choosing to play this back in a conventional way, the GC made a radical choice of guidance by following this teller’s lead, and she invited the former nurses who were present in the audience to stand up and to receive our appreciation. This quickly evolved into a standing ovation and the whole community (audience, actors and partners) responded with enthusiasm to honour and celebrate the nurses. If the second show was described as if listening to a live orchestra playing, at this point the crescendo had reached its peak. This was a bold and radical act to witness, entirely unlike what would happen in a typical playback show.

5. Preparation and research

In hindsight we were able to identify the extent to which rehearsing a scripted play based on the oral history accounts of the nurses had meant that the actors were immersed in an in-depth process of research and preparation about the target audience. 

The GC and GM we were also immersed in this extended process of preparation, albeit in different ways. The GC was able to join rehearsals in person and both of us had access to video recordings of THT’s development work on the scripted segment. This included some audio recordings from the interviews with the Malaysian Angels that would feature in the final script. The GM spent time listening to music from Malaysia and trying to ensure that the melody and tone of the parts he was writing for the scripted play would feel appropriate and familiar to the target audience. At the request of THT’s director, he composed a song inspired by the nurses’ own words in the audio recordings.

The potential benefits of a playback show are always linked to the collective commitment of a playback theatre troupe. The GC remembered Jonathan Fox’s advice in his closing speech at the IPTN conference in Japan in 2003:  if we want audience members to tell their stories, we need to do our research and understanding the history of the land and its people.  The oral history aspect of the project provided the performers with an unusual degree of exposure and insight to the stories of the Malaysian nurses for many weeks before the shows took place. This had arguably enabled their artistic skills and spontaneity to be more fully present and informed in both the devised play and in the playback enactments. The actors and GM used their talents, knowledge and deep listening to respond creatively and insightfully on stage. 

This familiarity with the voice recordings collected during the oral history interviews ensured that we kept in mind the overarching goal for this project; to bring visibility to the stories and the contributions of the Malaysian nurses.

6. Recognition and acknowledgement

The ripple effect of the increasing the visibility of the Malaysian nurses and their stories became obvious for everyone present in the playback performances. In the first show, audience members identified closely with the themes of the scripted play, and some compared their experience as immigrants from Malaysia to the earlier and better-known experience of immigrants to the UK from the Caribbean in 1950s. There was a call for more people to know about and recognise the lives and contributions of the Malaysian nurses. These associations were represented in the playback enactments, and in our post show conversations that took place with the audience members, especially after the first show. In our reflective peer supervision discussions, we shared how meaningful it had been for us as individuals to learn more about this hidden history from the people themselves.

7. Appreciating our intersectional identities in a shared performing space 

We reflected on the way in which our personal and professional identities had played a part in bringing some of the sociopolitical and intersectional stories and elements of the playback shows to another level. Most of the playbackers involved this project had immigrated to UK from either Asia or Europe. The GC and GM both have experience of working as allied health professionals in the NHS, and for the GM this had been at a significant level. Agnes is a Southeast Asian living and working in the UK. Steve has close family members who are immigrants to the UK. As a result, there were important layers of shared understanding between the playback team and the audience. We wondered if this dynamic had also impacted in the freedom we’d felt to do things differently.

Conclusion

The overall process of preparation, performance and review that we undertook as guest conductor and guest musician in the Malaysian Angels of the NHS project led us to come to several conclusions. These are briefly stated below:

• Playback Theatre and oral history share a common focus on the importance of personal stories and lived experience, and they can work well together. Both hold the power to celebrate and honour voices less heard. Both can provide platforms to help us hear and understand stories of immigration, cultural representation, and visibility.
• A Playback Theatre company can bring added value to project design, delivery and outcomes as an engaged community partner. 
• The playback method has a high degree of flexibility and versatility. Staging and timings may vary, companies can invite guests to join them, and conductors can make bold interventions in response to what is happening in the room. But the core ritual at the heart of what we do can still provide containment and safety. 
• Under the right guidance (in this case an experienced theatre director) playback performers can very effectively incorporate different dramatic methodologies into their work (for example scripted theatre). This can complement and enhance the playback process.
• Serving the community (or the audience) and the here and now process of what is happening in the room is as important as rigidly adhering to an established idea about what constitutes a Playback Theatre show. In playback, as in life, rules are made to be broken.
• Investment in peer review can greatly develop awareness and recognition of both the artistic possibilities and the social impact that can occur during a playback performance. 
• Given the right conditions (such as open-ended discussion, and a shared approach to dialogue and collegiate curiosity) it is possible to discern seemingly endless layers of emerging themes and learning points within the scope of one small (but very well designed) playback project. The more we looked, the more we found. We are reminded of the opening lines from the William Blake’s poem Auguries of Innocence:

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand,
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.”

We hope that our paper brings a meaningful contribution to the discourse of practice-based inquiry for the Playback Theatre community around the world. 

References

Centre for Playback Theatre (2013 revised 2016) Story Sequence Triggers, Leadership Handout

Fox J., (2018) The Theory of Narrative Reticulation, a brief description, in Personal Stories in Public Spaces, Essays on Playback Theatre, Fox J and Salas J (2021) Tusitala Publishing, New Paltz, New York

Jablonka J., and Gleeson L., (2023) Punk Playback, Workshop facilitated at IPTN Conference at Muldersdrift, South Africa

Salas, J., (1999) Improvising Real Life, personal story in playback theatre, Third edition, Tusitala Publishing, New Paltz, New York

Further information

Video of the scripted play at Newham University Hospital (20 minutes)

Video of the Bryant Street Community Centre Launch event (7 minutes) (//www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQJ4JpkFNdU

About The Malaysian Angels of the NHS Project //eastsidecommunity.wixsite.com/malaysianangels

Some photos of nurses from Malaysia

//eastsidecommunity.wixsite.com/malaysianangels/photo-gallery

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the members of True Heart Theatre who were centrally involved in the project, and who so warmly entrusted us to participate as guest conductor and guest musician: Andy Yau, Valentina Wong, Candy Ma, Sze Kan Cheung, Ferran Luengo, Ritz Lui, and Thelma Sharma.

We also want to acknowledge Veronica Needa as the original founder and director of True Heart Theatre and for her role in establishing its connection with the Asian community in London.

Disclaimer: Both authors want to affirm that the views expressed in this paper are solely their own and are not intended to represent the views of the project partners or playback colleagues involved with the Malaysian Angels of the NHS project.  

About the authors

Agnes Law is a founding member and a former director of True Heart Theatre. Agnes first initial exposure to Playback Theatre was in New Zealand where she attended the Playback Theatre Summer School led by Beverly Hosking and Christian Penny in 2002. Agnes considered this immersion as a turning point for her in developing as a creative practitioner. She is a graduate of the School of Playback Theatre and an Accredited Playback Theatre trainer with Centre for Playback Theatre. Agnes was also the founding member and former director of Tapestry Playback Theatre and together with Tapestry organized the first Asian Playback Theatre Gathering in Singapore. Agnes’s professional background is in social work and dance movement psychotherapy. Agnes works as a senior lecturer in London delivering training in practice education and reflective practice to colleagues in health, education and social care sector.

Steve Nash has been doing playback since 1991. He is a founder member of Playback Theatre York, the longest running playback company in the UK. He is passionate about developing the contribution of music and sound and song in Playback Theatre and he has been a playback performer and trainer in many different countries and events around the world, both in person and online. By background he is an Occupational therapist and a Dramatherapist and he worked in mental health services in England for many years, initially as a therapist, then helping to develop arts-based and user-led support. He is a graduate of the Centre for Playback Theatre’s Leadership Programme (Brazil 2017) and an Accredited PT Trainer. In 2021 he became co-editor of the International Playback Theatre Network (IPTN) Journal.

Abstract

Playback Theatre is often imagined as a space of radical listening and unconditional acceptance, where every story can be witnessed and held. Yet the internal dynamics or company life of Playback Theatre groups themselves are complex. This article explores the ethics of belonging, inclusion, exclusion, and unconscious group processes within Playback Theatre groups, particularly in multicultural and migration contexts. Drawing from practice-based reflections, group dynamics theory, embodiment, and trauma-informed perspectives, the article examines how groups develop visible and invisible rules, how newcomers can destabilize existing systems, and how unconscious conflicts may become projected onto particular participants. Special attention is given to the bodily dimension of group life, including preverbal reactions to exclusion, tension, and loss of belonging. The article argues that ethical questions in Playback Theatre extend beyond performance itself and include the ongoing negotiation of power, boundaries, trust, and transformation within the group. Rather than presenting idealized solutions, the text invites greater awareness of the fragile and deeply human processes through which groups define who belongs inside the circle.

Throughout this article, I use the term Playback Theatre group to refer to an ongoing group that rehearses, performs, and develops collective artistic practice over time. While each Playback Theatre group has its own structure and culture, many of the dynamics described here emerge in long-term companies where relationships extend beyond individual performances. 

Playback Theatre Groups and the Myth of Unconditional Acceptance

There is an idealized image of Playback Theatre as a space of universal acceptance, where every story can be heard exactly as it is. A space that welcomes complexity, contradiction, pain, and difference. In many ways, this is true. Playback Theatre creates rare conditions in which human experience can become visible without immediately being corrected, interpreted, or silenced.

