Participatory Theatre as Democratic Rehearsal in Psychology Education

Abstract

This practice-based article examines how participatory theatre functions as a democratic rehearsal space within undergraduate psychology education in South India. While curricula increasingly acknowledge social determinants of mental health, structural inequalities such as caste, gender norms, and institutional hierarchy are often treated as contextual factors rather than constitutive of subjectivity. Consequently, students may acquire critical vocabulary about oppression without developing embodied awareness or relational capacities to navigate power in practice. Informed by participatory performance practices including Playback Theatre, Image Theatre, and Forum Theatre, the study introduces facilitative dramaturgy as a framework that sequences participatory forms to move students from narrative witnessing to embodied recognition and rehearsal of ethical response. Implemented within a second-year applied theatre course, the intervention engaged psychology undergraduates from diverse social backgrounds through a structured progression of exercises. Playback Theatre enabled collective witnessing of experiences of loneliness, abuse, and institutional authority; Image Theatre translated these narratives into embodied representations of hierarchy; Forum Theatre created a symbolic rehearsal space to experiment with interventions in situations of social constraint. Findings suggest participatory theatre operates not merely as expressive pedagogy but as a structured environment where democracy is encountered as embodied negotiation. Students moved from perceiving distress as individual experience to recognising its structural conditioning while rehearsing relational responses. Classrooms can function as provisional democratic infrastructures, where recognition, ethical engagement, and collective responsibility are rehearsed rather than abstractly discussed.