Values, Intentions, Success and Impact in Applied Theatre Documents

Abstract

Our aim in this chapter is to develop a sense of how the data for this study assembled and recruited change as an understandable, usable or knowable concept related applied theatre. To achieve this, we explore how the documents collected for this project draw on, and represent a variety of themes that seem to be informed by, or to inform the idea of change in applied theatre. The analyses presented here are based on more purposive thematic coding of the data than those provided in the previous section. Specifically, here we describe the results of coding that employed the software program NVIVO, which we used to collect and interrelate references to 'transformation' and 'change'. The themes of value, intent, success and impact had emerged from discussions in the literature, and so we used them as filters for exploring the content in the 139 documents. The chapter aims to present a clear and robust, but relatively common-sense, 'everyday' view of the data, drawing together what was discovered when the documents were explored with the specific themes above in mind. In this sense, this chapter presents data from the research to establish the bases for subsequent discussions of the findings, including the critical perspectives that emerged. The themes we focus on here revolve around the idea that to understand whether or not an applied theatre program has been successful, we must understand what change has, or has not, occurred, and the relationship such change might have for the intentions of the program. The intention of the funders and facilitators cannot be detached from the details of the practices or thus from the impact of the work (Etherton and Prentki 2006). The values held by the funders, facilitators, participants , and evaluators (if they were different from those listed) were also considered central to understanding what changes were given prominence, and what 'success' had or had not been achieved.