And yet, the group itself is not outside human dynamics.

Different people enter the space carrying different histories, sensitivities, desires, fears, and unconscious patterns. We never fully know another person, just as we never fully know ourselves. The unconscious field that unfolds inside a group can become powerful very quickly. A Playback Theatre group is never simply a collection of individuals; psychologically, it begins to function as something larger than the sum of its participants. The group develops its own nervous system, memory, rhythms, and defenses. Wilfred Bion was the first to notice this in group therapy when he worked with the military (Bion, 1961).

As Jacob Moreno observed in his work on psychodrama and group dynamics, groups develop relational structures and roles that often operate beyond conscious awareness. Playback Theatre groups are no exception. The emotional life of the group frequently exceeds individual intention (Moreno, 1953).

When a new participant enters a Playback Theatre group, something shifts in the whole structure. In this sense, the process is not so different from entering a family, a company of friends, or any existing social organism. Even in groups that consciously strive toward openness and inclusion, there are visible and invisible rules already in place.

In my own Playback Theatre group, we have written agreements and clearly stated principles. But alongside them, there are also many unspoken rules that no one explicitly formulated. They exist somewhere in the shared atmosphere of the group: in intuition, habits, emotional reactions, bodily responses, and silent understandings about what feels acceptable, desirable, or threatening. Some of these dynamics are consciously chosen; others are simply inherited through repetition and familiarity.

A newcomer often encounters these invisible structures before fully understanding them. They may ask questions that no one else asks anymore. They may react to tensions the group has learned to normalize. Their presence alone can destabilize what previously felt settled.

In group dynamics theory, the arrival of a new member often returns the group to earlier developmental stages. Even if the group was functioning with relative stability, the introduction of a new participant changes the system itself. If we imagine group development as a spiral rather than a linear progression, the group does not simply go backwards; instead, it enters a new cycle of renegotiating identity, belonging, roles, and boundaries. A new person means a new group. The organism reorganizes itself around a new element in the system.

This process can evoke curiosity and growth, but also tension. Sometimes the tension is subtle and primarily bodily: a tightening, withdrawal, irritation, or the vague sensation that something has already been decided without me.

This bodily dimension of belonging becomes especially important in trauma-informed practice. As Bessel van der Kolk famously wrote, “the body keeps the score” (van der Kolk, 2014). Long before conflict becomes verbalized, the nervous system may already perceive shifts in safety, inclusion, or exclusion.

For the newcomer, entering the group can feel less like joining a professional company and more like entering an already existing family system with its own emotional history and internal alliances.

At the same time, the arrival of a new member implicitly raises difficult ethical questions for the group itself. If someone is truly accepted as a full participant, do they also have the right to influence or change the existing culture of the group? And if the group resists this change, what exactly is being protected: stability, identity, safety, hierarchy, or simply familiarity?

These questions, while often left unspoken, exist at the center of group or company ethics in Playback Theatre.

Playback Theatre often asks:
Can every story be heard?

Perhaps we also need to ask:
Who gets to remain inside the circle that listens?

Belonging and the Invisible Criteria of Acceptance

Every Playback Theatre group has criteria for participation. These criteria are usually (or at least ideally) visible, articulated, and relatively easy to explain. A person may need to complete a basic training course, attend a certain number of rehearsals, possess particular musical or theatrical skills, speak a shared language, or participate regularly in the practical work necessary for the group to function. Sometimes age, availability, or familiarity with a specific cultural context also become relevant factors.

These forms of structure are not inherently unethical. Groups need continuity, commitment, and shared frameworks in order to survive. A rehearsal schedule alone already creates a boundary: if someone cannot attend rehearsals on the agreed days, they may simply be unable to participate in the group. In this sense, inclusion always exists alongside limitation.

At the same time, there are also criteria of belonging that are much more difficult to define. A person may technically fulfill all formal requirements and still feel that they do not fit the group. Likewise, the group may collectively sense that something does not fully align, even if no one can clearly explain why.

These unspoken dynamics exist in almost every human system. Groups develop their own psychological tempo, emotional intensity, humor, aesthetic preferences, conflict styles, and bodily ways of relating. Some groups are psychically intense and highly emotionally expressive; others function through greater restraint or distance. For one person, a certain level of emotional tension inside the group may feel alive and stimulating. For another, the same atmosphere may become overwhelming or impossible to tolerate. In this sense, group belonging is not only social but deeply nervous-system based.

This perspective resonates with trauma-informed approaches and with the work of Peter Levine, who emphasizes that the body responds to relational safety and threat before conscious cognition fully organizes experience into language (Levine, 1997).

This can also emerge on the level of embodiment. Some Playback Theatre groups rely heavily on physical forms during performance and rehearsal processes. Movement, touch, spatial closeness, and intense bodily presence may become central elements of the group’s artistic language. But what happens if a new participant cannot physically engage in the same way? Is the group willing to adapt its aesthetic habits in the direction of accessibility or inclusivity? And if not, is this acknowledged openly, or does exclusion occur silently before the person is ever fully considered?

Over time, Playback Theatre groups also develop what could be described as a recognizable voice. There is a certain rhythm, tone, humor, emotional vocabulary, and style of interaction through which a specific company becomes identifiable. Audiences often intuitively recognize this atmosphere long before they can consciously describe it. New members enter not only a practical structure, but an already existing emotional and symbolic language.

Sometimes a newcomer does not immediately understand this language. They may not recognize the humor, may react differently to irony or emotional intensity, or may challenge forms of interaction that the group experiences as normal. In these moments, tension often appears. The group may begin to experience the newcomer as disruptive, while the newcomer experiences the group as rigid, closed, or emotionally unsafe.

At this point, the group faces an important ethical question: does difference necessarily mean incompatibility? Or can the discomfort produced by a new member become an invitation for transformation?

Sometimes the answer becomes conflict. Sometimes exclusion. And sometimes, although more rarely, the encounter changes the group itself.

Conflict, Projection, and the New Participant as a Carrier of Group Anxiety

A new participant in a Playback Theatre group does not enter an emotionally neutral space. Very often, the arrival of a new member activates dynamics that already existed within the company long before this person appeared. Tensions, unresolved conflicts, unspoken frustrations, fears about change, questions of leadership, intimacy, hierarchy, or artistic direction may suddenly become more visible once a new element enters the system.

In this sense, the newcomer can unconsciously become a reflection of the group’s internal conflicts.

Irvin Yalom writes that groups often externalize tensions through particular members who begin carrying unspoken anxieties for the collective (Yalom 2020). In Playback Theatre groups, where emotional attunement is central to the work, these dynamics may become especially amplified.

The new participant may come to represent disruption, instability, excessive emotionality, lack of professionalism, too much sensitivity, rigidity, passivity, or conflict, depending on what the group itself is struggling to metabolize. At times, the individual characteristics of the newcomer matter less than the psychological function they begin to serve inside the collective field.

At the same time, the new participant may also become a catalyst that exposes areas where the group has stopped developing. Questions that nobody wanted to ask may suddenly appear. Habits that were tolerated automatically may begin to feel uncomfortable or outdated. Existing members may notice themselves becoming unusually defensive, irritated, withdrawn, or emotionally activated in ways that seem disproportionate to the actual situation.

This does not necessarily mean that the group is wrong, nor that the newcomer is innocent or idealized. Rather, it suggests that the arrival of a new person reorganizes the emotional balance of the system itself.

In some cases, the newcomer functions simultaneously as both a trigger and a stabilizing force. By concentrating unspoken tensions around one figure, the group may temporarily regain a sense of internal cohesion. Anxiety that previously circulated diffusely becomes localized and therefore easier to manage. The group unconsciously restores equilibrium through projection, distancing, or subtle exclusion.

When does a group begin protecting itself from actual danger, and when does it begin protecting itself from transformation? These processes are often visible not only emotionally, but physically.

Playback Theatre groups work through presence, rhythm, embodiment, and relational attunement. Because of this, shifts in group dynamics frequently appear first on the level of the body. Members may begin to notice changes such as:

• a sudden drop or surge in the group’s energy
• longer and heavier silences
• strained or performative laughter
• increased interruptions during discussions
• avoidance of eye contact
• withdrawal from physical or contact-based exercises
• recurring lateness or absences
• unusual fatigue, irritation, or emotional numbness
• excessive enthusiasm that seems disconnected from the atmosphere in the room

Sometimes the body of the group reacts before the conscious mind understands what is happening.

For this reason, bodily awareness inside Playback Theatre groups may carry ethical significance. The emotional atmosphere of a rehearsal is not simply an individual experience; it can become information about processes unfolding within the collective system. A sudden tightening, numbness, irritation, or fatigue may indicate not only personal discomfort, but an unconscious negotiation of belonging, power, fear, or resistance to change.

The ethical challenge lies in whether the group is capable of becoming curious about these reactions instead of immediately locating the problem inside one person.

Because the moment a group unconsciously decides that one participant has become the problem, it risks losing the ability to see its own reflection inside the conflict.

Avoidance, Contact, and the Limits of Trust

These group processes do not remain only on the level of discussion or interpersonal tension. Over time, they begin to shape the artistic and relational life of the Playback Theatre company itself.

One of the first places where this often becomes visible is in contact.

