Raising social consciousness through verbatim theatre: a realist evaluation

Abstract

Background: Verbatim theatre has the potential to raise social consciousness around difficult social issues, but consideration needs to be given to the philosophical and practice aspects of evaluating social consciousness.

Methods: A mixed methods design consisting of survey and ethnographic data was used within Realist frameworks.

Results: Four Context-Mechanism-Outcome configurations were developed. These allowed exploration of transformative learning as the key to understanding how verbatim theatre could raise social consciousness.

Conclusions: From a Critical Realist perspective, verbatim theatre can potentially raise social consciousness through a transformative learning mechanism that consists of emotional and cognitive components. However, a number of factors need to be taken into consideration.

Keywords:

• Verbatim theatre
• social consciousness
• evaluation
• Critical Realism

Acknowledgements

I wish to express deep appreciation for the contributions made to this project by Rod Ainsworth from Creative Regions, Rebecca Atkinson and Lung Ong from Arts Queensland, and Susan Prince, Independent Theatre Maker.