invoked the broader institutional and political audience such as child and adolecent mental health services, schools, gender clinics, and politicians. T is helped us to consider who to contact in order to share these stories and honour the young people’s words. T e physical set ing used was also


Figure 1: Digital theatre of life template and guiding questions.


audience position and narrator position, in a ‘show and tell’ format.


The power of the theatre of life for young trans people


This methodology was, and continues


to be, remarkably powerful for the young trans people who took part in the designing and sessions. In the words of one participant: “I really enjoyed the freedom to say as


much or as little as we wanted to in what we made and what we shared. Also, it was good to hear other people’s stories and that reminded me that other people are going through similar things.” This methodology strikes a balance


between bearing witness to stories of hardship, without neglecting the often subjugated stories of how people challenged, resisted, overcame or ultimately survived. The term “creative resistance” (Afuape, 2016, p. 33) has been used to describe resistance that is expansive and opens up new opportunities and possibilities; as there are initiatives to “reduce or redress the harm and/or to care for and protect others” (Denborough, 2008, p. 198) hidden in peoples’ responses to oppression. Crucially, we created a safer space


for co-authoring stories of collective identity, allowing for a diverse array of ideas, language and identities to come together, weaving a patchwork quilt of trans personhood, one which can grow and comfort continuously. This is most


14


important for minority communities, given the collective voice is central in constructing both the self and the collective-self due to the barriers of oppression (Gal et al., 2015). Allowing participants to feel pre-


prepared at diff erent stages was another unique feature of the methodology. For example, creating a poster in the fi rst instance allows for participants to refl ect on what feels comfortable enough to go on to share with words. As well as writ en words, participants sometimes used images, symbols and drawing to depict the unsayable. Painting a ‘backdrop’ of life allowed young people to place their life story in a historical and political context, whilst the ‘orchestra pit’ invited participants to share soundtracks of life, lyrics and songs, and describe how we can use creativity to communicate what is otherwise diffi cult to say. It was important for participants to


consider who the wider audience would be. As a gay man, I (Dane) related to an extent to how cautious I was as a teenager in guarding information which may impact on my safety and social life. Having participants take charge of their preferred audience, depicted in the ‘audience’ section of their poster was, therefore, a very useful aspect of the session. Common preferred audience-members included young trans and queer people who may be isolated from community but also transphobic people, or non-allies who saw trans issues as irrelevant. In the ‘royal box’ participants


a remarkable learning point. Mental health clinics can be experienced as unsafe and stigmatised places for young trans people, who oſt en have to navigate complex referral-systems, waiting lists, and may at ract stigmatising and defi cit- based labels, which may further confuse a young person’s own identity, in order to access resources. We were inspired by the report from the Trans Community Conference (Stewart, 2008) in which delegates advocated for the importance of “using art, writing, theatre, performance, fi lm and oral history to discuss gender diversity in our communities” (p. 33). Wernick et al. (2014) also found that a lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender theatre group in the United States used theatre to create community, build critical consciousness and eff ect community change. Get ing out of the clinic and moving to a theatre space, the preferred physical set ing chosen by the community group, seemed really important. T is space invited pride and joy, and connected to the many creative arts projects which the group had produced in the past.


Future directions The future dreams of ‘the theatre of


life’ are to firstly share trans stories. This needs not be limited to the PowerPoint based echo chambers of academia. Stories have long been shared in the creative arts and, arguably, may extend a broader reach than journal articles and conferences. For instance, through ‘political theatre’ which emerged from the work of critical playwright Bertolt Brecht (1964); and in a similar terrain, ‘forum theatre’ a form of ‘theatre of the oppressed’ from the work of Augusto Boal (2002). Another dream is for other young


people to connect with their trans, queer and chosen family and build upon this method in order to harness their unique creative resistance. T is may include connecting with other marginalised groups to fulfi ll the dream proposed by Freire (1970, p. 157) for building “unity in diversity”.


Context 155, February 2018


The theatre of life: Collective narrative practice with young trans people


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