Playback Theatre ‘plays it back to me’
May 14, 2010 – Drama for Life scholar, Tonderai Chiyindiko, tells us about a Playback Theatre Workshop with the founder, Jonathan Fox, and his personal experience with Playback Theatre.
“I have watched many movies and seen many theatre pieces in my home country and here in the Diaspora, but in all these I have maybe seen a ‘glimpse’ of my own life … just a glimpse because the folks play those folks who I struggle to relate to, or who are not ordinary folks like me and everybody else, but who are rather ‘creations of a culture’ – Hollywood creations. They are also ‘celebrities’ and well-known personalities.
What could a story acted out by Denzel Washington (I have nothing against the man and think that he is one of the most talented African-American actors alive) have in common with me, even if he were to play a ‘common me’ in a ‘common story’? He still plays me from the ‘rose-tinted’ perspective of a ‘celebrity’; he has no choice as that is what he is. I guess what I am trying to put across is that in Playback Theatre, as the name aptly suggests, ordinary actors/people ‘play back’ our feelings, moments and life-changing stories/experiences as we watch. It’s like we are gods and can see how we have lived our lives and how decisions we have taken, or not taken, have affected how and who we are today. It’s therapeutic! It is not the same as ‘suspending your disbelief’ because in life, we do not have such a privilege.”
Dr Jonathan Fox, the founder of Playback Theatre was in town!
How many people get to read a book, learn a new theatre form/technique and then get to meet the man who started it all? Well, I did … and truly this experience will forever be etched in our collective memories, particularly as a Drama for Life scholar. It was indeed an inspiring and transformative experience to be in a workshop run by Dr Jonathan Fox. What we learnt is that Playback Theatre was a humble project started by a very humble man and a group of collaborators and that it struggled to be accepted into mainstream theatrical forms … a struggle perhaps that is far from being ‘done and dusted’!
I believe that Playback Theatre offers opportunities that are immense because we all carry a story in us ... a story that needs to be told, a story about ourselves and others, ourselves with others and ourselves through others, for indeed in telling our stories we are writing and re-writing our realities and our history. Our stories are not fiction, they are stories of ordinary lives lived extraordinarily, of human triumph over difficulties and challenges and over adversaries that threaten to wipe us off the face of the Earth. Playback Theatre offers us that opportunity, to share experiences and to exercise our ghosts and demons, to clean out the skeletons in our cupboards and extend olive branches to our former foes, to be heard and to hear how others in other places have confronted their challenges and overcome them.
In watching my story in ‘playback mode’, I got all of this and more and I know one thing: I AM NOT ALONE.