Children’s Participative Theatre for Social Impact

Excluding children from social construction and disregarding their opinion is a form of oppression that as a society we do not speak about enough.

Although in general we understand that minors are citizens with rights, in practice, we do not include them in decision-making. We typically believe that children are not prepared to discuss the complex social issues that afflict us, as they are humans “in development.” There is also a kind of widespread fear of negative emotions in children: they should always be happy, they should quickly get up when they fall because “nothing happened,” and we should avoid any situation that connects them with uncomfortable emotions such as sadness and anger.

Although theatre for children has evolved a lot in recent decades, presenting greater variety and complexity in the themes it addresses, a didactic approach still predominates: the child needs to be told how to interpret the content and what lessons they should learn. Often, simplistic language is used, with a predominantly cheerful and uplifting tone, resulting in work that lacks emotional depth, aesthetic richness, and sociopolitical value.

Facilitating a space for reflection and creativity around the experiences of children from vulnerable sectors in Chile was one of the missions of the Fundación Quien Cuenta Eres Tú (QCET), created in 2015. Its director (and my dear friend) Rosanna Nitsche is a psychologist specialized in group processes, who by then already had over twelve years of experience working with communities through Playback Theatre with El Colectivo, a company based in Santiago, Chile. Playback is a form of applied theatre that highlights the importance of individual and collective memory by fostering a dialogue space where the audience collectively shares emotions and stories from real life and then sees them represented by a theatre team trained in this specific improvisation technique. The ritual of narrating our stories, respectful listening, seeing ourselves reflected in other people's stories, and the new meanings that theatrical language can unveil make Playback Theatre a powerful tool for community development.

I worked at the foundation from the beginning as programs director. Over the course of eight years, we benefited more than twelve thousand people from different parts of Chile, of whom more than 95 percent were children. The Children’s Participative Theatre was our most beloved and successful program.

So how do we facilitate this creative experience for the children?

We consider the complete theatrical experience to be a ritual from start to finish.

One of the principles of Playback is that the fourth wall often blurs or breaks. For this reason, functions are held in performance spaces at the same level as the audience—we usually do not perform on traditional stages but in unconventional spaces. In the case of Children's Participative Theatre, we primarily work in schools and libraries with an audience of (ideally) a maximum of forty-five children to allow for an intimate and truly participative experience. Due to all this, our aesthetic is minimalist and has the versatility required for theatrical improvisation.

We consider the complete theatrical experience to be a ritual from start to finish. This means that each function follows the same steps every time and that the experience begins the moment the audience enters the room.

When the children enter the room, soft live music plays. Our team welcomes them as they pass through a “tunnel” of colorful fabrics that marks the symbolic step from the everyday space to the extraordinary space that the classroom or library has turned into thanks to two wooden screens, colored fabrics, simple and static lighting, as well as a large black curtain that covers a significant portion of the walls, creating a black box effect. This immediately predisposes the audience to sharpen their attention and arouses curiosity, key elements for the creativity we will need later on.

Once the children are seated, the conductor welcomes them and asks a few questions that they answer freely. For many of them, this is their first time attending a theatrical performance. Next, each member of the company introduces themselves and shares an emotion they are feeling at this moment or have felt recently. We do brief representations of these emotions and in this way, we model how the children will participate.

The theatrical performance begins. It is a dramatized reading where the conductor reads from a large book while the actors and music interpret the scenes. The three tales we adapted belong to the Mapuche, Aonikenk, and Atacameño traditions, and they have very different themes and rhythms which, through humor and connection with nature, allow us to open a dialogue around issues such as friendship, death, and trust.

The story is represented up to a climactic point where suddenly a page of the book has been “lost.” The play stops completely as we search for the lost page, and the room fills with murmurs and bewilderment: this must be the worst theatre company in the world! The conductor then asks the audience what can be done to solve the situation. Invariably, the children propose the solution they are experts in: to create!

We go on to create an ending together, but first we want to talk about what we saw in the play. At this moment, the conductor asks the audience to reflect on the internal world of the characters: What do they think the grandmother felt when she was left alone? How do they think the girl felt when the condor deceived her? It is heartbreaking to see that the more under resourced the school, the more limited the emotional language of the children. They usually start by saying that the character felt “bad” or “good.” Guided by the conductor, they move on to identifying simple emotions, such as “sad” or “scared,” and rarely to more complex ones such as “confused” or “hopeful.” We then ask the audience when they had felt that way. We often encounter difficult stories, sometimes related to family violence, bullying, loneliness, or mourning. Managing these narratives properly and representing them in symbolic ways that avoid re-traumatization was part of the consistent training our theatre team received from our director.

