The promise and pain of devising as deliberative democracy: Out Of Character Theatre Company’s Fresh Visions trilogy

Heinemeyer, Catherine ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6300-5544, Rowe, Nick and Birch, Paul (2022) The promise and pain of devising as deliberative democracy: Out Of Character Theatre Company’s Fresh Visions trilogy. Research in Drama Education, 27 (3). pp. 286-303.

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Official URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13569...

Abstract

Out Of Character Theatre Company's Fresh Visions project pursued an innovative theatre-based research methodology which enabled sustained, in-depth, polyphonic and dialogic engagement around the future shape of local mental health services. Since our previous research (Heinemeyer, Catherine and Nick Rowe. 2019. ‘Being Known, Branching Out: Troupes, Teams and Recovery.’ Mental Health Review Journal 24(3): 212-227) indicated that theatre devising can act as ‘intuitive democracy’, we ask whether Fresh Visions constituted a deliberative democracy exercise. We explore both the ‘promise’ of theatre-led approaches to overcome power imbalances and embrace dissent in deliberative processes, and their attendant ‘pain’ and limitations.

Item Type:	Article
Status:	Published
DOI:	10.1080/13569783.2022.2052832
School/Department:	School of Education, Language and Psychology
URI:	https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/6120