Imagine watching a group of strangers take a very personal story and act out their spontaneous interpretation of it right on the spot, in a moving and mystifyingly cathartic spur of the moment performance. That is essentially what the genre, playback theatre, is all about. The art of theatre dates back to ancient times, and has evolved to include various different forms throughout the years. Playback theatre in particular started to emerge in the 1970s in New York City and it stemmed from improvisational theatre. Much like improvisational theatre, playback theatre does not involve a script or anything pre-planned, but rather depends on the actors’ natural and spontaneous instincts – as well as on-the-spot input – to create a performance. It does, of course, have a structure to it that facilitates in bringing these unprompted performances to life. Playback theatre’s structure involves three main roles, that of the conductor (the person who acts as a link between audience and actor), the actor and the musician. In improvisational theatre, most of the different ‘games’ or forms of improv have names such as ‘dictionary’ and ‘four boxes’. In playback, the scenes produced…
How Playback Theatre Can Help Build the Fabric of the Egyptian Community
February 21, 2020
