What is Playback Theatre?

Playback theatre is a richly human form of improvisational theatre in which audience members tell stories from their lives and watch them enacted on the spot. The intention is to honor the stories that are told, whether they are funny, poignant, painful, or transformative. Through this shared honoring of personal stories, playback theatre draws diverse people closer, as they see their common humanity.

Playback was founded in 1975 in New York's Hudson Valley by Jonathan Fox with Jo Salas, as an outgrowth of their work in psychodrama. The founders felt that the kind of theatre created spontaneously from personal stories in a therapeutic environment could be adjusted and applied as a uniquely community-building form of entertainment. Since then, playback has reached many thousands of locations around the world.