Can Story Telling Realy Change The World?

Michel Foucault

Foucault addresses social action through his outlook on power. His argument makes a detour through history by showing that since the middle ages we face a "genealogy of human soul" (Gutting, 1994, p. 75).

Foucault uses a history of punishment in order to illustrate the larger social movement of power from the aristocracy to the middle classes. He is interested in punishment to exemplify how modern society disciplines its subjects. These subjects experience the intersection of social definitions of normality, through material institutions such as school.

Furthermore, punishment is used when non-bourgeois "rebels" (Foucault, 2004, p. 285) are identified. They are judged by the bourgeois in order to stabilize society.

Foucault's outlook on power, describes the move from public, physical punishments to individual, invisible discipline of the soul. He demonstrates how the subject bonds with the object, while both are controlled by the policy required. Foucault further relates to the production of knowledge regarding the three concepts: norm body and knowledge. They govern the subject by use of a pendulum swinging between discipline and punishment. In order for such relations of knowledge and power to exist new technics of individualism are formed (Foucault, 2004, p.305).

In light of Foucault's approach, it may be suggested that PT uses norm body and knowledge in order to enact a scene. But, so long as the contract with the audience is based on obtaining a cathartic experience, the sense of imprisonment will prolong.

Pierre Bourdieu’s ‘Habitus’

Bourdieu too refers to power relations. His term, 'habitus', relates to the structured social forces governing us. Bourdieu coined the term in an attempt to bridge the gap between two competing sociological approaches: the subjective approach that analysed social processes as the deliberate action of individuals while ignoring the social forces acting on the individual; and the objective approach, focused on social structures, systems and institutions, ignoring the voluntary actions of individuals.

Bourdieu was interested in identifying the functioning of the social structure in the preferences and voluntary actions of individuals. 'Habitus' seeks to clarify how the hierarchical relations between social groups are internalized and experienced as natural and how the social status of the individual is expressed in the cultural capital accumulated during his life (Bourdieu, 1990, .p 13).

Habitus serves Bourdieu in order to identify the mechanism of reproduction In this sense Bourdieu presents a closed world, a replicator - the only way to change it is called "space for taking a stand"(Bourdieu, 2005, p. 122). Therefore it may be suggested that Bourdieu regards the source of the theater's power to bring about change is within the habitus rather than outside it.

Since theatre is used in order to control the cultural capital by reproduction it takes place in dialectic positions in the field. PT will best serve these dialectic positions by voicing both the individual teller and the community narrative. The individual teller becomes the community narrator, bringing forth not only his story but that of many others.

Michel De Certeau

Alongside Foucault and Bourdieu, Michel de Certeau recognizes the existence of governing social structures which he names strategies. But unlike Foucault and Bourdieu he recognizes another force, that of the individual over governing social structures. He names the actions of individuals 'tactics' (De Certeau, 1984, p. 38).

In his book 'The practice of everyday life' de Certeau's widens the dichotomy between the self and the potential to overcome governing social powers.

For de Certeau the concept of strategy relates to concrete material, space, and the institutional frameworks. By this it may be suggested that he means that the individual is conditioned to participate in certain social or cultural activities, governed by the structure. For de Certeau the concept of tactics relates to mobile, temporal and personal occupations of space enacted by an individual. Something as simple as walking in the city becomes a tactical act, as the pedestrian creates a personalized path from the various options that the urban grid provides.

While Foucault regards disciplinary procedures as inevitable, de Certeau suggests that tactics are "the unknown forms" taken by dispersed individuals already "caught in the nets of discipline" (de Certeau, 1984, xiv–xv). They use creative, make shift ways in order to free themselves from the grid. De Certeau describes how tactics operate within a space that is becoming ‘at once' more homogenous and more extensive.

While strategies tend to ‘produce, and impose’ places in conformity with ‘abstract models’, tactics work to "use, manipulate, and divert these spaces" (de Certeau, 1984,p. 29–30). This is done in a voluntary way by increasing the "number of possibilities in a dominated space" (de Certeau, 1984, p. 98). Just as the pedestrian created a personalized path, so the PT actor improvises on stage, insinuating "himself in the other’s place, fragmentarily, without taking it over in its entirety, without being able to keep it at a distance" (de Certeau, 1984, p. xix).

De Certeau allows us to perceive the seemingly paradoxical co-presence of transcendence and the everyday upon which they are built. This reciprocal relationship, in addition to the empowering presentations of the street-level movement described above, works in many sequences to relate mystifying or normally out-of-reach specialities to our experiential and bodily coordinates. In this way the seemingly constant gap between strategies and tactics is subtly reduced. For de Certeau tactical appropriations are a necessary response to contemporary life – a way of providing narratives to places and so making them liveable (de Certeau, 1984, p.142).

Playback Theatre – three avenues

Following the reading into Foucault Bourdieu and de Certeau a new call for action in PT emerges. Through its 40 years of journey playback theatre has developed extremely. Today two main avenues may be detected:

The first is based on theatrical dimensions and usually takes place in front of a random or rearranged audience (Fox 1994, p.119). Most events in this case are cathartic with a theatrical structure. Yet, they usually take place within the governing strategies and limit the possibility for voluntary spontaneous growth.

The second avenue is a vast and varied use of PT in therapeutics, social help groups and training groups. On many occasions these are repeated workshops (on a short or annual basis) and share a content dimension where PT is a crucial and leading means (Salas 2005, p.82) . Here too there is limited possibility for voluntary spontaneous growth because episteme psychic boundaries may be broken but not the governing social ones.

Both these avenues are limited in time and impact.

Therefore this article will attempt to offer a third avenue. This avenue will aim to add the option for social action, by creating a new contract between the audience and the actors. In order to do so the random participators in a one-time PT experience will be invited to continue and participate in an on-going PT experience. Thus the experience will be a deeper and more self-revealing one, and it may be hoped that on the community level an authentic social action will emerge enabling a change of the social structure.