Q: What is forum theatre

A: Forum theatre is a dynamic workshop using drama to engage with your staff. A forum theatre scenario is performed by professional actors and designed to stimulate audience participation through debate, interactive role-playing and shared experiences.

Q: How does a forum theatre event work?

A: The event is divided into three sections.

Part 1 The audience is presented with a short play in which they follow the journey of a set of characters who are experiencing a challenging situation.

Part 2 The audience have the opportunity to question the behaviour and attitude of the characters to discover a more detailed picture.

Part 3 The actors will then perform the scene again but this time an audience member will call out "Stop!" at the point where they would like to change the scene or the behaviour of the characters. The actors will then take on board the comments and re-enact the scene based on the comments from the audience.

Q: What are the benefits of forum theatre?

A: Forum theatre is a live and interactive experience. Your staff are able to participate, engage and vocalise their thoughts and opinions on the subject in question. We make challenging issues come to life and will actively seek out a response from the audience.

Q: How do you research your material?

A: After an initial brief from the client, we thoroughly research the topic by looking at real life case studies while seeking out information from stakeholder organisations and support charities. Only when we have gained a full picture of the issues will we write and dramatise the situation, which is then approved by you, and rehearsed and performed by our actors.

Q: How many delegates would this suit?

A: A typical forum theatre event is best suited to a group 15 - 50.

Q: Where do you hold these events?

A: These events are usually held on the premises of your business, space permitting of course or at a conference venue of your choosing.

Q: How does role-play work?

A: Professional actors are frequently used as role players in development and assessment centres on a one-to-one basis. The delegate and the roleplayer is given a fictitious scenario with background information on the situation and characters involved. The delegate and the roleplayer will then have a "real life" conversation.

Q: How can I use role-players?

A: Role-players can be used effectively  in customer service training, appraisal training, staff management and sales training to name a few. Encouraging your staff to practise different outcomes of a given scenario is a valuable investment for your company.

Q: What are the benefits of using role-players?

A: Professional role-players will give a realistic performance according to given guidelines and give a consistent performance to all participants. He or she will respond to different circumstances in a realistic and natural manner, giving you a model from which to make a fair assessment. Relying on colleagues to perform with each other puts undue pressure on the idividual and the learning experience is lost.

Q: How do you source your role-players?

A: Every role-player we provide has trained professionally as an actor with proven experience in corporate roleplay. Our actors are personally vetted and assessed in an interview and audition

Q: What type of role-players do you provide?

A: We have approximately 70 role-players on our books from varying diverse backgrounds and physical abilities.

Q: Does Scene Change have an Equality and Diversity policy?

A: Yes. We actively seek to employ contributors from all ethnic groups of varying ages, sexual orientation, gender and physical abilities