Branch Out Theatre invites you to join us as a spectator and a spect-actor...
We believe in the power of theatre to ignite social change. To help make that possible, we invite our audience members to be active participants in our shows. Whether you join us in stepping into the action to create change in a forum theatre play, sharing a story for our actors to playback in a playback theatre performance, offering a prompt or singing along in our improvisational storytelling performances—in our productions, the audience and the performers are almost always co-creating to make positive change happen on stage.
Production Styles
Forum Theatre
Actors present a worst-case scenario play focusing on issues of social injustice or localized conflicts. Spectators are then invited to step into the action of the play as spect-actors to rehearse resolving the conflicts onstage, scene by scene. Plays can be devised with you, or for you on the topic of your choice. Forum Theatre is a powerful tool to increase social awareness and leadership through actively rehearsing how to transform conflicts, build social justice and work towards social change.
Playback Theatre
Audience members are invited to share stories and watch as our actors play them back. This interactive and therapeutic form of improvisational theatre serves to motivate self-expression, build community and compassion, as audiences recognize and learn from the diversity and universality of their experiences. We invite you to choose the theme for the show or we can choose with you.
Original and Improvisational Storytelling
Artistic Director, Naomi Tessler, charismatically takes audiences on an adventure in interactive storytelling. Naomi writes original stories that can be created on the theme of your choice. Each story is an adventure in co-creation- inviting audiences to Branch Out through adding pieces to the tale, joining in for a song and improvising collectively the direction the stories will travel.