Storying worlds: using playback theatre to explore the interplay between personal and dominant discourses amongst adolescents

This article explores the ways in which playback theatre was used to interrogate the views of adolescents on their social context(s) and establish what the personal and dominant discourses operating in their views were. Playback theatre, with its focus on reframing personal stories to generate new perspectives on these stories, was an appropriate tool to do so. By referring to participants’ reflections, we demonstrate how playback theatre intervened in the interplay between these discourses and how meaning(s) and understanding(s) were (re)imagined to negotiate new avenues pertaining to voiced issues.