There’s a song. It begins:

Once I had a secret love

It ends:

Now I shout it from the highest hills

Even told the golden daffodils

 

At last my heart’s an open door

And my secret love’s no secret any more.

And my secret love is….

Playback Theatre. Well kind of. Secret in that I seem to keep it separate from other parts of my life. Have I mentioned PBT in this blog before? If not, it’s time.

Art and Soul Space

is about creativity.

Playback

is massively creative.

Do you know Playback Theatre? Jonathan Fox and Jo Salas birthed it in the 1970s – a sort of fusion of psychodrama and community theatre – the theatre of truth – theatre for every body.

An audience member shares an experience from their life. A team of actors and musicians spontaneously ‘plays back’ their experience.

A Playback performer listens deeply to the ‘teller’. Then somehow, magically, (with years and months and hours of practising the forms), instantaneously enacts the essence of the story. This is done in a team. You don’t have to do it alone.

I see Playback as

a form of creative mirroring, as a way to affirm our everyday experience, to bring it to life. I see it as helping us find the universal in the particular. It connects us. It’s amazing. Of course I’d say that. It is my not-so-secret love.

I discovered … sort of fell into … Playback at a 40^th birthday party in the 1990s. Unusually, I found myself acting in a story, and another and another; actually DOING Playback before I’d even seen it. I was enchanted.

In 1997 I founded a troupe.

It was an enormous part of my life.

I left in a raggedy heap after twelve years.

The troupe changed from this:

to this:

Here’s the thing.

There are Playback Theatre companies around the whole world.

From Fiji to Finland,

from Italy to Israel.

Everywhere.

You didn’t know it existed? How come more people haven’t heard of it? Beats me. It’s healing, transformative, nourishing, community-building. Yet PBT seems to lurk, swim and shimmy below the surface of mainstream culture.

Here’s an explanatory video from Melbourne PBT 

I’ve kernoodled around and found a longer video from Toronto PBT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2wR2V8Q_kg

So last year there was an Australia-New Zealand ‘Gathering of Elves’ Playback meet-up in Hobart.

My visual diary revealed this

And this

And this.

And now? After a nine year absence from Out of the Box Theatre, my home troupe, the one I birthed and which became a wayward youth? The troupe has matured. Several remarkable people kept it alive, fed and watered.

I’ve re-joined.

There has been a Resurgence

and the Circle is Full.

 

Now I shout it from the highest hills

Even told the golden daffodils

At last my heart’s an open door

And my secret love’s no secret any more.

Do you have a secret or not-so-secret long-term love?

with love, art and soul from Sally