Co-creation in theatre: an antidote to controversy in democracy?

When dis­cuss­ing eco­logy, polit­ics or vari­ous social issues, have you ever felt like you were talk­ing to a brick wall? The use and mis­use of pesti­cides in agri­cul­ture or the role of tech­no­logy in com­bat­ing glob­al warm­ing, for example. In an increas­ingly polar­ised soci­ety, debat­ing with people who do not share our val­ues can some­times become impossible. This trend is amp­li­fied by the pro­lif­er­a­tion of “echo cham­bers”¹, spaces where we only inter­act with people who share our beliefs. This has giv­en rise to a new dis­cip­line: the soci­ology of con­tro­versy, which stud­ies dif­fer­ent points of view and the con­texts in which they are expressed. So how can we re-estab­lish dialogue?

This ques­tion is cent­ral to the research con­duc­ted by Sylvie Bouchet, a doc­tor of psy­cho­logy and lec­turer at Par­is Dauphine Uni­ver­sity, and Olivi­er Fournout, a seni­or lec­turer in com­mu­nic­a­tion sci­ences at the Inter­dis­cip­lin­ary Insti­tute for Innovation/CNRS at Télé­com Par­is (IP Par­is). In Le Champ des pos­sibles², they study how the col­lect­ive cre­ation of a play can help to re-estab­lish dia­logue with­in pop­u­la­tions frag­men­ted by intense con­flicts. The pro­ject takes the form of artist­ic pro­duc­tions car­ried out in 2018 by groups of pro­fes­sion­als – farm­ers, envir­on­ment­al act­iv­ists, entre­pren­eurs, experts, pub­lic and private sec­tor admin­is­trat­ors, and asso­ci­ation lead­ers – all act­ively involved in a con­tro­ver­sial issue. The aim was to work togeth­er to cre­ate 25-minute plays focus­ing on divis­ive issues such as pesti­cides in agri­cul­ture and the impact of tech­no­logy on glob­al warm­ing. Those involved were giv­en free rein to stage their own plays, which they write and per­form themselves.

Two years after its cre­ation, half of the par­ti­cipants con­sider that some­thing has changed in the way they view them­selves in rela­tion to the controversy.

The book is accom­pan­ied by the res­ults of a sur­vey of par­ti­cipants, which aimed to assess how the joint cre­at­ive work had “changed their per­cep­tion of the debate, the oth­er prot­ag­on­ists and the facts of the issue”³. In addi­tion, a second sur­vey⁴ was con­duc­ted in July 2020 to detail the long-term effects of the exper­i­ence. Among the find­ings: two years after the cre­ation, “half of the par­ti­cipants (56%) think that some­thing has changed in the way they pos­i­tion them­selves on the con­tro­ver­sial issue⁵,” and the mul­tiple levels of change are specified.

Olivi­er Fournout. The start­ing point is the obser­va­tion that in our soci­et­ies, divi­sions and con­tro­versy are con­stantly fuelled by the media and social net­works. There are divi­sions and irre­con­cil­able dif­fer­ences. When faced with any real­ity – even sci­entif­ic and recog­nised ones – we are drawn into spir­als of viol­ence, both polit­ic­ally and eth­ic­ally. Dif­fer­ent groups of people in con­flict no longer talk to each oth­er, or only talk to those who share their views, ignor­ing what is hap­pen­ing around them. These divided soci­et­ies are stud­ied by the soci­ology of controversy.

Based on this obser­va­tion, my per­spect­ive has been to help cit­izens and stu­dents engage with con­tro­ver­sial issues in order to under­stand their under­ly­ing causes and try to over­come them. After study­ing them and some­times exper­i­en­cing them first-hand, those involved take part in the cre­ation of a col­lect­ive the­at­ric­al pro­duc­tion deal­ing with the issue. This approach is accom­pan­ied by a cent­ral research ques­tion: how does the pro­cess of col­lect­ive artist­ic cre­ation change the exper­i­ence of the people involved? What can theatre pro­duc­tion spe­cific­ally con­trib­ute in terms of rep­res­ent­ing issues, and how can this be made access­ible to the audi­ence? Thanks to fund­ing from the ANR⁶, we were able to set up an empir­ic­al study of these effects, enabling us to make them the sub­ject of research.

