Playful Encounters

“Playful Encounters” is a long-term, multi-sited, ethnographic project investigating Applied Theatre projects that foster intercultural encounters.

Professor Elliot Leffler’s recent book, Applied Theatre and Intercultural Dialogue: Playfully Approaching Difference, weaves together the project’s overarching insights from across multiple sites.  Informed by play theory, the book argues that the playful elements of theatre processes nurture a unique intimacy among diverse people.  However, this playful quality can also dampen explicit conversations about participants’ cultural differences, and defer an interrogation of people’s own entrenchment in systemic power imbalances. As a result, addressing these differences and imbalances in applied theatre contexts may require particular strategies.