School engagements

"I learned that a lot of times people were feeling different than how they acted. Playback theatre helps you understand people’s feelings."

Student participant of a KTP program

"Playback Theatre helps students realize the other things they can do to help people in bullying situations."

Student participant of a KTP program

Playback at your school

We offer performances and residencies in schools around issues important and relevant to your students. In the performance model, BAPT offers interactive performances in which students address issues impacting them. In each performance, children will be invited to tell personal stories and feelings, which the performers will enact on the spot.

In the residency model, we train a select group of students in Playback Theatre in weekly workshops and then include them as actors in performances for other students. These student-leaders become  "ambassadors" for the school.

Performances take place for up to two classes/50 students at a time

Virtual Performance

Big Apple Playback uses online theatre to bring interactive performances to schools everywhere, addressing the urgent and often sensitive issues impacting students. In potent, 50-minute sessions, our skilled facilitators create a compassionate space that offers a sense of togetherness across distance. Students become storytellers, sharing moments and feelings about a topic of your choice — including fear, loss, and isolation related to the pandemic. Our performers ‘play back’ these stories, allowing students to feel seen and heard by their community. Opt for one session or a workshop series.

Empathy in Action 

Playback Theater is a form of applied theater where audience or group members share moments from their lives and watch them enacted on the spot by trained actors and a musician.  Our performance team uses music, movement and dialogue to embody the heart of the stories that are shared. 

Big Apple’s Empathy In Action program creates a fun, engaging and safe space for students to explore compassion in their bodies and hearts. Students delve into empathy by enacting their emotions, feelings and true life stories with the Big Apple performers.  This experiential program allows students to expand their capacity for understanding their peers by hearing, sharing and affirming others’ experiences with their own bodies.

 BAPT’s Empathy in Action program goes beyond traditional teaching tools to help younger children to identify emotions in themselves and others through exploration with their bodies.  It allows children to utilize their multiple intelligences to process this complex concept.  For older children, BAPT’s program allows kids to employ “practice based learning” of the concept and application of empathy.  Through embodied trial and error, children experience the impact of words and deeds in situations where compassion and empathy are needed.  All children get a chance to use the tool of playback theatre to ‘try on’ their peers’ feelings and stories in their bodies.

Big Apple’s Empathy in Action program also functions to strengthen classroom and school communities.  Deep sharing and empathetic listening shifts the culture of classrooms to kinder, more empathetic communities where students’ feelings and experiences are valued.

keep the peace - anti bullying program for k-12

The Big Apple Playback Keep the Peace! program uses interactive theatre to create a forum for compassionate listening and role-playing, and opens a dialogue around issues of bullying and harassment in schools. Based on Norwegian expert Dan Olweus’s Anti-bullying program, the primary goal of Keep the Peace! is to empower the “witness”. In other words, we encourage the young people to say something if they see something.  Olweus pioneered the idea that bullying, and harassment can be stopped if the people who are witnessing the abuse speak up.

The KTP program seeks to teach skills to children who witness bullying to end the behavior.   After identifying the types of bullying and the places in which it occurs in their school, student begin a role play about the topic.  Participants build details into the role-play based on harassment they have witnessed in school. Students come on stage to act out the scene and techniques to empower witnesses are used.  The scene is replayed to test out all four of the constructive tools for community response to bullying. The role-playing segment of the program, functions a “rehearsal for the future” (in the words of Augusto Boal, creator of Theatre of the Oppressed). Once kids practice the steps involved, they are more likely to be able to use them in real life.  

Lastly, the students are asked to share personal stories about being bullied, witnessing bullying or being a bully themselves.  The Big Apple performers and musician then play back the stories and give the ‘tellers’ a transformational experience of being listened to and empathized with deeply.  Big Apple’s performances become a tool for building empathy and tolerance and provide language, awareness, and empowerment so that children are prepared to respond effectively next time bullying or harassment happens in the hallway, classroom, playground or on the bus.