‘Honouring the storyteller’: the potential of Playback Theatre in health policy and systems research

Stories and storytelling stimulate inquiries in health policy, and initiate and become an integral part of policy dialogues. They can also be used as a health policy advocacy tool. Storytelling is a compelling way to engage with various actors in the health policy realm, co-creating knowledge and action in the social world of health systems. Playback Theatre (PT) is an improvisational form of theatre in which audience members share their life stories, which are then enacted on the spot by a group of citizen actors. Citizen actors are everyday people who are not necessarily professional performers but are trained in PT. PT's emphasis on emotional expression and representation allows individuals to deeply engage with the stories of others, leading to greater empathy and understanding across diverse social groups. If applied with a critical consciousness, we argue that PT methodology can illuminate health policy and systems research storytelling processes, given its ontological and epistemological alignment with social constructivism and its orientation towards values such as human dignity and social justice. In this article, we explore the possibilities and the limits of PT for storytelling in the field of Health Policy and Systems Research, as it emphasises stories as much as the storyteller.