Counter-Narratives Mobilized by Deprived Communities Through Theatre Interventions: Deconstructing and Reframing Master Narratives

Mise au Jeu is a Quebec-based social intervention organization that has been putting on forum theatre – in the Augusto Boal tradition of the theatre of the oppressed – for over 20 years. We investigate how such a non-profit organization creates spaces where members of a deprived communities can elaborate counter-narratives to deconstruct dominant narratives, thereby helping them to make sense of situations of oppression they are living and to act to promote social change. By unpacking counter-narrative strategies and their enabling mechanisms, our study contributes to the narrative tradition in two principal ways. First, while extending Deetz’s work on dominant narratives, we enrich existing understanding of the disruptive power of counter-narratives in situations of social exclusion by bringing to bear the theatrical principles and techniques of Augusto Boal, a missing voice in extant narrative literature. Second, we propose a reflexive discussion related to the political conceptualization of counter-narratives.