Social and Community Theatre. Artistic Representation As a Collective Investigative Process

In this session I intend to explore how a particular theatre model, Social and Community Theatre (SCT), shares many principles and practices with Participatory Action Research. The first part focuses on theatre as a process of collective representation, examining the ontological and epistemological implications of its use as a methodology in social research. Unlike external observation, SCT requires active involvement, in which the researcher participates in the construction of knowledge and the realisation of a collective action, expressed in an artistic performance. Using theatre in research means creating a liminal space where participants can explore and reinterpret their social position and experienced conflicts. This process not only represents a social drama, but also acts as a mechanism for other processes, such as conscientization and the transformation of one's political and social context. “Together” with the theatre, the researcher can investigate the participants' agency and interrogate it in relation to the context from which it takes inspiration. The second part analyses the origins of SCT, tracing the ritual matrix of theatre and the dramaturgical revolutions of the 20th and 21st centuries. The changes I will examine have transformed theatre into a space and time of investigation for the actor – person or collective – highlighting the dialectic between mask and backstage (Goffman, 1959). In addition to showing the transformative effects of these revolutions in the theatrical field, I will discuss how this approach to acting and theatre has been partially absorbed by the market, anaesthetising its transformative and political power. At the end I will present reflections from my ongoing research project, which applies this methodology in marginal and oppressed spaces, such as a prison and an Italian urban periphery. The aim is to analyse through SCT how, in these highly structured contexts, particular and unconventional forms of political agency emerge.