I have used this the­at­ric­al meth­od­o­logy more than 150 times: with stu­dents and cit­izens, but also, on sev­er­al occa­sions, with pro­fes­sion­al act­resses on the sub­ject of transhuman­ism⁷. The col­lect­ive cre­ation pro­cess is well estab­lished. A 50-minute doc­u­ment­ary filmed in 2018 recounts this pro­cess⁸. Each time, we start with a soci­et­al phe­nomen­on that has been stud­ied and/or exper­i­enced. The cre­ation time is short. In two days, the par­ti­cipants cre­ate a 20–25-minute play and per­form it in front of an audi­ence. There is a lot of impro­visa­tion, includ­ing in the final per­form­ance. People who, in most cases, have nev­er done theatre before can find them­selves at ease impro­vising and per­form­ing very accur­ately, in a very lively and nat­ur­al way, as opposed to recit­ing a text they have learned by heart. The sta­ging choices, act­ing and text are left entirely up to the cre­at­ive groups. The facil­it­at­ors provide feed­back, but the group and its col­lect­ive dimen­sion always have the final say. The rules of the game are shared with the group in advance, and cre­ativ­ity flour­ishes with­in this frame­work. I tested this col­lect­ive cre­ation format for the first time in 2009, in a highly innov­at­ive course for the Corps des Mines, com­bin­ing field geo­logy, theatre and obser­va­tion of group dynam­ics. This course, which still exists, gave rise to a paper in edu­ca­tion­al sci­ences in 2011⁹.

To return to the issue of mar­riage equal­ity, we pub­lished a research paper in 2017 with Valérie Beau­douin on this the­at­ric­al pro­duc­tion that was staged in 2013¹⁰. What was par­tic­u­larly strik­ing about the group of stu­dents who took part was that most of those who had vol­un­tar­ily signed up to dram­at­ise this con­tro­ver­sial issue were deeply con­cerned about the sub­ject. Stu­dents came to sign up say­ing that they could no longer dis­cuss it among them­selves and wanted to open up the dia­logue. That’s why they signed up, and one stu­dent in par­tic­u­lar con­fided that she felt very deeply about the sub­ject. This lent a spe­cial tone to the work done by this group of stu­dents, because it wasn’t just about study­ing the issue. The cre­at­ive pro­cess brought some­thing deeply felt to the surface.

For ques­tions about pesti­cides and wheth­er tech­no­logy helps or hinders the fight against cli­mate change, we had the means to con­duct a sur­vey and object­ively assess the effects on the par­ti­cipants in the col­lect­ive cre­ation. The play on pesti­cides fea­tured an organ­ic farm­er, anoth­er who treats his more than 100 hec­tares with glyphosate, a tech­nic­al advisor for large farms, an envir­on­ment­al act­iv­ist, the head of an asso­ci­ation, a doc­tor registered with an agri­cul­tur­al health insur­ance fund who is him­self a winegrow­er. With this pan­el, we achieved the highest pos­sible level of rep­res­ent­a­tion on the sub­ject. It was chal­len­ging and uncom­prom­ising, because there was a real divide at the out­set, with par­ti­cipants afraid of being attacked. For example, the farm­er who sprayed his fields with glyphosate thought he was going to be “lynched”. In a way, we have an empir­ic­al breed­ing ground where we start from a very dis­tant point in terms of divi­sion and the risk of hurt feelings.

For the play on mar­riage equal­ity, we were unable to con­duct a sur­vey of stu­dents on the col­lect­ive cre­ation pro­cess at the time, but the con­tent of the play itself reflects very pos­it­ive res­ults. Although they didn’t agree with each oth­er at all, the stu­dents man­aged to draw a frieze with six dif­fer­ent rep­res­ent­a­tions of couples, which were pro­jec­ted dur­ing the play and which Valérie Beau­douin and I repro­duced in our art­icle. In a way, the play gave birth to a mod­el of diversity, even though the stu­dents dis­agreed about these rep­res­ent­a­tions in the pub­lic space. Anoth­er achieve­ment is the name the theatre com­pany gave itself, “theatre for all”, which neatly sums up the uni­fy­ing power of theatre, in the same way that a Shakespeare play brings togeth­er Fal­staff and the future Henry V in a tav­ern. In short, the stu­dents man­aged to find com­mon ground through theatre, where the sub­ject mat­ter was divis­ive, which is both touch­ing and effective.

Chan­ging people’s minds is not some­thing that can be set as an imposed object­ive. What we observed in our second sur­vey con­duc­ted in 2020 was that, after the col­lect­ive cre­ation pro­cess, there was a much bet­ter under­stand­ing of the con­text and logic behind oth­er people’s pos­i­tions, a sens­it­iv­ity to per­son­al stor­ies and an open­ness to dia­logue with people with whom it had pre­vi­ously been impossible to dis­cuss these issues. From expos­ure to oppos­ing pos­i­tions, ini­tially per­ceived as the worst enemies in the con­flict, empathy and emo­tion even­tu­ally emerge, which is a fant­ast­ic res­ult. Fant­ast­ic, because this ini­tial res­ult paves the way for cog­nit­ive advances: two years after the exper­i­ment, 70% of par­ti­cipants said they had learned things in terms of “reflec­tion” and “thoughts”.

