Innovation Blog

Playback Theatre:  A Case Study in Scale-Up

By Shlomo Maital

    Two awful disasters occur to inventors.  One is, their invention fails.  The second is, their invention succeeds!

    Succeeds?  Why is that a disaster?

   Because very often, innovators are not prepared for success, and are unable to scale up and globalize quickly. 

    An exception is Playback Theatre.  Playback Theatre is an original form of improvisational theatre in which audience or group members tell stories from their lives and watch them enacted on the spot. Playback Theatre is sometimes considered a modality of drama therapy.

    “I was sitting in a coffee shop, drinking hot chocolate”, recalls founder Jonathan Fox.  I pictured a small audience, people who’d be ready to act out the story of their community.   I had done experimental theatre that would get close to the community in godforsaken places….Over the years, the vision expanded and took on therapeutic dimension.”

     Fox began the world’s first Playback Theatre in New York in 1975.  His wife, musician Jo Salas, helped him.  Today there are eight branches around the world, including one in Israel.  The idea scaled quickly. 

    Here is an example of Playback Theatre, as enacted recently in Tel Aviv: (source: Haaretz Magazine, April 9, 2010):    A small intimate theatre.  Mostly women in the audience.  A pianist and 6 actors are ready.  People introduce themselves to one another.  The emcee invites a volunteer from the audience to tell a personal story.  Actors are then selected for roles.  A women sits in the ‘teller’s seat’, and relates,  how 23 years ago, she was called to the phone and told her father had died.  ‘I wanted to open the coffin and laughed…I ….decided to say good-bye in a different way. So a week later I went to the cemetery and lit a memorial candle and played the tango melodies he loved.’   The actors begin.  They dance a tango on the stage.  “Laugh! Let her laugh! ” They shout.  “Dad you went too soon.  But I am so proud of you and myself. You can hear me, can’t you?!”…..  Applause.

        If your idea fails…it dies.  If it succeeds — how will keep it authentic, true to your vision, while spreading it around the world?  Study Playback and other successful innovations.  And above all — think ahead!   What if my idea catches on like wildfire?  What will I do? How will I scale up?   Better to think ahead, than scramble to catch up — by then it’s too late.