During rehearsals and performances, participants may begin unconsciously avoiding forms that require greater emotional or bodily closeness. This avoidance can take many forms:

• contact-based forms gradually disappear from rehearsals
• physical proximity becomes shorter or more cautious
• touch becomes less frequent
• emotional expression becomes flattened or more controlled
• vulnerable stories emerge less often
• participants choose safer or more familiar material
• improvisations become technically accurate but less relationally engaged

The group may continue functioning outwardly while gradually reducing the depth of mutual encounter inside the work itself.

This avoidance is not necessarily deliberate. In many cases, it reflects a decrease in collective trust or a growing difficulty tolerating emotional vulnerability within the group. When a group feels uncertain, destabilized, or emotionally unsafe, its artistic choices often shift accordingly. The body begins protecting itself before the mind fully understands why.

Group members may also begin avoiding storytelling altogether.

In Playback Theatre, telling a personal story requires more than simply having something to say. It requires a belief, conscious or unconscious, that the space can receive the story without humiliation, fragmentation, misunderstanding, or emotional abandonment. When trust weakens inside the group, this willingness to risk personal exposure may diminish as well. Silence in these moments does not always indicate absence of experience.

Sometimes silence reflects what trauma-informed practitioners describe as a collapse of relational safety. The inability to tell a story may emerge not from resistance, but from the nervous system’s perception that vulnerability cannot yet be metabolized inside the group.

A participant may feel that there is not enough relational ground to bring something vulnerable into the space. Or they may sense that contact inside the group has become too fragile, tense, performative, or unpredictable to allow genuine openness. In such conditions, storytelling can begin to feel emotionally dangerous rather than connective.

This can create a subtle paradox inside Playback Theatre groups. A space that outwardly exists to hold human stories may simultaneously develop internal conditions in which participants no longer feel able to fully reveal their own.

Over time, the repertoire of the group itself may narrow. Stories become safer, more intellectualized, more distant from emotional immediacy. Humor may replace vulnerability. Forms remain technically correct while losing emotional permeability. The company still performs Playback Theatre, but contact itself becomes thinner.

In this sense, the artistic life of a Playback Theatre group cannot be separated from its approach to its ethical life and the resulting group dynamics. The depth of listening on stage is inseparable from the degree of trust, embodiment, and relational honesty that exists off stage.

Sometimes the disappearance of contact forms, silence in storytelling, or the collective avoidance of emotional risk may reveal not a lack of professionalism, but the presence of unresolved group tension that has not yet found language.

Power, Migration, and the Search for Belonging

Ethical reflection inside Playback Theatre groups cannot remain limited only to explicit values or written agreements. It also requires attention to the constantly shifting dynamics of power inside the company itself.

At different moments, power may belong to different people in the room. Sometimes it is connected to formal roles such as conductor, founder, trainer, or senior company member. At other times, power moves informally through emotional influence, charisma, artistic authority, confidence, cultural fluency, or simply through the ability to define what is perceived as normal inside the group.

One of the ethical questions that Playback Theatre groups may need to continually revisit is whether the lived reality of the company actually corresponds to its declared principles.

Groups often develop written agreements about inclusion, listening, equality, or collective process. Yet beneath these explicit structures, there may also exist unconscious hierarchies, invisible coalitions, emotional dependencies, and unspoken centers of influence. Some alliances are conscious and openly acknowledged; others operate almost entirely beneath awareness.

Questions of belonging become even more emotionally charged in contexts of migration and displacement:

Playback Theatre groups often function not only as artistic communities, but also as spaces of emotional survival, continuity, and identity. For migrants, refugees, or people living between languages and cultures, the company may unconsciously begin to represent something much larger than a rehearsal space. The group can become associated with home, cultural recognition, shared memory, language, or the possibility of remaining connected to one’s own community.

This echoes what bell hooks described in her reflections on belonging, margins, and community: spaces of connection are never emotionally neutral. They carry desires for recognition, safety, continuity, and survival (hooks 2009).

Groups frequently carry projections related to family systems: longing for acceptance, fear of exclusion, sibling dynamics, authority conflicts, dependency, rebellion, or the search for emotional safety. However, in groups where migration is part of the experience of some or all participants, additional layers emerge. The Playback Theatre group may become tied to questions of national identity, belonging to one’s people, cultural continuity, political experience, or the fear of losing connection to oneself through displacement.

Conflicts inside the group may be experienced with disproportionate emotional intensity:

A disagreement about rehearsal structure, artistic direction, participation, or interpersonal tension may unconsciously touch much older and deeper layers of the psyche connected to abandonment, exile, exclusion, or loss of attachment. The body can react to these experiences long before language becomes available.

At times, group conflict may push participants into profoundly preverbal emotional states. A person may suddenly experience panic, numbness, shame, collapse, rage, or desperate attempts to restore connection without fully understanding why the reaction feels so overwhelming. The nervous system may respond as though belonging itself is under threat.

What happens when artistic conflict begins to feel, inside the body, like exile?

And because these reactions emerge from layers of experience formed before language, they can become extremely difficult to articulate. The person may not yet have words for what is happening internally. Instead, the conflict appears through bodily responses, withdrawal, silence, emotional flooding, dissociation, or intense sensitivity to shifts in contact and recognition inside the group.

In these moments, Playback Theatre groups are confronted with an especially delicate ethical challenge: how to remain aware that conflicts occurring in the present may simultaneously contain echoes of much earlier experiences of attachment, exclusion, migration, and survival.

Conclusion

The discussion of ethics in Playback Theatre is often focused on listening, inclusion, and neutrality – the possibility that every story (and teller) deserves space. Yet the ethical complexity of Playback Theatre does not exist only on stage. It also lives inside the group itself: in its boundaries, silences, hierarchies, alliances, fears, habits, and unconscious negotiations of belonging.

No group is free from exclusion. No company has a life that exists outside power dynamics or unconscious processes. The question is not whether these dynamics exist, but whether they can become visible enough to be reflected upon rather than acted out automatically.

A Playback Theatre group is not only an artistic structure. It is also a living psychological organism that continually negotiates closeness and distance, sameness and difference, stability and transformation. The arrival of a new participant may challenge not only practical routines, but the identity the group has constructed about itself.

This can create discomfort, resistance, projection, and conflict. It can also create movement.

Perhaps ethical practice in Playback Theatre is not only about inclusion, but about developing enough collective awareness to recognize:

• who is being centered
• who becomes silent
• who carries the group’s anxiety
• and who quietly disappears from the field of belonging

Perhaps the ethical task is not to build groups without tension, but to develop the capacity to remain conscious inside tension without immediately turning difference into danger.

A Playback Theatre group may become most ethical not when it avoids conflict, but when it remains capable of reflecting on who becomes Other in moments of tension.

Because the moment a group stops being able to encounter difference, it risks losing the very quality Playback Theatre seeks to cultivate: the possibility of meeting another human being without already knowing who they are supposed to be.

References

Bion, W. R. (1961). Experiences in Groups and Other Papers. London: Tavistock Publications.

Foulkes, S. H. (1983). Introduction to Group-Analytic Psychotherapy.

hooks, b. (2009). Belonging: A Culture of Place. New York: Routledge.

Levine, P. A. (1997). Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.

Moreno, J. L. (1953). Who Shall Survive? Foundations of Sociometry, Group Psychotherapy and Sociodrama (2nd ed.). New York: Beacon House.

van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. New York: Viking.

Yalom, I. D., & Leszcz, M. (2020). The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy (6th ed.). New York: Basic Books.

About the author

Alisa Volkova is a Playback Theatre practitioner, conductor, and psychologist from Kharkiv, Ukraine, currently based in Lithuania. She has been a member of the Vakhtery Playback Theatre for over 10 years. Vakhtery, originally founded in Kharkiv, found itself unexpectedly on tour in Lithuania when the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine began in 2022. Since February 2022, the company has continuously performed for Ukrainian refugee communities and broader international audiences, creating spaces for witnessing, connection, and collective reflection during displacement and war.

Working at the intersection of Playback Theatre, trauma-informed practice, and group process, Alisa is particularly interested in embodiment, ethics, belonging, and the unconscious dynamics that emerge within groups and performance spaces. Alongside her artistic work, she practices as a psychologist and logotherapist, exploring the relationship between storytelling, the nervous system, and human connection.

Disclaimer: Artificial intelligence was not used to create the content of this paper, except in the form of search engines for data collection

Abstract The importance of being ‘trauma-informed’, whether in health services, the creative arts therapies, or any other type of human service, has been growing over the last two decades. Trauma stories may be told in Playback Theatre performances anytime communities come together, be it in response to the need to celebrate or to mourn. The characteristics of this form of theatre, including the spontaneous nature of improvisation, the use of ritual to create a supportive and empathic milieu make it more likely that personal stories of a traumatic nature may arise, regardless of the theme of the performance. Thus, the argument is made that Playback Theatre artists could be made aware, or ‘trauma-informed’, to more sensitively respond to the teller and serve the story. Various methods and techniques, and suggestions are made to employ before, during and after to prepare players for a performance.

