Applied theatre, when I first heard about this term from the recruitment information, I was hooked by this new field that I never knew before. Then I googled Applied Theatre and learned some introductory knowledge about it. Applied Theatre utilizes elements of theatre but performs outside traditional theatre buildings to realize the aims of education, personal growth or social progress. I was fascinated by its artistic forms and meaningful cores. My curiosity pushed me to take a try in this industry.
I started my internship at Ouch Theatre at the beginning of this semester. Ouch Theatre is a Chinese company located in Nanjing, Jiangsu. Ouch Theatre has focused on the exploration, practice and promotion of applied theatre in China since 2017. My duties at Ouch Theatre included two main parts. Firstly, online social media operations and marketing communication, for example, visual designs, copywriting, publishing and daily maintenance of social media accounts. Secondly, the operation of our workshops, such as internal and external communication about activity requests, workshop plans and so on.
There are many forms of applied theatre. In this blog, I would like to briefly introduce the ones that Ouch Theatre specialises in and I worked most with. I hope you can feel the interest and charm of applied theatre from my description. The first one is Playback Theatre which is a kind of improvisational theatre. At Playback Theatre, the audience will share their feelings, experiences and stories, and performers will use their bodies and voices to “playback” the audience’s telling. Theatre in Education is another form mainly designed for children. The purpose is not to study drama but to learn and grow while doing drama, being creative and imaginative, and practising expression and communication.
I once got an opportunity that I could organize an activity by myself. I enjoyed the experience a lot. It was a Playback Theatre in a small coffee shop. I came up with the topic “That Song” and made the innovation that the song would be played during the audience’s sharing. I was very proud and happy when participants said that they felt happy, connected with people and obtained a lot from the workshop.
My research during the internship was based on social media. It was a practical problem I met at work, the use of emojis in the promotion post on social media. Although I did not find a significant difference between the experimental and control group, I learned from the research that previous exposure to the brand is a vital factor in marketing research.
To conclude, I learned a lot from this internship, not only about communication and media but also much general knowledge and experience in work. Include flexibility to solve problems and freedom of innovation. What impressed me most was the company’s belief in taking care of people’s feelings. It is invaluable to be true to ourselves in a society busily chasing goals and full of anxiety. I would recommend this internship to students who are interested in applied theatre, want more freedom to make their decisions and want more experience beyond desk work.
