ABOUT PLAYBACK THEATRE

Playback Theatre is an original form of improvisational theatre in which audience or group members tell stories from their lives and watch them enacted on the spot. Whether in theatres, workshops, educational or clinical settings, Playback Theatre draws people closer as they see their common humanity.

Playback Theatre was founded in 1975 in the Mid-Hudson Valley in New York by Jonathan Fox with Jo Salas and other members of the original Playback Theatre company. Since then, Playback Theatre has reached hundreds of settings and locations. A support organization, the International Playback Theatre Network, provides connection and information for Playback practitioners on five continents.

A group of people in a room, a hall, a theatre. They face a row of actors sitting on boxes. On one side sits a musician with an array of instruments. On the other, an emcee, who waits next to an empty chair. This is for the "teller," who will come from the audience to tell a personal story. Then, in a ritualized process, using mime, music and spoken scenes, the players will act out the story. After one teller, another will come. In this way, the individuals in the audience will witness a theatre of their own stories. 

Playback Theatre is used in educational, therapeutic, social change, and arts settings, either as performance, with a company of trained actors and a defined audience; or as a group event led by an individual, in which participants become actors as well as tellers for each other.  Playback Theatre companies now exist in many localities, usually calling themselves after their town, such as Melbourne Playback Theatre, or Köln Playback Theatre.

Founded in 1975 by Jonathan Fox, a student of improvisation who had studied oral traditional tale-telling and psychodrama, the original Playback Theatre Company made its home in Dutchess and Ulster Counties of New York State, just north of New York City. This group, while developing the basis of the Playback form, took it to schools, prisons, centers for the elderly, conferences, and festivals in an effort to encourage individuals from all walks of society to let their story be heard. They also performed monthly for the public-at-large.

The playback theatre idea has inspired many people. Playback companies now exist on seven continents. The International Playback Theatre Network was founded in 1990 to support Playback activity throughout the world. As of 2006, the IPTN has 100 company and 300 individual members from 50 countries. For links to many PT companies and other information about Playback, see the home page of the International Playback Theatre Network

International Playback conferences have taken place in Sydney, Australia (1992), in a village north of Helsinki, Finland (1993), in Olympia, Washington (1995), Perth, Australia, (1997), York, England (1999) and Shizuoka, Japan (2003). In 2007 it is being held in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

To meet the demand for training which this level of growth has created, Jonathan Fox and guest faculty teach at the School of Playback Theatre, providing beginning, intermediate and advanced levels of training in Playback Theatre since 1993.

Books about Playback Theatre are published by Tusitala Publishing and can be obtained through the Centre [Click Here] or at Tusitala Publishing.

Playback Theatre compared to Psychodrama and Theatre of the Oppressed
 

Photos of the early years in playback theatre