# Object theatre
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*Authors: [Anne Pässilä](https://www.linkedin.com/in/annepassila/)*

Summary
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**Art-form**^1^: Performance art. Draws on a range of traditions of modern adult puppet theater.


Sketch by Anne Pässilä, photo by Antti Knutas

*Object Theatre*

**Requirements**
* Time: 15 minutes pop-up example to 1,30 hours scripted and particiaptory performed
* Difficulty^2^: 1 star for pop-up, 4 stars for participatory performed session
* What you'll need: objects, stage (pop-up can be created on the table with white or black cloth, lights, music, a theme to investigate with the help of objects (and participatory performed needs dramaturgical knowledge for scripting, rehearsing and performing)
* Participants: All age

Description
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**Steps**
1. Create a stage with a selection of objects
2. Identify a theme you want to explore together; for example power tensions or hidden thoughts
3. Choose an object which illustrates theme you decideed to explore
4. Start to talk about the theme with the help of the objects. Create fast several set-ups which speaks about the theme

**Which stage to use it in**
* Is usefull for any stage where you need aesthetic distancing to organise space for thinking and talking

**Why it is useful**

We have identified this type of an Object Theatre being based on Bertolt Brecht’s idea of the alienation effect, which breaks down the illusion of cathartic theatre. The idea of aesthetic distancing puts familiar, taken-for-granted issues in a new light, making the unfamiliar familiar and vice versa; everyday affairs and relationships are explored through metaphors or roles. This allows for reflection and reflexive thinking; participants sensuously explore different type of distance related to the issues at hand.

**How to document**
Still images and audio (you can also use these as a form of evocative reporting of themes)

**Analysis**
Discourse analysis

*Footnotes*

^1^ Categories are based on Sara Coemans and Karin Hannes. 2017. Researchers under the spell of the arts: Two decades of using arts-based methods in community-based inquiry with vulnerable populations. Educational Research Review 22 (2017), 34–49.
^2^ 1-5 stars, I star being easy to facilitate and do not require deep artistic skills and 5 stars requiring deep level artistic skills.

###### tags: `art-based methods guide` `book` `method`