Creating a safespace for listening and sharing, this Women’s Day
I share with you, our recent experience of executing an assignment for an IT service office in Mumbai. The HR lead had asked us to do a 90-minute interactive show, and when we asked her about the expectation, she said, “We don’t have any predefined agenda other than for our team to experience Playback Theatre and its magic.”
As you may know, Playback Theatre is a community-building improvisational theatre that combines artistic expression and social connection based on storytelling and empathetic listening, creating a safe space for sharing. We at Mumbai Playbackers love playing back stories for people, just about anywhere!
The surprise show for the team with a blank canvass was a great starter for anything to emerge. The mix of ease and anticipation began to stir the space slowly as we introduced ourselves and a slice of our life that our fellow actors enacted. Anticipation turned into awe, as they watched us perform and then to awkwardness as it was now their turn to share a little something! But, slowly I could feel the ice melting as they started to share their stories, from the excitement of watching us enact to the aftermath of a Holi celebration, from the joys and struggles of Work from Home, to the conflict between following rules and craving freedom and a desire to break free from the judgemental world.
The initial sharings, while brief and “simple” on the surface, created the vessel for the deeper stories to land. A mother breaking her routine and allowing herself a treat with friends, a man being scanned with lecherous eyes which brought him the realization of what women go through almost every day – a story he feels responsible to share with young men asking them to give respect to women, more than anything else. And while we could end on this note of “giving” respect to women, in came the last story from a young woman. The heart of this experience really spoke about women first respecting their own self, in their inner fabric, not feeling small because of age, size, or perception – a story of standing up for yourself and claiming your dreams – quite a befitting story, I thought, for the group to pause on.
The spontaneous artistic representation of the sharings, through movement, sound, music, and dramatization – by the actors added to the creative energy and also deepened the resonance, as the hidden emotions surfaced through this process. We listened together, we allowed vulnerabilities to surface, we held space for laughter and tears to flow with ease. It left people feeling heard, seen, and connected. Knowing a different side of their colleagues built deeper empathy too. And this nature of space in itself held and celebrated the feminine qualities that we can all access and allow space for if we choose to.
Spaces like these are needed at the workplace and in our larger community too – that otherwise can become dry, clinical, transactional, and ever ready to solve your “problems” without a space to simply Be with you, in resonance.
Thank you for reading and let us know in the comments when and where was it that you last shared space like this, collectively. Playback Theatre is one such structure that allows the collective container to be held for us to share the experience and stories of being human – together.
If you wish to have a playback theatre performance in your organization or community, do get in touch.
Preeti BirlaNair (Founder & Artistic Director – Mumbai Playbackers)
