Everything’s a Rule: In Legislative Theatre, Every Citizen Is a Policy Analyst
How do we, as citizens, begin to participate in designing and changing policy, before we are able to articulate the relationship between what we experience in our daily lives, and the laws, rules and designs that impact those experiences? I am inspired by the frame of “citizen as a verb” used by Baratunde Thurston on his blog “How to Citizen,” in which “citizen” is not a noun defined by nationalities or passports, but an active practice, open to all residents. To citizen, like any physical or mental challenge, we build skills with continued practice. Legislative Theatre offers one such exercise programme, which is accessible (and fun!) for both democracy newbies and seasoned policymakers.
Three decades ago, Theatre of the Oppressed creator and activist-turned-city councillor Augusto Boal brought a community theatre performance into Rio de Janeiro’s city council chambers, inviting the public and his fellow councillors to test out changes to local legislation by improvising in the scene. That was the birth of the Legislative Theatre methodology, which is now practised around the world, from New York City to Colombia, from London to India — creative, radical, participatory democracy, built on a foundation of the ethics and techniques of Theatre and Pedagogy of the Oppressed. In Legislative Theatre (LT), audiences and policymakers watch a play based on the community actors’ experiences of oppressive policies and practices. Then, audiences act onstage to rehearse ways to confront the problems presented and test new policies in real time. This testing leads actors and audiences to propose ideas for new policies to address the problems, working together with advocates and government representatives. Finally, audience members vote on their priorities, and decision-makers commit to immediate actions.
From 2013-2018, I worked to develop this practice as executive director of Theatre of the Oppressed NYC, and since 2019, I’ve been collaborating with local governments to implement and amplify LT across the UK. Various concrete policy wins have followed directly from LT processes in the UK and the US, including the co-creation of the first Greater Manchester Homelessness Prevention Strategy (2021-2026), which won the International Observatory of Participatory Democracy 2022 Award for Best Practice in Citizen Participation. However, while LT and other participatory democracy methodologies should, and do, result in more equitable and effective policies and budgets, the civic activation and consciousness-raising that grow from these processes can have lasting power.
In an LT process, community members begin by playing games that reveal, physically and emotionally, the way that rules are embedded inside us and outside in society. These games lead to discussions about the rules we are forced to follow daily, and how they might stop us from accessing our rights and living with dignity. When we talk about rules, we’re equally concerned with the very local to the international. We must examine rules we make or follow in our homes and families alongside the rules we experience in the school, the hospital, the parliament. These discussions lead to stories, which lead to scenes, which become tools for framing a policy problem. Once the actors have framed the problem in this human-centred way, the audience can understand it both emotionally and analytically, and only then are we ready to imagine and test new alternatives with the broader public.
