Theatre-making and performance: The importance of authenticity in the process of ‘being’ and negotiating the ‘becoming’

Abstract

Theatre-making processes and performance opportunities offer young people who are vulnerable, marginalized or disenfranchised a means to rethink their current identities and consider different ways of being. This article discusses a three-month theatre-making programme with sixteen children from a low-income residential estate in Singapore. The programme, which culminated in two public performances, offered opportunities for the young people to re-engage with situations and experiences from their own lives. While exploration and story creation involved a fictional lens, the authors note the importance of including elements of authentic stories from the lives of participants. The theatre-making became a critical platform for the participants to examine the identities they performed; a state of being, and offered ways for them to see how they could shape future identities for themselves through the process of becoming. It was also a physical and dialogical space providing young people in need of supportive structures in their lives with alternative perspectives and voices.