Forum Theatre

Forum or Stop-Start Theatre uses actors, facilitators and even audience members to create an interactive, lively and effective way of looking at company issues.

We use a form of Forum Theatre or Stop-Start Theatre

Using actors, facilitators, and even audience members we create an interactive, lively, and cost-effective way of looking at company-wide issues.

Forum Theatre Objectives

• Highlight Pitfalls
• Improve Communications
• Learn by Watching
• Deal with Difficult Communication Situations
• Interactive Style of Training
• Seeing it Happen as a Third Party
• Allow People to be Outside the Emotional Stresses
• Stop and Start The Interplay at Will
• Resolve Conflicts or Difficulties
• Look at Potential Problems
• Pre-empt Difficulties Before They Happen
• Test Drive Something New Within the Company
• Highly Interactive, Entertaining, Energising, and Educational

Forum Theatre Methodology

Or Stop-Start Theatre as we call it.

So, how can a bunch of actors help your organisation?

If you think of them as communication crash test dummies you’ll begin to see how they might help highlight pitfalls and improve communications across your business.

It doesn’t matter how many times they crash and burn, you just dust them off, give them a new instruction, and off they go.

Time and time again you can learn by watching difficult communication situations replayed and modified until the lesson is learned…(Or we wear them out and have to buy new ones… actors that is.)

How Forum Theatre Works

Every workshop is bespoke and designed specifically for each client.

We take an initial brief and work up an outline of what you might require.

Wherever possible we also like to have brief meetings with a few of the possible attendees to get a feel for what issues exist, ‘from the horse’s mouth’ so to speak.

From the information received we create some general scenarios and brief the actors.

Forum Theatre Set Up

There’s an audience (that’s your people), there’s a ‘stage’ (a good size room will do), as many actors as required and usually a couple of facilitators (that’s Impact Factory).

Usually, after initial introductions, we get the audience involved in a low-stress warm-up and a brief chat about the way we work and the topic/s of the day.

Then we’re into an improvised scene and off we go.

Provocative And Interactive

This style of training is provocative and interactive.

Seeing it happen as a third party allows people to be outside the emotional stresses one suffers when in the middle of conflict or difficulties.

These events are interactive and the audience is encouraged to make suggestions as to how to resolve the scenarios.

Stop-Start Theatre

Now this is why we’ve started calling it Stop-Start Theatre

Either the actor or the facilitators may stop the scenes at any point to elicit help and get suggestions from the audience as to how to reach a successful conclusion.

Sometimes it’s necessary to place the action outside the framework of the business or industry we’re working with, so as to lessen the ‘pointing finger’ effect.

We can either enact situations in a direct, or ‘real’ style; develop the scene to make the point more creatively, or indeed mix the two.

Potential Problems

Additionally, you can use Forum Theatre to look at potential problems, say, in an upcoming project, so that you pre-empt difficulties before they happen.

Indeed, there doesn’t really need to be a problem or serious issue to look at – you might just want to use the Forum Theatre format to test drive something new within the company to see how it feels on the road.

In all, it makes for a highly interactive, entertaining, energising, and educational time for all with as little chalk and talk and as much get up and do as possible.

Stop-Start Forum Theatre