𝕋𝕙𝕖𝕒𝕥𝕣𝕚𝕩

Theatre as a method of facilitation.

Day 6 : 1 method-a-day

Celebrating Facilitation Week 2026 (2 – 8 Feb)

During law college and for many subsequent years, Saturday’s meant theatre … watch a drama and discuss on the nuances of the play outside on the steps of Bhavan’s Chowpatty.

Therefore, this post on Saturday.

While at the core, theatre invites a range of emotions, thoughts, queries and silent advice to the characters, the only discussion possible was if the performance was experienced by your group of friends who then were in a mood to sit and chat.

So, as a facilitator can we encourage conversations around what we observed, felt, heard and wish to be changed.

At the basic level of using theatre, trainers have been using Role-Plays, usually requesting, nominating or forcing participants to come in front of the group and perform on a given scenario. While the impact is high and participants do mention on feedback sheets that the Role-Play was very helpful to them, we often forget what happens later to the volunteers. If the performers enact the play well, then great; however, if they don’t, then the whole world including the trainer judges them in the garb of feedback and at times it leads to labelling them back in the organisation much after the training has ended.

I still remember a call many moons ago after a funny role-play was enacted, where the volunteer complained that his team is now calling him by the name of the character he had played and were mocking him for how he handled the situation in the given scenario. Mind you, the scenario wasn’t true for him, so he acted or rather mimicked a film actor and that unfortunately became his nemesis. His self-esteem be damned!!!, none cared.

As a facilitator, we need to respect the members and their dignity back into the workplace.

So, How can a facilitator use theatre?

 Let me attempt to articulate as putting pen to paper here isn’t as easy as experiencing it yourselves.

FACILTIATED PERFORMANCE LAYERS:

1.      Nautanki (Performance) – Topics are given to teams; they prepare skits and then perform. A facilitated conversation is initiated amongst the group - one may even integrate World Café, Fish Bowl or Gallery Walk to harvest the emotions, thoughts, opinions from the audience.

2.      Role-Modelling  - the facilitator becomes one of the characters and do spirited performances with individual members who sit in their place (without them having to face the audience). The facilitator then moves quickly to another person, restarting or continuing the role-modelling with similar / changed behaviours. And this gets done with at least 4 participants spread across tables. The idea is not to identify who does what; the focus is to get as many behaviours as possible. As the facilitator involves many different members spread wide, it gets difficult for the audience to remember who did what and therefore it doesn’t get into labelling later.

3.      Forum Theatre (inspired by Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed) with enaction by theatre actors who prep for various scenarios, twists and impromptu responses. The facilitation layers brought in is by introducing tools such as:

o   Pause – In between the performance, the performance is paused to seek suggestions from the audience as to how the play should move forward.

o   Rewind & Replay – The pause may bring about a suggestion of a complete different trajectory in the scene, the artists impromptu play it and the facilitator invites observations.

o   Hot Seat – A audience member may be invited to jump in to replace and play one of the characters in the way they would have behaved in similar circumstances.

o   Mind Tap – At certain points of time during the performance, the audience can mind-tap the artiste/s to check how is a particular behaviour emerging from.

The magic of using theatre in facilitation requires prep, clarity, the facilitator’s own comfort and understanding of this methodology. What it doesn’t require (other than for Role-Modelling) is the facilitator as an actor.

What’s our mojo? 2 and now 3.

We now have a theatre group that supports us in the performance of the Forum Theatre. The feedback is amazing and exciting!