Choosing a Theme and Designing the Play
Choosing a Theme
The starting point for any participatory theatre project is selecting a theme. In a biodiversity project themes could include resource extraction, intergenerational justice, climate anxiety, local environmental change, or tensions between economic growth and ecological limits.
Tips for Selecting a Theme:
- The theme should be meaningful, clearly definable, and open enough to allow different perspectives and interpretations
- Consider the emotional tone, some themes may surface strong feelings or trauma, so ensure the selection is appropriate and relevant support is in place
- Allow room for complexity, conflict, and multiple viewpoints in the theme. Use metaphors or symbolic framing if direct discussion feels too exposing
- When working with a predefined group, such as a school class or Learning Community, you could co-select the theme by asking what issues matter most to them.
- If the method is being used as part of a broader programme, such as (e.g.) environmental education, youth activism, or community engagement, the theme could be connected to this work.
Designing the Play
Once you have chosen a theme, the next step is to design the structure of the play. Participatory theatre does not usually rely on a fixed script. Instead, the play is based on a flexible scenario or story-world with roles, dilemmas, and moments for participant intervention. Ensure the structure is clear enough to guide the process, but open enough to invite improvisation and decision-making. When using the method in the PLANET4B education case study, a narrative was designed in advance and presented to the audience. Alternatively, it is also possible to co-create the entire play with participants through workshops – for more information see The Open University,
Participatory Theatre
It may be useful to reflect on the dimensions included in the PLANET4B and Kava Theatre play and to think through how each of these components relates to your own play.
- Setting: A specific place or situation that participants can relate to (e.g. a village affected by environmental decline, a company debating land use decisions, a community negotiating the restoration of a local wetland, a school facing choices about biodiversity initiatives on campus, a fishing community responding to changes in marine conservation policies, or a city council deciding on urban green space development)
- Characters: Create roles that reflect different viewpoints, identities, or power positions relevant to the chosen theme. Characters might include a company executive focused on profit, a community activist campaigning for environmental justice, a policymaker balancing competing interests, or a young person concerned about their future.
- Conflict or dilemma: A moment where something important is at stake and decisions must be made. There may be multiple or escalating dilemmas depending on how the play evolves. Facilitators should be prepared to de-escalate or divert the discussion if the conflict moment becomes unproductive or overly confrontational. Conflicts or dilemmas could include (e.g.) deciding whether to approve a development project that would harm a local ecosystem, addressing unequal access to natural resources within a community, negotiating land rights between indigenous communities and commercial developers, responding to a crisis where a local river has been polluted by a nearby factory, deciding how to allocate limited conservation funding between species or habitats, balancing the needs of tourism-based income with the protection of fragile ecosystems.
- Opportunities for intervention: Plan in points where participants can step into the story, take on roles, or suggest new directions. You can stage moments of interventions such as during a village council meeting or a company board meeting. You can also leave space for spontaneous interventions such as organising a protest, a company strike or walkout, or lobbying campaign, allowing participants to propose alternative actions or strategies.
- Closing: A reflection or dialogue at the end that brings participants out of role and able to situate their experience in the world
In this video Eszter Kelemen discusses how the content and themes of the play were designed:
The Session
Make sure you allow time to structure the session, you should allow time for an introduction and warm-up, the performance, and a debriefing afterwards. The following is a proposed structure, but this can be adapted to different timeframes:
1. Arrival and Welcome (30 minutes)
- Welcome participants and introduce the facilitation team
- Share the purpose of the session and the theme
- Establish ground rules on participation (respect, confidentiality, opt-in participation etc.,)
- Warm-up with body-based exercises, games, or movement to help people feel present and connected
- Introduce theatre skills needed during the play (e.g. role play, stepping into character, improvisation)
- It is useful to establish openness, emotional safety, and acknowledging that there were no right answers, only possibilities to explore.
2. Introducing the scenario and inviting participation (90 minutes)
- In the PLANET4B play, the actors presented a fictional village where a healing plant had been discovered. A biotech company offered investment in exchange for harvesting rights.
- The actors open the play by setting the scene and establishing the scenario. This initial portion may be scripted in order to provide enough structure for participants to engage meaningfully with the story.
- Once the scene has been set, the critical point in the narrative can be introduced. At this point the participants are invited to join in various roles and shape the direction of the play. The moment of conflict in the PLANET4B play involved local residents debating the opportunity, with growing divisions between those excited about economic development and those worried about ecological harm and cultural loss.
- Participants can join as actors, improvising responses to the unfolding story, or as directors, pausing the action to describe their input and suggest how the story could develop. They can also offer reflections or responses to dilemmas within the narrative, helping to shape its direction collectively.
- Actors respond to participant input by adapting the story as it unfolds. Participants’ interventions can lead to scenes being replayed with different choices, character actions being adjusted, or entirely new directions being explored. Through this process, participants can examine the consequences of decisions, including how different social groups and the environment might be affected. The narrative can evolve to show how individuals or groups might organise, resist, or advocate for change-making. The aim is not to force consensus, but rather to create space for exploring multiple pathways and the complexities of collective action.
- Discussing environmental and biodiversity damage may be distressing. To support emotional balance, actors might consider ending with a hopeful scenario. For example, introducing the question of what can be done now? can help participants feel empowered rather than despondent.
In this video Eszter Kelemen outlines ways to organise the space to support a welcoming environment:
Tips for Managing the Flow of the Session
- Keep timing flexible and responsive to group energy
- Allow for breaks or quiet time if the material becomes heavy
- Provide different modes of engagement (verbal, physical, reflective, visual)
Augusto Boal, the founder of Theatre of the Oppressed, offers tips and techniques to use during the play in his book Games for Actors and Non-Actors. These include:
- Freeze moments: pausing the action at key points to ask the audience what the character might be thinking or what should happen next.
- Direct questioning: offering prompts or questions to individuals or the whole group during a scene to deepen engagement or shift perspective.
- Small group breakouts: splitting participants into smaller groups to discuss, role-play, or develop a short scene in response to the main storyline.
- Role reversal: Invite participants to step into the roles of characters they may initially disagree with, encouraging deeper understanding of different positions and power dynamics.
- Hot seating: Place a character ‘in the hot seat’ and allow participants to ask them questions about their motivations, fears, and goals. Facilitators or actors can stay in role and respond accordingly.
- Multiple endings: Offer participants different possible endings based on earlier decisions, or collaboratively create a new ending together. This highlights how different choices lead to different consequences.
- Silent scenes: Remove dialogue temporarily and ask participants to use only body language and positioning to express responses or decisions.
3. Reflection and Dialogue (30–40 minutes)
Once the play has concluded, invite participants to reflect on the experience. This moment of debrief is important for helping people transition out of the performance, it also reinforces learning and encourages participants to connect the experience to their own lives and contexts. The following could present discussion topics:
- What did you feel during the play?
- Which characters or situations felt familiar, uncomfortable, or surprising?
- What would you do differently if this were real life?
- What lessons can we take into our own contexts or communities?
This stage could take a variety of formats, including individual and group reflection formats, such as talking circles, journaling, drawing, or one-to-one conversations.
Debriefing: see the Debriefing Method for detailed guidance on possible follow-up activities and session closure.
In this video Eszter Kelemen reflects on the closing message of hope and possibility shared with participants:
