The focus of my research is to investigate how a combination of theatre practice and different level of physical engagement of the participators can be used to perform, examine and discuss collective action.
The possibility to move from the role of a bystander to the role of a participator, and vice versa, facilitates the possibility to scrutinize a political action itself. By inviting the audience to participate alongside actors in fictional scenarios, it is possible to examine the ethos of a social movement; a reasoning in line with Brecht’s learning plays. In an ongoing creation of a sequence of performances the theatre collective Public Plot develops the concept learning play. In Violence & Learning (2016) Public Plot used die Maßnahme and Mauser as reference points and toolboxes. Violence & Learning was performed primarily in social centers and occupied buildings in Sweden and Germany. During 2019 Public Plot performs Corpus & Punishment. The methods developed in Violence & Learning will be used in a reconstruction of a dystopia set out in a possible future in a European country with a nationalist government. In both performances the audience physically takes part in ways that are inspired by police and military training, and how social activists set up and play out violent scenarios to educate themselves. The tools used in the creation of the performances include sociological terms contention (Tilly) and public order management (Della Porta). These participatory performances can be used to create rooms for critical discussions, in which the embodied knowledge that is inherent in certain actions or situations is exposed, and also argue that the artistic work presented is a way to renegotiate the values that are making us act.

The performances Violence & Learning and Corpus & Punishment is being developed and performed by a team of scholars and artists called Public Plot. They are also part of the input and outpout of John Hanses artistic research.