Introduction

‘Storytelling has long been recognised across many cultures as a way of responding to suffering and making meaning of difficult experiences. Contemporary psychological and neuroscientific research has begun to explore the mechanisms through which telling and witnessing stories may support the integration of traumatic experiences. Heard and ‘played back’ whether verbally, physically or in other countless ways by an empathic witness, integration of the traumatic content into the psyche of the survivor may finally occur (Bessel van der Kolk, MD, personal communication, December 2025)

I’ve been a trauma therapist for 30 years and a playbacker for 16 of those years. Over that time I’ve witnessed, along with the members of the four playback troupes I’ve been a part of, the telling of many people’s stories that contained trauma. Once we were doing a show at a senior’s residence and a participant told a story of her relationship with her dad that included abuse. When the story was played back it was missing what I thought were key elements of the emotions contained in the story. I felt remiss: had we just recapitulated the silencing of this woman’s pain?

As a Playback Theatre performer I feel a powerful resonance with creating what Jo Salas and Jonathon Fox have referred to as, “a theatre that serves” (Salas & Fox, 2021,p. 37). When an audience member answers the call to speak the “unspeakable” in a space created for that story to emerge, it’s a sacred moment. Whether that story is being uttered during a performance dedicated to the healing of a traumatic event, for example in a community decimated by violence, either natural or human-made, or one that is in celebration of a birthday, I have an ethical responsibility to serve the story as faithfully as possible. Also, I have a duty to be aware of how my choices and actions may impact the teller and audience.

When a show takes place in a community that has recently experienced severe trauma, such as war or natural disaster, the audience arrives with the understanding that this will be a place to tell their stories. But what about a show that is themed along different lines, without taking place in the aftermath of this? In both cases, the arrival and warm-up create the intimacy of the playback experience and the ritual aspects (Salas, 2020), inducing a kind of trance; folks can feel their shields dropping and the audience feels the security of their community around them. It may feel like the ideal moment to deal with an issue that’s been in the back of one’s mind for years, like the sudden death of a pet, for example.

So we know that trauma occurs both as a result of cataclysmic events, like natural disasters, but also in everyday life events that impact us as individuals. Eminent trauma researcher Judith Lewis Herman discusses this difference in a video podcast with Thomas Hübl (2025). If the trauma happens when we are very young, we may suffer in silence as the pain remains unspeakable in our families and communities. It can emerge during a playback performance that is not necessarily focused on healing a community after a collective trauma, but during a show themed along entirely different lines. In fact, trauma can emerge at any time during a performance of any type.

While not a form of therapy, playback has long been recognized as therapeutic. Over the past 10 years, greater awareness has arisen about the need for practitioners in all areas of human service to become more “trauma-informed”, and this awareness has since been picked up by practitioners of drama therapy, amongst others, and this has begun to inform the arts, particularly the performing arts.

When I arrive with my ensemble and offer to play back stories of any type, and create the conditions that naturally facilitate and invite the telling of those long-held secrets, do I not have responsibilities as an artist to prepare myself and my fellow players to honour what emerges?  I feel that I do. I also feel that I have a duty as a playback artist to be aware of any techniques and tools I can use to avoid re–traumatization of teller, audience and of course, myself as a player. While all improvisation involves some sort of risk, we can speak, here, of risk mitigation, or of minimizing the risks that re-traumatization will occur by simple awareness and preparation. In order to do this, it seems to me, I need to be apprised of three elements: the role of trauma in people’s lives, some basics about how and when it emerges, and the risks of retraumatization. Much has been written about all three of these topics, so for practical reasons I’ll focus a bit on the latter two and how they may inform my practice of Playback Theatre.

Concern about psychological risks for the teller, players and audience have been present since the inception of Playback Theatre (Fox & Salas, 2021). In response to this many authors, including, for example, Nash & Rowe (2000/2001), discuss “‘containing devices” in the practice of playback which help mitigate the risks, both personally and communally. They write that “the ‘disciplines’ of ensemble playing, formal structure and conducting create a space for the autobiographical. We acknowledge that Playback Theatre blurs boundaries. . .in doing so it creates new opportunities for challenging established narratives, identities, and roles.”(p.) According to Gonzalez, Pedroso de Lima, Preto Amarente, and Barros (2024) in playback there are elements such as “the empathetic presence of others, feelings of belongingness, social support, perspective taking, (and) emotional expressing “ (p.) that naturally lend themselves to the preparedness of the teller to come forth with a story.

Knowing that, as a playbacker, I am deliberately creating these conditions during a live show, if there are measures I can take to become more trauma-sensitive, more trauma-responsive, more trauma-informed, whether in my role as a player, conductor, or musician, it is incumbent upon me to avail myself of them. This essay will devote some space to discussing both the elements of playback that naturally give rise to the telling of both personal and community-level trauma stories and how ensembles may prepare themselves for responding effectively but sensitively to those stories, being aware of the need to avoid the risk of retraumatization, both of the individual and the audience.

To begin, it’s important to distinguish between the terms “trauma” and “trauma-informed”. Within the playback literature, Salas (2020) Freeman (2013) and others provide excellent definitions. While trauma is a specific kind of experience, The term “trauma-informed” refers to an approach based on an awareness and understanding of how trauma may be shaping the events going on around us. The Crisis and Resource Institute of Canada defines it as “an approach that understands the presence of trauma, acknowledges the role trauma can play in a person’s life, and promotes environments that support the individual and collective well-being of everyone” (CTRI, 2021).  Here, I’ll consider how such an approach may be employed before, during and after a playback performance.

Before

During rehearsals leading up to a performance, players can consider and practice playback forms that are highly metaphorical representations of trauma experiences. For example, Raz, Kowalsky, and Keisari (2025) describe two playback forms, Choir and Talking Heads, which have functioned well in this capacity. Legum (2013) remarks “there are many theatrical methods that can be used. For instance, knowing when to use narrative or movement or witnessing silence could make a huge difference in our performing. Training in these theatrical applications will be important for any company; but particularly, for those that feel a special call to do trauma work.”

 Being familiar with, having knowledge of, or having dealt with, our own traumas is important; it’s not necessary to have processed all our own traumas, but it helps to be aware of them so that we’re not triggered during a show. Someone to whom this is happening during a show cannot be fully present. Nash and Rowe (2000/2001) comment: “Like most improvised theatre, playback depends upon a high degree of ensemble playing. The work requires close, deeply co-operative and sustained relationships between company members. In rehearsal, the playback form is used to tell and re-tell the company members’ own stories and a great deal of time is spent on addressing the group’s internal dynamics and relationships. This essential, though sometimes painful, process enables the conditions for effective performance, sensitising the actors to each other and, crucially, to the audience.” (p.19)

Further, Legum (2013) notes: To be “trauma ready”, however, actors need to become familiar with these types of stories by working with them during rehearsals. Such practice might encourage the ensemble to be open to such stories, during rehearsals and performances alike. When a playback troupe is about to perform before a community that suffers from alcoholism, for example; a number of rehearsals ought to be dedicated to the topic. There, each actor shares a story or feeling the specific subject brings up and the troupe listens and acts them; thus, becoming familiar with each other‘s emotions. This way, during performances, actors are less likely to feel blocked or alone and with mutual support and trust, have the creative freedom to actively listen and play back.”

The ensemble in its entirety bears the responsibility of providing a safe container for the teller’s story (Nash and Rowe, 2000/2001). Trust is established with the audience and hence the teller- “The work done in rehearsal on personal material and group dynamics increases the emotional range of the company and allows it to hold the audience”. The audience senses the readiness of the players for the offering of the story; there’s a shift in the state of consciousness for everyone present as they prepare to enter the landscape of surplus reality, the place where past, present and future intersect. It is vital that the ensemble players understand this process, if not intellectually, then intuitively, if they are to escort the teller safely through this landscape while avoiding retraumatization the audience and themselves. “Another way of putting this is that a Playback Theatre performance is a ritualised event. Careful observance is made to the ‘rules’ and roles in the performance. The actors do not usually speak directly to the teller, for example, leaving that to the conductor (Nash & Rowe, 2001, p.20). Many other writers have commented eloquently on these norms that are at once so nuanced and yet so powerful.

While the entire ensemble is implicated in the establishment of trust with the audience, the conductor embodies that role. The conductor holds the container of the show, manages transitions into and out of surplus reality for both the teller and the audience as a whole. She does this by references to the boundaries and limits of playback at the beginning of the show, what it is and is not, guides the teller onto and off the stage and briefs the actors to receive the story. She then returns the teller to the body of the audience. At all times she’s aware of the arc of the show and the need to transmute story time into quantifiable time, i.e. minutes and hours. “In doing this, the conductor needs to have highly developed group work and listening skills as well as a theatre director’s appreciation of the aesthetic properties of the story. A skilled conductor will appreciate the ‘holding function’ of Playback Theatre’s formal structures and maintain these while facilitating the spontaneous engagement of performers and tellers within” (Nash & Rowe, 2000/2001, p.20) Legum (2013) adds “it is always important to ask if the traumatic story is being told for the first time and if it has not, to inquire about what would be significant for the teller to see. Furthermore, in situations like these, it is important for the conductor to choose tellers that have not had a chance to share.”

