Raising social consciousness through verbatim theatre: a realist evaluation

Abstract Background: Verbatim theatre has the potential to raise social consciousness around difficult social issues, but consideration needs to be given to the philosophical and practice aspects of evaluating social consciousness. Methods: A mixed methods design consisting of survey and ethnographic data was used within Realist frameworks. Results: Four Context-Mechanism-Outcome configurations were developed. These allowed exploration of transformative learning as the key to understanding how verbatim theatre could raise social consciousness. Conclusions: From a Critical Realist perspective, verbatim theatre can potentially raise social consciousness through a transformative learning mechanism that consists of emotional and cognitive components. However, a number of factors need to be taken into consideration.