Approaches to leading community-based theatre with the aim of wider and more diverse engagement

This article explores leadership and theories around the engagement of diverse communities in community-based theatre concluding with the proposal of a series of prevocational interrogative questions. Articulating these questions and the reasoning for them through documented UK-based participatory community-centric projects, with requisite theoretical frameworks, suggestions are made with regard to leadership and planning strategies in order to engage participants in projects that have meaning and purpose. In thinking about process over product it is argued that the strategic thinking needed for successful engagement must be interrogative and reflexive and take account of all stakeholders and the wider context of the project itself.