Sometimes a teller’s story will have a profound impact on the audience and some members will show strong emotion, such as weeping, as a result. There’s a difference between such empathic responses to a teller’s story and evidence of  retraumatization, though. In a podcast hosted by Noa Leibu (2021), Jo Salas remarks that conductors must be “resourceful, spontaneous and informed. We need to know that (re–traumatization) can happen, and have some ideas accessible to us about what to do”. We need to know what this looks like in the teller. She gives the example of a teller who was not able to watch her own story played back (Salas, 2021, pp. 212-213).

Salas (2021) suggests that, upon hearing a traumatic story, the conductor “acknowledge it” and this may require a pause. She can say, perhaps, “we want to hear this story” and normalize the response by saying, “it’s o.k. to be moved by this story” and invite the audience to reflect on what it’s like for them to hear the story. The conductor may then slow down the action or “back up” the arc of the show by returning to some simpler forms to have the audience members simply express feelings without necessarily telling a story. Short forms such as fluids or pairs may return the audience to an earlier part of the show and slow down the action to give time for everyone to process a bit more before more longer stories are told. I have seen players use scarves and body movements to first concretize the feelings and then disperse them, or as an invitation to hold, then release, some aspect of the story.

Music in playback theatre can contribute greatly to the balance between sensitivity to the story and avoiding graphic representations that run the risk of triggering or retraumatizing, of “showing enough but not too much” (Leibu, 2021). Music creates an atmosphere without words that can convey a strong empathic witnessing to the teller’s story. Minimising words, teller’s actor may set the stage and then use dance, accompanied by music, which can be powerful yet subtle. It does justice to the story without triggering the intense emotion of reliving the trauma.

After

Debriefing after a show wherein traumatic content has been expressed is crucial for the ensemble. Audience members as well can debrief and members of the troupe may make themselves available afterward. In one playback troupe I was in, called Personal/universal, which performed at the Montréal Fringe Festival in 2023, a designated person with therapeutic background and training sat in the audience and had the role for each show of debriefing with any audience member who felt the need. They were introduced to the audience at the beginning of each show, and their function explained.

While ensemble members may enjoy mingling with audience members after the show, if there’s been highly-charged traumatic content in one or more stories during the show, they may choose to debrief for 5-10 minutes privately immediately following the performance, before making themselves available to audience members. It’s important to keep in mind that troupe members, as well as audience members, may become retraumatized, or triggered, by the content of the stories in a show. Individual troupe members may have to debrief further before making themselves available to the audience for further interaction. Some may choose to forego this opportunity altogether and take the time for themselves to process further. It’s vital for the well-being of ensemble members that they feel supported in their decisions about self-care.

Finally, it’s vital for ensembles to debrief together, perhaps discussing and replaying emotionally-charged stories, or doing fluids together to explore their feelings further, in the rehearsals immediately following a performance in which trauma stories are told. In one of my troupes, Ottawa Playback Theatre, a form of reflective practice has been introduced in lieu of critiquing each other’s performances. While still under development, it seems promising. In this practice, players each reflect on their experience of the performance, identifying what went well, as well as what could have been missed. The common goal is to ensure all members feel valued and appreciated for their unique personality, perspective, energy and contributions, and also to improve their skills and quality of performance as playbackers. In practice, this could mean stating what we want to see instead of pointing out what someone did “wrong”, in other words, focusing on the common goals and intentions of the performance. Players are free to share these reflections with the rest of the troupe, either as a whole or in part, including only feelings, if they wish. Fluid sculptures can be used for empathic resonance. Players must give their permission to receive feedback; it isn’t delivered unsolicited. It’s been proposed that we should consciously and intentionally include discussion and revision of our use of feedback in every rehearsal so that we can grow a stronger sense of how feedback is being offered and received.

This is but one form of practice. Sharing these methods and techniques of giving and receiving feedback amongst different ensembles could be very healing and instructive.

Conclusion

In this essay I’ve attempted to advocate for the importance of becoming trauma-informed playbackers, noting the responsibility of this awareness now in any domain of human service. Playback is one such domain, I believe. While not a form of therapy itself, and we as playbackers certainly aren’t therapists, we can acknowledge the healing power of the playback form and acquaint ourselves with how we may use this power responsibly before, during and after a performance. The foregoing discussion has captured a small fragment of the enormous fund of knowledge the playback community has accumulated in 50 years of working with trauma stories. “Playback is an extremely powerful way of helping groups of people metabolize trauma” (Leibu, 2021). It is an incredible gift to the world. As a person who has dedicated her life to serving the story in the name of healing, in many different settings, I am profoundly grateful for it.

Please feel free to send comments, inquiries etc. to christinelavoieconsulting@gmail.com

References

Crisis and Trauma and Resource Institute (2021). Trauma-informed care: Building a culture of strength. //ctrinstitute.com/newsletter/

Freeman, P. (2013), Living with trauma, living with playback. Interplay, 18(2), 6-8.

Gonzalez, A-J., Pedroso de Lima, M., Preto, L., Amarente, N., & Barros, R. (2024) Playback theatre applications, a systematic review of the literature, The Arts in Psychotherapy, 89. //doi.org/10.1016/j.aip.2024.102152

Hübl, T (host). (2025). Healing Complex PTSD: Trust, Safety and Mutuality (video podcast). //www.google.com/search?q=judith+lewis+herman+definition+of+trauma&rlz=1C1ONGR_enCA931CA931&oq=judith+lewis+herman+definition+of+trauma&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCTk5NjhqMGoxNagCCLACAQ&sourceid=chrome&source=chrome.rb&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:e1d665d1,vid:HcTmrzBQ2GU,st:0

Legum, S. (2013). Living with trauma, living with playback. Interplay, 18 (2), 1-10.

Leibu, N., MA (host). (2020-2023). Playback Theatre Talks (audio podcast).  //creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/playbacktheatre/episodes/19-Jo-Salas–How-to-deal-with-Trauma-Stories-in-Playback-Theatre-e1060u9

Nash, S. & Rowe, N. (2000/2001). Safety, danger, and playback theatre. Dramatherapy, 22, 18-20.

Raz, N., Kowalsky, R., & Keisari, A. (2025) MacKenzie and Livesley on stage: Group development through psychotherapeutic Playback Theatre. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 95.  //doi.org/10.1016/j.aip.2025.102344

Salas, J. (2020) Enacting testimony: Trauma stories in playback theatre. In Fox, J. & Salas, J. (2021)    (Ed.s), Personal stories in public spaces: Essays on Playback Theatre.(pp.208-222). Tusitala Publishing

About the author

Christine Ann Lavoie, B.A., M.Ed. , RSW is an educator, activist, and parent. She has been a registered therapist for over 30 years and specializes in trauma treatment. She has studied psychodrama for over 20 years and has been a practitioner of Playback Theatre 16 years, working with four different ensembles. She currently resides in Ontario, on the unceded ancestral lands of her grandmother’s people, the Kanien’kéha.

Abstract

This paper looks at Playback Theatre as a form where what matters most is not exact retelling, realistic scenes, or detailed character building, but the group’s ability to find and shape the emotional core of the teller’s story.

Using Rasa theory, I suggest that Playback Theatre can be understood as the bringing alive of a main emotional mood, supported by smaller passing feelings that add depth and clarity to it. This helps explain why some enactments feel strong, clear, and satisfying, while others feel scattered or flat.

It also gives actors a shared way to think about training and feedback, so that discussions about a performance are not based only on personal likes and dislikes. Instead, they can be grounded in a clearer aesthetic understanding of how feeling is created, by the ensemble working coherently.

My main point is that a more conscious use of Rasa can strengthen ensemble coherence, emotional clarity, and the audience’s experience, without taking away from spontaneity.

Introduction

Playback Theatre is the improvisational re-enactment, in the present moment, of stories, anecdotes, feelings, and emotions. There is little time to discuss character, motivation, or intention, and no time to shape responses in advance. What is required is the immediate evocation of affective truth, something that resonates with both teller and audience, not through one fixed interpretation, but through different performers’ responses gathering into a single theatrical whole.

My experience as part of a playback team for several years has taught me that this begins with deep listening. The actor receives the story with empathy, allows it to register in body and feeling, and responds with as little premeditation as possible. Yet the power of playback does not lie in one actor’s response alone. It depends on the ensemble’s ability to respond with coherence, so that individual impulses are not scattered but move toward a shared affective expression.

This challenge is intensified by the nature of playback itself. It is not a director-led form in which performers are told exactly how to play a story, nor is rehearsal a matter of fixing repeatable sequences for later reproduction. Practice is exploratory, and the development of a repertoire helps expand the performer’s range without prescribing a single correct response. But this openness also creates a difficulty: how can performers respond spontaneously and individually, yet still create an enactment that feels coherent, unified, and aesthetically satisfying?

A related practical difficulty in playback is that feedback often remains vague, highly subjective, or shaped by individual preference. Performers may be told that something “worked” or “did not land,” but without a shared way of understanding why, such feedback can make practice inconsistent and growth uneven. 

This paper proposes Rasa theory as one response to these problems. It offers a clearer language for understanding performance, rehearsal, and feedback without turning improvisation into a fixed formula. More specifically, it provides a way of thinking about how different emotional responses can gather around a dominant affective centre, giving Playback both a language of performance and a stronger basis for feedback.

Playback as an affect-centred form

A teller’s story is always layered. It is never just one idea. Along with what is openly shared, there is often something hidden, repressed, unsaid, or waiting to be expressed.

