Tapestry Playback Theatre produces communitry performances using the playback theatre format, conducts workshops on personal development, and develops community projects using playback theatre.
What is Playback Theatre?
Playback Theatre is created through a
unique collaboration between performers and audience. Someone tells a story or
moment from their life, chooses actors to play the different roles, then
watches as their story is immediately recreated and given artistic shape and
coherence, through elements of movement, cloth, music and the spoken word.
Building community through personal stories
Playback Theatre creates a ritual space
where any story - however ordinary, extraordinary, hidden or difficult - might
be told, and immediately made into theatre. And where each person's uniqueness
is honoured and affirmed while at the same time building and strengthening our
connections to each other as a community of people.
Origins
The original Playback Theatre Company
came together in 1975, with Jonathan Fox as its director. This was in the
mid-Hudson valley of upstate New York and part of the experimental theatre
explorations of the 1970s - looking for ways of reaching out to its audience,
bringing theatre closer to everyday reality, and breaking away from the
tradition of scripted theatre. Since then, Playback Theatre has spread across
the world with companies and practitioners in over 30 countries. It thrives in
a variety of settings, existing as community theatre gatherings as well as a professional
service to both the business and social sector.
Influences
· Community ritual & theatre: Jonathan Fox had lived in Nepal and
experienced these deeply embedded into the rhythms of everyday life.
· Oral tradition of storytelling: where people gather together to hear
and share the old stories - the world of myths and legends and folktales.
· Psychodrama: while there are differences in form and practice,
there are many shared values in Playback Theatre and psychodrama. For example,
o
spontaneity
and the release of creative energy
o
inclusiveness
– every individual has a place in the collective.
