ABSTRACT
The audience has an important and proactive role to play in most kinds of Interactive Theatre including that of Augusto Boal’s Forum Theatre, where the spectator transforms into the spect-actor, thereby transforming the story being told. Research Initiatives Bangladesh (RIB), a participatory action-research organisation, has experimented with adaptations of Forum Theatre for many years in an attempt to give voice to marginalised communities in Bangladesh. From May to September 2019, RIB attempted to venture into a new field: addressing both gender-based violence and environmental rights in the context of the south-eastern coastal resort town of Cox’s Bazaar the vicinity of which has been the scene of a massive influx of Rohingya refugees fleeing crimes against humanities with genocidal intent from Myanmar. This chapter discusses a participatory research project with RIB that created and co-scripted stories of violence in the refugee camps and enacted them in the host community by holding a theatre camp and performances in Cox’s Bazaar. It highlights the challenges inherent to making participatory theatre with audiences and offers some potential solutions.