For example, an alumnus at a performance for a college alumni audience said: “We had a great connection with our professors. We socialised outside class, went for movies together, and played sports. But in the classroom, we maintained boundaries and discipline. There was no unnecessary familiarity”.

This story is not about events. It carries nostalgia, affection, respect, trust, safety, and pride in a relationship that had warmth but did not lose its form. It may also carry other feelings that are less directly spoken: sadness, longing, disappointment with the present, idealisation, or even some resentment toward hierarchy. The latter may reveal itself through the body language, the tone, and the resonance within us as performers.

This is why the organising centre of performance in playback is often not character or plot alone, but affective essence. This does not mean that plot, event, or social context are unimportant, but that in playback their theatrical force often depends on how these are affectively organised in performance. The performer is not being asked to represent the person or reproduce every detail of the tale. What the performer is asked to do is to respond with an emotional truth. Playback does not need to perfectly recreate what happened in real life. It needs to evoke the affective truth of the telling.

This gives the actors a rich field to work with, and very often they do respond intuitively to one of these emotional truths. But often the performance feels thin, scattered, or unclear. It may not come together as a whole. The teller may feel let down, or the actors themselves may feel they have not fully served the story.

This is where Rasa theory can help. It gives actors a way to identify and hold the emotional centre of a telling, so that individual responses come together more clearly and powerfully.

The Nāṭyaśāstra

The Nāṭyaśāstra is “a foundational Indian treatise on drama, performance, dance, music, and aesthetics, traditionally attributed to Bharata Muni” (Rangacharya, 1966, p. 1). Most scholars, and I share this view, generally agree that “Bharata” was probably not a single historical individual but a symbolic or collective figure representing a long performance tradition developed over time. The text itself appears to have been composed gradually between roughly 200 BCE and 200 CE, with later additions and revisions likely continuing afterward. Interestingly Bharata is also the name of a famous King after whom India is also named and means actor too. 

Nāṭyaśāstra explains the origin of drama through a mythic narrative. Society had fallen into conflict, greed, jealousy, violence, and moral disorder. The gods therefore approached Brahma, the Creator, and requested a new form that could both entertain and guide people. Brahma responded by creating a “fifth Veda,” accessible to all castes and not limited like the sacred Vedas. This new form was drama or Nāṭya. Shastra means teaching, discipline or systematic body of knowledge. By presenting Nāṭya as divinely sanctioned, theatre gains legitimacy and authority and is protected from some of the criticism it might otherwise have faced as a cultural and ethical practice.

Over time Nāṭyaśāstra gradually shifts away from a simple struggle between good and evil. Its deeper concern becomes the representation and shaping of human emotions, behaviour, relationships, and states of mind. Drama is valued not as a lesson in morals, but because it allows audiences to experience and reflect upon emotional life in an aesthetic form. 

According to the Nāṭyaśāstra theatre works not simply by telling stories or representing emotions realistically, but by evoking emotional moods or aesthetic experiences in the audience. These experiences, called Rasas, arise through the interaction of story, gesture, voice, movement, music, and emotional expression. Over time, Rasa theory became one of the central ideas in Indian aesthetics and performance traditions.

What is Rasa Theory

As Coomaraswamy writes, Rasa is “Beauty or Aesthetic Emotion,” and a work may be called Rasavant, one that possesses Rasa, while a rasika is one who experiences or relishes it. This is important because it shifts attention from private feeling alone to the shaping of an experience that can be shared and aesthetically received. (Coomaraswamy, The Dance of Shiva, 1924, pp. 30-31). A spectator watching a tragic scene may feel sorrow, but Rasa theory suggests that what is experienced is not simply personal grief. Rather, grief is transformed into a collective aesthetic experience that can be reflected upon and even relished. Grief expands beyond the individual and becomes an existential experience carried by the human condition itself. In this sense, Rasa resonates with broader Indian philosophical traditions found in the Vedas and Upanishads, where the individual self is not ultimately separate but participates in a deeper underlying unity of existence. 

Rasa is not simply an emotion felt directly by a spectator as a private psychological reaction. It is evoked through the interplay of determinants (vibhava), consequents (anubhava), primary Rasa/dominant mood (sthāyibhāva), transitory moods/Rasa (vyabhichari bhava), and involuntary bodily states (sāttvika bhāva). In other words, Rasa emerges through how emotion is organised, embodied, shaped, and presented in performance. Bharata states that “without rasa, no purpose is fulfilled” (Rangacharya, 1966, p. 69). He goes on further to state “Anything, be it beautiful or ugly…could be turned into rasa by a poet’s imaginative power” (Rangacharya, 1966, p. 69). This suggests that rasa stands beyond the dualities that constantly shape human life and offers a relief from them. 

Determinants are the plot, the theme, other characters, relationships, context, the physicality of a tale. For example, “last year I was in Bhutan being driven through the mountains on narrow roads. At one point we collided with a car and both drivers rushed out ready to do battle.” The mountain road, the collision, the danger, the confrontation, and the charged atmosphere together create the conditions from which emotional experience emerges. 

Consequents are gestures, movements that manifest a feeling. The performer gesticulating wildly, anger pouring out of his body giving the feeling he is about to launch into an attack. A trembling voice, clenched fists, pacing may all function as consequents depending on the emotional atmosphere being shaped.

Bharata distinguishes these expressive signs from involuntary bodily reactions; tightening of the jaw, changes in breathing, widened eyes, sweating, tears, or a shaking voice. These reactions arise automatically and are beyond conscious control, yet they contribute powerfully to the emotional atmosphere of the performance. Bharata notes that such reactions emerge naturally in response to emotional situations rather than through deliberate effort. (Rangacharya, 1966, p. 72)

Rasa theory identifies 8 primary moods with a ninth added subsequently – Śṛṅgāra – love, beauty, erotic feeling, Hāsya – laughter, humour, Karuṇa – compassion, sorrow, Raudra – anger, fury, Vīra – courage, heroism, Bhayānaka – fear, terror, Bībhatsa – disgust, aversion, Adbhuta – wonder, amazement, Śānta – peace, tranquility (added later).  It further includes “Thirty-three transient moods induced by pleasure and pain, e.g. joy, agitation, impatience etc.”. And lastly it specifies “involuntary emotions that stem originating in the inner nature such as anxiety, trembling, a sigh, tightening of the jaw, heavy breathing. (Coomaraswamy, The Dance of Shiva, 1924, p. 31)

Rasa is not identical to any single gesture, action, or emotion. It emerges through the total arrangement of performance elements and is “relished” (Rangacharya, 1966, p. 70) or savoured by the spectator. For example, a scene centred on Karuṇa Rasa may contain grief, silence, hesitation, tenderness, memory, anger, and resignation all at once, yet these different emotional textures gradually gather into a single dominant aesthetic atmosphere of sorrow and compassion.

The Nāṭyaśāstra gives importance not only to performers but also to spectators. Bharata describes an ideal audience member as attentive, emotionally responsive, imaginative, and capable of entering sympathetically into the joys and sorrows presented on stage. Rasa therefore depends not simply on expression by performers, but on the spectator’s capacity to participate in and relish the emotional atmosphere created in performance. This atmosphere, I believe, needs to be created even before the performances begin. A ritual like the lighting of a lamp by the performers with a background of themed instrumental music and under mellow lighting would be a great addition to Playback Theatre.

For an enactment to evoke Rasa, Aesthetic emotion, in the spectator “one of the permanent moods has to be the master-motif to which all other expressions of emotion are subordinate” (Coomaraswamy, The Dance of Shiva, 1924, p. 31). This primary Rasa becomes the organising principle around which every other consequent, involuntary emotion or the transient mood wraps itself. If a transient emotion is treated as the centre the enactment will become sentimental, pretty art, fleeting, personal rather than expressing the universal. It will lack Rasa. Transient feelings, bodily reactions, gestures, and expressive details may constantly shift, but unless they are shaped toward a coherent affective centre, the performance risks becoming scattered, sentimental, decorative, or merely personal rather than aesthetically resonant. A performance about courage, for example, may still contain fear, doubt, humour, hesitation, or grief, but these elements remain subordinate to the larger atmosphere of Vīra, heroism and resolve.

Rasa does not arise from one emotion, gesture, or performer alone. It emerges through the interaction of story, movement, expression, bodily response, atmosphere, and the audience’s participation. The aim is not simply to express emotion realistically, but to shape it into an experience that can be collectively shared and aesthetically felt. 

Rasa theory is not merely a literary or philosophical discussion. It continues to shape several Indian performance traditions including Kathakali, Kutiyattam, classical dance forms, and other actor-training systems. In these traditions, performers train not only in dialogue or representation, but in gesture, rhythm, gaze, bodily expression, emotional modulation, and the cultivation of atmosphere. Emotional experience is shaped collectively through movement, music, timing, interaction, and ensemble responsiveness rather than through psychological realism alone. (Vatsyayan, 1992)

A Rasa-based workshop I attended at Natanakairali in Kerala brought together not only actors but also dancers from many Indian traditions. It was striking to see how differently and yet similarly each tradition expressed the rasas. Looking back at my own playback performances after the workshop, I realise that I have, in some way, drawn from elements of these different traditions in my enactments, while keeping rasa theory’s concern with emotional unity and the creation of a shared aesthetic experience.

