ABSTRACT
Through all the barriers, frustrations, resistances, twists and turns, the conviction that theatre can play a role in improving the quality of life has sustained them in tasks for which the monetary rewards are typically slight. Whether the narratives ever coalesce into social action may depend alike upon the interventionist strategies of the facilitator and the capacity of activist organisations to support the discourses developed by the theatre process. The applied theatre encounter, by contrast, is a forum for the challenging of attitudes and a place where the self seeks to find itself in the other and the other in the self. Decisions are made and attitudes formed on the basis of feeling, direct experience and empathic connection. Consequently, the primary role of applied theatre for the foreseeable future is to engage all people in understanding and responding to this crisis.