The key point here is undoubtedly the pro­cess of the­at­ric­al cre­ation, which brings togeth­er people who no longer talk to each oth­er in real life and cre­ates a com­mon object around which dia­logue can take place. Indeed, the con­tro­ver­sial ele­ments of the play, such as the theme of pesti­cides, are inter­twined with the oblig­a­tion to cre­ate a play togeth­er. This oblig­a­tion, which is stronger than the sub­jects of dis­agree­ment, makes it pos­sible to rebuild rela­tion­ships, or to build what I call in the book a “rela­tion­al eco­logy”, which becomes the con­di­tion for any real pro­gress. In short, we must first work on the eco­logy of human rela­tions to achieve res­ults in the eco­logy of nature, which requires everyone’s con­tri­bu­tion in the search for solu­tions. The the­at­ric­al pro­cess makes it pos­sible to restore a form of alli­ance to suc­cess­fully co-cre­ate the play – a play which is itself a dia­logue that addresses the root of the problem.

One of the lim­it­a­tions of the approach is that theatre is a very eph­em­er­al dis­cip­line that requires a lot of resources to be per­formed again. For example, we staged two plays in the Deux-Sèvres region, in part­ner­ship with a CNRS agroe­co­logy “Zone Atelier” (Centre d’Étude Bio­lo­gique de la Forêt de Chizé) and WISION, a com­pany spe­cial­ising in medi­ation in rur­al areas. The sub­ject was the rela­tion­ship between farm­ers and loc­al res­id­ents. The plays were cre­ated and per­formed by farm­ers and loc­al res­id­ents, joined by a few stu­dents. The two plays we filmed¹¹ went very well, and we par­ted ways say­ing that we should per­form them again. How­ever, the will and resources to do so are not neces­sar­ily there, and find­ing ven­ues is dif­fi­cult. It is a very power­ful pro­cess on an exist­en­tial, emo­tion­al and affect­ive level, involving the body, but one that is not eas­ily repeated.

We need mech­an­isms that work on rela­tion­ships in order to then work on changes in prac­tices and values.

In 2020, in the midst of the COVID lock­down, we set up a dia­logue plat­form called Zig­Za­g­Zoom¹² with Cyrille Bom­bard, who works as a social medi­at­or. We bring togeth­er three people in favour of a pos­i­tion and three people against it, with a par­ti­cip­at­ory audi­ence of ten to fif­teen people. We always come to the same con­clu­sion: changes in beha­viour and atti­tudes can only come about if we first work on the rela­tion­al ground­work. This res­ult is prob­ably gen­er­al­is­able. It is not expert dis­course, how­ever numer­ous and com­pet­ent, that brings about change. If it did, many prob­lems would already have been solved. What does bring about change, how­ever, is first and fore­most build­ing rela­tion­ships based on mutu­al under­stand­ing. We need mech­an­isms that work on rela­tion­ships to then work on chan­ging prac­tices and values.

The par­ti­cipants in our 2020 sur­vey were dis­ap­poin­ted by the frame­work of the exper­i­ment, which they had expec­ted to sup­port them after the col­lect­ive theatre exper­i­ence. This is indeed a lim­it­a­tion that I have not been able to address, as the research is highly depend­ent on fund­ing that is lim­ited in time and per pro­ject. When fund­ing stops, there is no fol­low-up because resources are sud­denly cut off. For example, I can no longer work with my col­league, a social medi­at­or who would like to con­tin­ue the effort to anchor the changes that have been ini­ti­ated and keep the pro­gramme alive over the long term.

In our 2018 play about pesti­cides, a new myth­o­lo­gic­al char­ac­ter appeared: “the little sick field”. This char­ac­ter was cre­ated by the troupe. It is not men­tioned in any of the encyc­lo­pae­di­as of the ima­gin­a­tion that I have con­sul­ted. It is a cre­ation from this play which may one day change the world. Pla­cing a fic­tion­al device such as “the little sick field” at the centre of the story is already a way of learn­ing how to heal it. See­ing is already doing, as research on mir­ror neur­ons tends to show¹³. Thus, fic­tion­al actions on a theatre stage, espe­cially when they have been cre­ated by the very people involved in society’s prob­lems, open the way to over­com­ing divi­sions. They inspire us to build a com­mon future togeth­er. This is undoubtedly a neces­sary and essen­tial con­di­tion for solv­ing problems.

Interview by Lucille Caliman