Role-Play as Performance

Abstract

Role-play offers experiences and insights distinctly different from those of real life. Role-play enables a group to see their usual, everyday behaviour on stage from the novel point of view of an outsider, and assuming appropriate aesthetic distance, even while they are themselves on stage. However, to make this impact and foster these insights, role-play needs to come alive. To achieve this, designers and facilitators need to access creativity throughout the process, organize well, use space thoughtfully, manage aesthetic distance artfully, cater to the particular demands of the simulation triad of actor, player, and facilitator, and recognize that only role-play, of all performance types, is intrinsically a rehearsal process. Managed well, these factors produce dynamic role-plays and accomplished facilitation.

Having considered some of the major aspects of performance in general, we now turn our attention to role-play itself. We begin with the need for creativity throughout the process, and consider organization , the choice of location , the active management of aesthetic distance , the simulation triad of actor, player, and facilitator, and the intrinsic nature of role-play as rehearsal . Managed well, these factors produce dynamic role-plays and accomplished facilitation. These important aspects of role-play performance are introduced here in broad brush strokes and expanded in much greater detail in later chapters.