Interpreting social issues: Museum theatre’s potential for critical engagement

Abstract

Museum theatre and its potential within museum education is explored at the Museum Education and Research Laboratory at the University of Thessaly, Greece. There, the leading research project Museums and Education: methods of approaching and interpreting museum objects’aims to address how, over the last few decades, museum theatre has been in ever-increasing use to vocalize the sensitive issues of a multicultural society and marginalized social communities. Recent studies highlight museum theatre evoking empathy and critical engagement in the audience with the subject-matter of the performance. One such performance was organized by the School of Drama at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and studied in depth. Titled Voices of the City: Historical Routes through Theatre, the performance embodied controversial social issues, and its implementation was evaluated using qualitative methodology to examine the responses of visitors.