Theatre elicitation integrating a participatory research tool in a mixed-method study

The relation between theatre, or drama, and research is not novel which is illustrated by concepts such as role theory, theatre for development, or distancing in drama therapy. In various scientific fields theatre is used as a communicative and/or educative tool, however in the realm of childhood journals the use of theatre as a tool is still rarely discussed. Therefore we wish to share some of our insights on working with theatre as a participatory research tool. We coined our tool Theatre Elicitation and defined the main objectives as 1. actively engage children in the research process by providing an open space for communication and 2. use theatre forms as means of data collection. Two separate studies are presented. First we discuss a qualitative oriented pilot project (study 1) in which data was elicited on children’s perceptions of happiness; second we present our project in progress in which we discuss Theatre Elicitation as embedded in a more structured mixed method design (study 2). In study 2 we look into the relations between children's empathic abilities and their daily practices, hereby using theatre to examine children’s abilities to engage with other children’s enacted emotions in a controlled but interactive research setting. In both studies the use of theatre as a tool had significant added value which has implications for a further discussion on the use of theatre as a method in children’s research.