What is Forum Theatre?

Forum theatre is an innovative, engaging and practical way of exploring common leadership and management issues. It allows participants to develop their understanding and skills in resolving difficult workplace scenarios, while avoiding the discomfort of taking part in role-play.  

How does it work for organisations?
 

We use similar techniques to design realistic, tailored scenarios and use these as the basis for powerful and engaged audience experiences. Participants can 'coach' the actor/facilitators to experiment with a variety of behavioural choices, and see what happens – this allows participants to truly understand how small changes can have a big impact. 

Forum theatre acts as a laboratory for behaviour, where participants can experiment in a controlled environment to see what works well - and not so well!

Where does it come from?
 

Forum theatre is a technique pioneered by Augusto Boal, a Brazilian theatre director, actor and political activist. Using the idea that theatre could be a vehicle for social and political change, Boal took his theatre group all around the country. The group performed topical scenarios and the audience directed the actors to explore alternative ways of dealing with the situation.  

Why us?

We’ve been there. We know the challenges. The Primavera People team brings together the practical experience of being in leadership roles, years of expertise in facilitating leadership development at all levels, and the acting and improvisational skills of trained actors.

For example?

We’ve worked with the Competition and Markets Authority to improve the quality of honest and challenging conversations between staff, and with Civil Service Learning to develop a solution to address performance management issues.  

We have designed a bespoke 'Leading Your Team' workshop for the Rail Safety Standards Board, which has been rolled out regularly over the last two years. 

With the Insolvency Service we designed an 'Honest Conversations' workshop, delivered to 350 staff so far, with a satisfaction rate of over 95%.