A Beginner's Perspective on Playback Theatre

"Playback what?" I asked, rather perplexed. It was the first time I

heard about the term. The meeting was a blind date, and the man
had been involved with playback theatre for a decade. As clich as it
might sound, we followed an unspoken rule of blind dates: sharing
the things we were passionate about. "So you don't follow a
predetermined storyline?" I further inquired, genuinely amused.
Each answer he gave me only brought forth more questions, as the
idea sounded so foreign yet at the same time quite ingenious. "Hang
on, could you elaborate that part about 'playing back the audiences'
stories, please? How do you play it back? With a tape recorder?"
At home, I typed in the keywords on a search engine. If a picture
said a thousand words, the still images presented to me were to
be blatantly honest somewhat aversive. A small bunch of people,
usually clad in black, performed in a minimally decorated function
room, sandwiched by one or two musicians on one side and two
people sitting down idly on the opposite side. The whole setting
screamed psychedelia: a colourful cloth tree, hands in the air,
contorted facial expressions; they seemed almost too avant-garde,
too exaggerated. It was not until he took me to a performance in
Manchester a few months later that I had my first taste of a live
playback theatre performance.
Contrary to other theatre performances I had attended, there were
less than 15 people in the audience. For the next couple of hours, I
watched the actors enact the stories told by us the audience
on the spot. The audiences wept and laughed as different theatrical
forms played back diverse stories ranging from the excitement of
purchasing a new mobile phone to a father's embarrassment of
having to temporarily live with his now independent son post marital
annulment. I went home with a cocktail of vehement emotions; my
initial skepticism had turned into a profound inquisitiveness.
As time passed by, Arnet Donkin, the man from the blind date who
introduced me to this world had become my partner. However, our
search for further performances was frustratingly futile, which was
surprising as we lived in Leeds, one of the biggest cities in the UK.
The company he belonged to Mirror Mirror was based in the
South West, too far a distance to be frequented. He himself had not
been performing routinely since he moved to the North in 2014. Yes,
he would attend gatherings here and there or participate in the
European gay playback rendezvous, but they were not in the UK and
they were seemingly inaccessible to a beginner. The playback
school was located in London, but I was apprehensive to pay a lot of
money for a formal, systematic training to join a community I was
yet to comprehend. I craved for something more communal,

informal, and accessible for a beginner, a greater exposure to brace

myself before I plunged into the world. Of course, there were none.

UK playback gathering 2015

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