At this point, the emotions and stories shared by the children are represented by the actors and actresses in an improvised manner using the Playback Theatre methodology. We create “sculptures,” brief representations that highlight some important aspects of what was narrated.

After three of these representations, we move on to creating endings. The conductor gathers ideas through specific questions. It is important to accept all ideas without criticizing. We do not seek a logical development in the narrative, but rather for the children to see their imagination validated.

Over the years, we have observed that the more vulnerable the school, the more repetitive the endings were, often getting stuck at the classic “they got married and lived happily ever after,” while in less marginalized areas, the stories were complex, full of new characters and unexpected twists.

On some rare occasions, we have encountered surprisingly disturbing creations. For example, once a child suggested that the grandmother in the story be tied up and murdered, while the rest of the children enthusiastically supported the idea. In these cases, we were faced with the difficult task of maintaining our principle of not criticizing or censoring ideas, while avoiding validating violence. In this case, we shifted the scene towards empathy development through a pivotal question: “how do you think the grandmother would feel if that happened to her?” The children were then invited to empathize with the pain a victim of violence experiences. “If the grandmother felt scared like that, what would she like her family to do?” We then represented the emotional support the family gave to the grandmother in the event of a traumatic experience, without representing the event itself. Understanding that a child who expresses violence is most likely a victim of violence is key.

We represent the endings created by the audience. An indelible part of the memories I cherish from our years of work is the way the children's eyes sparked with enthusiasm when they saw their own ideas represented by real performers on stage. We often invite the children themselves to portray secondary characters, guided by our team.

Usually we create and represent three endings, after which the “lost page” “appears,” and we then represent the end of the story while reminding the audience that all endings are valid and interesting.

This is where the performance ends, and we guide the children towards the exit while singing one of the songs from the play, passing through the tunnel of fabrics again, thus concluding this particular artistic experience.

In 2020, we created our first and only original play, called Mucalí and the Secret Mirror, written by me and performed only in audiovisual format due to the pandemic. The story takes place in a dystopian world where all people are forced to be the same and show only happiness. A group of children will search for the legendary Secret Mirror, hoping to find the answers they need, accompanied by Mucalí, the last of the magical animals. The play has no ending, and the video “malfunctions” at a climax point, after which the  children are invited to participate through a manual with entertaining activities. This play has been broadcast on the public family channel Nacional TV (NTV) several times since 2022 and is a great success among our target audience due to its entertaining plot.

Over time, we learned that each place has its own idiosyncrasies and we, artists from the city, had to arrive with respect and humility.

Traveling Through Chile

We performed more than 120 shows in schools in many places in Chile, sometimes in small rural schools so remote that they were in the middle of the world's driest desert or in the snowy border with Argentina. Sometimes the schools had only eight or nine students of different ages in a single group, and for the first time in their lives they saw puppets, musical instruments, and a real theatrical production. Many times we were in schools in vulnerable areas in the city of Santiago, sharing with the children the deplorable conditions of the bathrooms and the freezing classrooms in winter. In Pisagua—a tiny seaside town in the north that over hundreds of years was repeatedly devastated by the War of the Pacific, catastrophic earthquakes, and forced eviction for residents during the dictatorship when the entire town was turned into a prison for political prisoners—we were welcomed by indifferent children and teachers who refused to participate and looked at us mockingly. Over time, we learned that each place has its own idiosyncrasies and we, artists from the city, had to arrive with respect and humility and adapt to the characteristics of each audience without expecting them to behave in a certain way.

In each area or town, different stories emerged: in the city, stories of family violence and bullying would often appear, while in rural areas, children's pains were more related to the loneliness and boredom of country life. The death of pets and loved ones was one of the themes that children were often eager to talk about. The plot of the plays, the opportunity to verbally express emotions, listening to other classmates who had felt the same, and seeing their inner world transformed into small scenes conveyed to the children the idea that their emotions were natural, valid, and full of meaning.

The social and creative experience I had in my years with Fundación QCET was invaluable. I am thankful to all the people who were part of it, especially the actors and actresses who contributed their talent and passion in the development of work that undoubtedly left marks on many children in Chile. I hope that, as artists, we are always willing to question how we either perpetuate or transform oppressive models and stereotypes, both in the content and formats of our works, and that we collaborate by sharing our experiences to help each other strengthen the social impact our work can have.