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Family, Diwali and more… Building bridges through Playback Theatre
September 30, 2019 New DelhiPlayback Theatre (PT) has been a recent addition to our repertoire of tools while working with Children in Conflict with Law. Our first ever Playback session with CICL came in May 2017 when we conducted an awareness and capacity building session on ‘Dreams, Delinquency and Destitution’ at the Delhi Judicial Academy. The audience members included members of the Child Welfare Committee (CWC), Juvenile Justice Boards (JJB) and civil society members working in the field of Juvenile Justice. Many office bearers were moved into sharing the aspirations they had when they were younger, bringing home the power of PT to connect different stakeholders through shared experiences Ever since then, Playback has become an active component of our Expressive Arts inventory
As part of our research study at the Place of Safety and Special Home for Boys, Majnu ka Tila, we used Playback as a standalone Expressive Arts tool to bring out stories and emotions that our participants were otherwise inhibited to express. The session ultimately became one of our most powerful and memorable experiences at the Home. It was the first time we were able to connect all participants beyond enmities and conflicts in a Communitas based on family and memories of Diwali.
We went on to conduct another Playback session in December 2018 as part of our ‘Open Day’ celebrations during the study. We invited family members of our participants, Superintendents of other Homes and Magistrates working at JJB to be a part of the day’s proceedings. After our participants displayed their work, this gathering became the audience for the Playback session. To our surprise, the senior officials opened up about the vulnerabilities around family and memories of childhood.
In this way, we managed to find ‘common threads’ for everyone involved to look at each other beyond the lens of a case number, a mistrusting judge or quite simply ‘a court date’. Playback, was largely successful in making this human connect come to life.
Our observations have been carefully recorded in a research paper titled ‘Playback Theatre with Children in Conflict with Law: An exploratory study’, which will be presented at the International Playback Theatre Network conference to be held in Bangalore this December.
