Playback Theatre - OLLI at Duke - Fall 2022 Nancy Capaccio
ROLES IN PLAYBACK THEATRE1
Audience/Tellers The teller is anyone who voluntarily offers their feeling,
comments, or stories to be heard by all and reflected by the company. The audience is
not unlike audiences at other types of live performance with the important exception
that they are also all potential tellers.
Conductor The conductor is the host or emcee who facilitates the flow of the Playback
Theatre event, inviting different people to tell their stories and choosing which of
various forms the actors and musician should use to enact a given story. Jonathan Fox
writes that the conductor also “monitors the arc of the performance, deciding when is
just the right time to invite the first story, and when will be the last. She conducts the
ritual, making clear what are its rules and keeping them honored” (2019, 10). In
Improvising Real Life (2007), Jo Salas further explains, “The double metaphor of the
name ‘conductor’ points to two aspects of the conductor’s job. It refers to the role of the
orchestral conductor—directing a group of performers so they can work together and so
the pieces they collectively create are organized and beautiful—and also to the
conduction of energy between all those present. The conductor is the conduit, the
channel through which audience and actors can meet” (65). Elsewhere, she says “The
conductor’s role is an embodiment of Playback’s fusion of art and social action” (Salas
2021, 80). Based on the story shared, including any clarifying details mined by the
conductor’s questions, the conductor chooses the form for reenacting the story that they
feel can best capture the story’s essence as well as sometimes working collaboratively
with the teller to cast the actors as specific characters. This role requires knowledge of
the forms and their attributes, familiarity with the actors’ capabilities, and a sensitivity
to the explicit and implicit meanings of the teller’s sharing.
Actors The actors are the ones who, with their voices, bodies, and imaginations enact
the feelings, comments, and stories the tellers offer. The work of the actor in Playback
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Pages 13-14, Storytelling on Screen
Playback Theatre - OLLI at Duke - Fall 2022 Nancy Capaccio
Theatre is largely, if not entirely, improvisational, meaning almost nothing is prepared
beforehand. Acting in Playback Theatre requires creativity, imagination,
expressiveness, but most especially, listening and a sense of story. Salas (2007)
specifies that Playback depends “on the actor’s sense of story, that aesthetic feel for
form and the archetypal story shape” (51). As part of a warm up or opening ritual, actors
may tell short stories about themselves to introduce a theme or model the kind of
real-life storytelling that will be asked for later from the audience.
Musician(s) The musician in Playback Theatre sets the mood of a given enactment
and helps to support the ritual nature of the event. The music, like the acting, is
improvisational and can often function like a container as well as help to mark the
beginnings, climax, and end of a given form. There can either be a dedicated musician
or a “music table” can be played by rotating members of the cast.
