What is Playback Theater?

Playback Theatre is an original form of story-based improvisational theatre that builds connection, dialogue, and change. Volunteers from the audience tell personal stories during a performance, then watch as trained actors and musicians create theatre on the spot.

While people tell their stories, listen to other’s stories and watch the theatre that is created, a “red thread” of common experience begins to weave through the performance, building and strengthening our connections to each other as a community. It enables audience members to see each other in a new, often more compassionate light, especially across differences of background, experience or values.

Created by Jonathan Fox in 1975, playback theatre is done in over 70 countries around the world. Participating in a playback performance joins us to a global community of people with different cultures and languages engaging in purposeful community and human building. In this time when the country and world seem divided, by the simple act of telling our stories and listening to others stories, playback theatre helps us to bridge that divide and find the “red thread” that joins us together.