Why Rasa theory matters for Playback

My understanding is in playback we do not simply reproduce the teller’s story at the level of literal incident. A purely literal rendition may miss what the teller most needs the audience to receive: the emotional shape and force of the story. We need to discover the primary Rasa or the emotional centre that gives the story its aesthetic shape and force, the heart of the story. In Indian art, according to Coomaraswamy, artistic expression is not merely imitation of external life but the transformation of experience into expressive form (Coomaraswamy, The Transformation of Nature in Art, 1934). What is needed is not a collection of interesting feelings, expressive gestures, or psychologically accurate details, but a clear sense of the primary Rasa that can organise the enactment. Once this mood is found, the other elements of the performance, the transient moods, the bodily signs, the gestures, rhythms, images, and interactions, can gather around it and deepen the emotional atmosphere. In this sense, playback is not only the retelling of an event but the rendering of its emotional essence into a form that can be felt and shared by the audience. For example, a teller may narrate a humorous family incident. Yet beneath this humour the dominant feeling may be Karuṇa, a quiet sense of loss for a family world that no longer exists. Once this primary Rasa is recognised, humour, pauses, gestures, and interactions can gather around and deepen that atmosphere rather than pull the enactment in scattered directions. 

This is where Rasa theory becomes especially useful. It offers a framework for transforming a tale into a form that can be collectively sensed and aesthetically received. It is important to distinguish Rasa from emotion here. Emotion is private and immediate. Rasa is shaped, shared, and aesthetic. It is not simply what the actor or character feels, but what the performance enables the spectator to experience. The performance therefore does not simply display sincere emotion but transforms emotion into something that can be aesthetically experienced by the audience. This distinction is crucial for playback, where the aim is not merely to display feeling, but to organise it into a theatrical form that feels clear and affective. A performer may genuinely cry on stage, but this alone does not necessarily create Karuṇa Rasa. The grief must be shaped through rhythm, gesture, silence, interaction, and atmosphere so that it becomes experienceable by the audience rather than remaining only the private feeling of the actor.

Rasa theory is useful for playback because it offers a clear and shared way of thinking about emotion in performance. It helps actors recognise the central feeling in a story, shape their response to it, and work with greater clarity as an ensemble. It also makes feedback less dependent on personal preference and more grounded in a common framework. For instance, after an enactment one performer may feel the scene needed more intensity while another may feel it became excessive or melodramatic. Thinking in terms of Rasa allows the discussion to shift from personal preference and sensibilities toward questions such as: What was the primary Rasa? Did the different elements support it? Did the enactment sustain a coherent affective atmosphere? 

Rasa theory is especially valuable for playback because it does not treat emotion as merely private feeling or inner psychology. It offers an account of how emotion is shaped into a shared and aesthetic experience. It is also particularly helpful because it distinguishes between a primary Rasa and supporting transitory states, allowing performers to think not simply about “showing emotion” but about organising an emotional field. This is especially relevant in playback, where several performers respond at once and where aesthetic coherence depends on plurality gathering around a recognisable centre. A story centred on Vīra, courage, may contain other emotions: fear, hesitation, humour, tenderness, or grief. Different performers may embody these different emotional strands simultaneously, yet the enactment remains coherent because these responses continue to gather around the larger atmosphere of courage and resolve.

Rasa theory can also bring into relation the primary Rasa of the teller’s story, the ensemble’s response, and the performer’s own life experiences, resonances, and unconscious responses. These personal responses are often an important part of Playback, but they need form and direction. The Abhinaya Darpana (Nandikeśvara, 1917) emphasises emotional expression in performance is embodied and communicative. Gesture, gaze, posture, rhythm, and movement all contribute to how emotional atmosphere becomes visible and shareable within performance traditions shaped by Rasa theory. Merely standing and speaking a line may not create the atmosphere. The body needs to be brought to bear to communicate the emotion. The “fluid” form in playback brings this about beautifully ending in a tableau that audiences have invariably commented on after the performance. 

Rasa theory enables the performer to use their life experiences and body in a way that remains connected to the heart of the telling and strengthens the overall enactment. For example, a performer hearing a story about abandonment may unexpectedly feel echoes of their own experiences of loneliness or rejection. Rasa theory does not require the performer to suppress these responses but helps shape them so they remain in service of the teller’s emotional world rather than becoming disconnected personal expression. In the workshop at Natanakairali we were encouraged to remember moments from our lives before playing out a Rasa. And over the course of the workshop this began to happen automatically bringing a remarkable level of authenticity to the performance. 

Primary Rasa and supporting transitory states

The alumni anecdote can be heard in more than one way. One performer might hear Vira in the teller’s emphasis on discipline, restraint, and right conduct, and organise the enactment around dignity, steadiness, and pride. Another might hear Karuna through nostalgia and the sorrow of something no longer present. A third might hear Shanta in the balance, order, and calm mutual respect of the relationship. The point is not that one of these is definitively correct, but that once a dominant affective direction is established, the rest of the ensemble must respond in a way that deepens rather than disperses it.

Here the first performer to step in would identify this primary emotion as Vira and enact it through the selected form. For example, a possible enactment could be a grounded upright stance, controlled breath, measured gesture, and a tone of restrained confidence. 

The other performers would then need to understand the first performer’s interpretation of the heart of the story and then support, deepen, texture, or modulate the enactment through transitory states (defined in appendix below). Organising plurality around this primary emotion using elements of the story. Enriching the emotional field rather than fragmenting it.

A second performer might enter through exhilaration, drawing on the teller’s memory of socialising, watching films, and playing sports with the professors. A third might bring in the feeling of connection, while another may quietly evoke nostalgia. These responses need not be identical, but they must remain organised around the dominant affective field, the primary Rasa.

The Rasa theory is not about just adding more emotion but organizing emotions around a dominant affective centre, around an organizing principle.

Rasa, ambiguity, and multiple possible readings

Interpreting the primary Rasa and aligning the supporting transitory states are central to an aesthetically coherent rendering in playback. Yet this does not mean that every story contains one obvious or correct Rasa waiting to be discovered. Playback does not work through formula, and Rasa theory should not be used as though it offers a fixed method for decoding a tale. A single story may invite more than one possible dominant Rasa, and different performers may hear its affective centre differently.

This is important because playback stories are often layered, ambivalent, and open-ended. What is spoken may not fully coincide with what is felt, and what is felt by one performer may not be identical to what is heard by another. Different histories, temperaments, memories, associations, and modes of listening will naturally produce different responses to the same story. In this sense, the dominant Rasa is not simply a hidden truth waiting to be extracted from the tale. It is also a performative choice through which the ensemble gives shape to the telling.

The value of Rasa theory, then, does not lie in guaranteeing the right interpretation. Its value lies in helping performers recognise, commit to, and develop an affective direction with coherence. Once a dominant Rasa begins to emerge in performance, whether through the first actor’s choice, the tonal direction of the enactment, or the ensemble’s shared recognition, the task of the others is not to compete with it or scatter the field, but to deepen, support, and texture it.

The question, then, is not whether one reading can be proven correct, but whether the performance is able to bring different responses into relation around a clear centre around an intelligible centre. A chosen Rasa may be developed through different transitory states, different bodily choices, and different tonal emphases, but these should gather around the same affective field rather than pull the enactment in unrelated directions. Coherence in playback does not require uniformity. It requires that difference be held within a recognisable emotional logic.

This is where practice becomes important. Playback cannot be over-controlled in the moment, but the absence of deliberate thought during performance does not mean the absence of prior discipline, structure, or training. The aim is not to produce actors who analyse Rasa while performing, but to cultivate actors whose instincts have been shaped by a richer aesthetic understanding. Training should refine intuitive response, not replace it.

Rasa theory is useful here precisely because it gives performers a way of thinking about ambiguity without collapsing into confusion. It allows for plurality, but not for incoherence. It accepts that different readings are possible, while also asking whether those readings are being developed in a way that creates an intelligible affective whole. In this sense, Rasa does not eliminate uncertainty. Rather, it helps performers work more consciously and more collectively within it.

Practical implications for actor training

If Rasa theory is useful for playback, it must do more than offer a way of analysing performance after the fact. It must also help shape the way performers train, rehearse, and develop their capacities. Its value lies not only in giving actors a language for what has happened on stage, but in helping them cultivate the sensitivity and range needed to respond more clearly in the moment.

In training terms, Rasa theory can strengthen playback practice in at least three ways. First, it sharpens listening by helping actors recognise possible affective centres in a telling. Instead of responding only to plot or surface detail, the performer learns to attend to the emotional force that gives the story its inner shape. Second, it expands expressive range by linking different Rasas to bodily, vocal, rhythmic, and spatial possibilities. Third, it deepens ensemble coherence by helping performers sense whether their choices are supporting, complicating, or dispersing the dominant affective direction.

This means that training cannot remain only at the level of interpretation. The actor must develop practical access to different emotional worlds through posture, gesture, movement, pace, breath, stillness, rhythm, tone, pitch, volume, and silence. It is not enough to identify a Rasa intellectually. The performer must be able to enter it, sustain it, and express it with enough clarity that others can recognise and build on it.

