Basically, Playback Theatre is an original form of improvisational theatre in which audience or group members tell stories from their lives and watch them enacted on the spot. Props such as cloths, boxes and musical instruments are used. Musicians are involved to begin and end and act. Techniques such as scene work and chorus does not require music. I have learned five techniques in playback theatre which are chorus, pair work, fluid sculpture, four elements and scene work.
Pair work is an action method that allows the teller to elaborate conflicting feelings in a particular situation. As persons develop, maturity is often a measure of a person’s ability to live with contradictions and conflicting feelings. Many decisions that people make and conclude come from trying to solve conflicting emotions surrounding one choice or another. It is an action method that mainly focuses on these contradictions. For instance, consider a naive girl whose close friend asks her to go along with her to a club where she has heard alcohol will be present. Part of her emotions wants to attend the club event and support a friend while the other part doesn’t want to go, get high, or get involved with people who are drinking alcohol. The actors form pairs on stage with one person in front and one standing behind. Each pair gives the feeling that they are one person. One at a time each pair acts the conflicting feelings. Although they act as one entity each, the pair takes one side of the conflict. For instance, one pair might begin with the person in front and holding her back or shoulder saying repeatedly “I’ll go to support my friend” and almost simultaneously the person behind tries to hole her hand chanting in her ear, “I'm fake, I am not going to do this“ Then pair then freeze after several seconds and acknowledge the teller with a nod and a gentle smile. Then the other pairs take their turn, perhaps enacting a slightly different but similar aspect of the conflict that the...