We did a show on playback theatre last year and left the audience mesmerising about the whole concept. This year once again we started practicing for the show in a conference. First question was to discover “what are the elements of playback theatre?” We all have understood that it’s not at all about “acting”.
Few ingredients which we have understood and that’s all we practiced about
1 Team building – Listening to each other.
Brought an opportunity to listen to each other. “Remove ‘NO’ from the vocabulary was the underline message and the actors on the stage were asked to “add to what others are doing, no cutting others”. And that’s all…after each practice the feedback by other members made us realize that what all we do which does not lead to team work. Some of them are cutting thoughts ” no, this is not like this”, another one is to not listen and be aware of what others are doing on the stage, other one was to not involving or inviting others to participate or rather giving not much chance to others to perform and so on. Just an hour of exercise was enough to understand and be aware of “which actions will lead to team building’.
2 Another ingredient of playback theatre is to establish “character”. And to establish the character, one needs observation about the character like “how does a police man acts, what a cat does, how a thief would be stealing, an elephant would cut the cake, a classical dancer would eat a lollypop and on”. Merging observation with imagination brings the element of creativity in playback theatre.
3 Normally objects are lifeless. In playback theatre inanimate objects gets life and they become part of drama on the stage. Table starts speaking, Shoe wonders, pencil goes for a walk and that makes stage alive with impromptu theatre.
And add to this music, voice modulation, situations, participants, emotions, body, pattern, props, character, team were some of the words we explored.
And that’s all about