For example, a teller speaks of having to stay composed while receiving bad news. An actor hearing Karuna may slow the breath, soften the body, and allow pauses to carry the weight of what cannot yet be spoken. Another actor hearing Vira may remain upright and restrained, showing not collapse but effortful steadiness. 

At the same time, playback demands more than individual skill. A performer may make a strong and subtle choice, but if the rest of the ensemble cannot hear it, receive it, or respond in relation to it, the enactment may still feel scattered. Training must therefore cultivate not only personal sensitivity, but also collective attunement. Performers need to learn how to support rather than spin off into private worlds or compete, how to add texture without fragmenting the field, and how to remain responsive to the emotional logic emerging in the group.

Seen in this way, training in Rasa is not about producing formulaic actors who classify stories before acting them. Nor is it about imposing a fixed system on improvisation. Its purpose is to refine instinct through repeated practice, so that the performer becomes more available, more precise, and more capable of contributing to a shared affective whole. The aim is not to replace spontaneity with method, but to give spontaneity greater depth, range, and coherence.

Exercises and rehearsal practices

If Rasa theory is to be useful for playback, it must be translated into rehearsal practices that sharpen perception without producing rigidity. The following exercises are not meant to impose a formula, but to help performers build sensitivity to dominant and supporting affective states.

A. Recognizing the dominant emotional center

One kind of exercise involves identifying the primary Rasa of a story. A short anecdote may be offered to the group, and performers may be asked to identify one possible primary Rasa within it. The same story can then be replayed through different possible primary Rasas to show how a change in affective centre alters the whole shape of the enactment. Such an exercise helps actors recognise that playback stories often admit more than one reading, while also training them to commit to a direction with clarity.

• hear one anecdote and identify the likely primary Rasa 
• compare interpretations 
• replay the same story through different dominant Rasas 

B. Primary Rasa and supporting states

A second kind of exercise focuses on the relation between a primary Rasa and its supporting transitory states. One actor may begin by establishing a dominant affective direction through a gesture, posture, sound, movement, or line. Other performers then enter, not with unrelated impulses, but with transitory states that support, deepen, contrast, or texture that same field without breaking its coherence. Reflection afterward can focus on which interventions enriched the affective world, and which fragmented it.

• one actor establishes the dominant Rasa 
• others enter with supporting transitory states 
• group reflects on what deepened or derailed coherence 

C. Ensemble attunement

A third area of practice concerns ensemble attunement. Since playback depends on several performers responding together, actors need exercises that cultivate sensitivity to one another’s tempo, breath, posture, and energetic direction. This may involve breath synchronisation, silent movement around a shared mood, passing an affective impulse through a circle without words, or working with shifts in gaze, pacing, and spatial relation. The purpose is to strengthen the ensemble’s capacity to move as a responsive whole rather than as separate individuals sharing the same stage.

• breath synchronization 
• silent movement around one affective center 
• gaze, tempo, and posture alignment 
• passing affect through a circle without words 

D. Embodying Rasa

A fourth set of exercises may centre on embodiment. Performers can explore how each Rasa might register differently through body, voice, rhythm, tempo, silence, and use of space. The same anecdote may be played several times, with attention each time to a different bodily or vocal realisation of the chosen Rasa. Such work helps prevent Rasa from remaining an abstract category and instead roots it in performative choices that can be sensed and recognised.

• body, voice, rhythm, tempo, and spatial exploration for each Rasa 
• same anecdote, different bodily realizations 

E. Disruption and correction 

A final kind of practice may focus on disruption and correction. One performer may intentionally introduce a choice that fractures or diffuses the emotional field, after which the rest of the ensemble must work to restore coherence without flattening the vitality of the scene. This kind of exercise is especially useful because it reflects a real challenge in playback: not every choice made in performance will align immediately with the emerging affective centre, and the ensemble must learn how to absorb, redirect, or re-organise such moments without collapse.

• one actor intentionally fractures the emotional field 
• ensemble works to restore coherence without flattening vitality 

Taken together, these exercises are not designed to train actors into sameness or correctness. They are meant to cultivate the ability to recognise possible affective centres, commit to a direction, and support the emotional logic of a performance as it unfolds. In this sense, rehearsal becomes not the fixing of repeatable outcomes, but the of responsiveness in a deliberate manner.

Risks and cautions

Any attempt to bring theory more explicitly into playback practice carries risks. Because playback depends so deeply on spontaneity, intuition, and responsiveness to the moment, there is always the danger that a useful framework may harden into a formula. Rasa theory is valuable only so long as it helps performers deepen their sensitivity to affective organisation. Once it becomes a rigid method, it begins to work against the very aliveness it is meant to support.

One risk is that performers may begin to treat Rasa as a template. Instead of listening openly to the teller and to one another, they may rush to classify a story under one of the primary Rasa and then reproduce familiar gestures, sounds, or postures associated with it. In that case, performance risks becoming stereotyped, mechanical, or clichéd. For instance, if an actor hears Raudra and immediately reaches for shouting, stamping, or aggressive gestures, the performance may become generic rather than responsive to the particular story. What should remain alive and emergent may collapse into repetition.

A second risk is over-intellectualisation. Because Rasa theory offers concepts and distinctions, performers may become too preoccupied with identifying the “correct” primary Rasa or justifying their interpretation. This can shift attention away from bodily responsiveness, listening, and imaginative availability. Playback then loses its immediacy and becomes overly interpretive, as though the task were to explain the story rather than enact it.

A third risk is that performers may mistake coherence for uniformity. Different actors will inevitably hear different things in the same telling. Their histories, temperaments, memories, and associations will shape how they respond. The aim is not to erase these differences or force everyone toward the same interpretation. The challenge is to ensure that such differences do not pull the enactment into unrelated directions. Coherence in playback does not require sameness. It requires that different responses remain in relation to a shared affective field.

For this reason, Rasa theory should not be understood as a system for fixing meaning in advance. It is better understood as a way of refining attention, enlarging expressive possibilities, and helping performers organise plurality without collapsing into confusion. It should support intuition, not replace it; deepen responsiveness, not restrict it; and offer form without sacrificing openness.

Used in this spirit, Rasa theory need not narrow playback. It can instead help performers remain more alert to what a story is asking for, more aware of the effects of their choices, and more capable of contributing to an enactment that is coherent without becoming rigid, and shaped without becoming formulaic.

Conclusion

My main argument has been that playback is at its weakest if it’s about simply recreating an event, reproducing a character, or remaining faithful to the surface details of a story. Its force lies in its ability to discover and bring out the emotional truth of the story in a way that can be felt by both teller and audience. Playback Theatre becomes stronger when performers do not merely reproduce the teller’s story, but identify and shape its dominant emotional mood, supported by transitory states, so that the ensemble creates a coherent shared aesthetic experience enabling the audience to stand out of their ordinary selves and participate in the universality of the human condition. In this sense, playback is not only an improvisational form, but an aesthetic one, and its success depends on how clearly and coherently it organises emotional material in performance.

Rasa theory offers a valuable framework for understanding this process. It helps shift attention away from private feeling alone and toward the shaping of a shared aesthetic experience. By distinguishing between a primary Rasa and the transitory states that support it, Rasa provides a way of thinking about how different performers’ responses can gather around an affective centre without losing plurality. Its value for playback lies not in supplying a formula or a correct interpretation, but in offering a language for ensemble coherence, a basis for more precise training and feedback, and a way of deepening aesthetic awareness in performance.

Playback often already works in this way intuitively. The contribution of Rasa theory is to make that process more conscious, more discussable, and more cultivable in practice. Used with care, it need not narrow spontaneity or reduce improvisation to technique. Instead, it can help performers respond with greater clarity, greater sensitivity, and a stronger sense of the emotional logic through which an enactment becomes theatrically alive. In this way, Rasa theory offers playback not a rigid method, but a fuller language for turning feeling into something shared.

References

Coomaraswamy, A. (1924). The Dance of Shiva. NY: Sunwise Turn Inc.

Coomaraswamy, A. (1934). The Transformation of Nature in Art. NY: Harvard University Press.

Nandikeśvara. (1917). The Mirror of Gesture. (A. C. Duggirala, Trans.) NY: Harvard University Press.

Rangacharya, A. (1966). Introduction to Bharata’s Natya Shastra. Mumbai: Popular Prakashan.

Vatsyayan, K. (1992). Traditional Indian Theatre. Abhinav Publications.

Appendix A: Working Table of Primary Rasas and Transitory States

A fuller working table of possible relations between primary Rasas and transitory states is provided separately in Appendix A. The table is intended as a rehearsal and feedback aid rather than as a fixed classification system.

About the author

I was introduced to Playback Theatre in 1992, but professional commitments led me into a two decade career in Information Technology before I returned to the form after retiring from full-time industry work in 2017. My re-entry into Playback began through a workshop with Preeti Nair and was deepened by attending the International Playback Theatre Conference in Bangalore. Since then, I have been an active member of Mumbai’s Playback community, EMPURPLE.

Alongside theatre, I have long been engaged with psychology and psychoanalysis. I hold a Master’s degree in Organizational Psychodynamics and completed three years of psychoanalytic training. My current interests lie in exploring the intersections of Playback Theatre, psychoanalytic thought, and the Natyashastra, particularly in relation to affect, memory, relationship, and collective meaning making.