Instructor: Sinan Işık
Title of the Workshop: Theatre of Experience: A Participatory Theatre Form Between Process and Product
Duration: 6 Hours
Description: This workshop aims to engage participants in a theatrical process inspired by their own lived experiences and to explore how the outcomes of this process can be transformed into a stage product. Bringing together the theoretical foundations of Theatre of Experience with participatory theatre practices, the workshop makes visible the transitions between process-based creation and product-oriented approaches in theatre, while offering participants the opportunity to experience both individual and collective modes of production.
Theatre of Experience is a theatrical approach in which the participant is not confined to the role of a spectator or practitioner but becomes a constitutive element of both the process and the resulting product as a subject. In this context, Theatre of Experience differs from traditional staging practices by placing the process itself at the center as an aesthetic value, while defining the product not as a final outcome but as a natural extension of the process.
What distinguishes Theatre of Experience is the way it incorporates participants into the process. Participants not only become part of an artistic experience but also actively contribute to the process and shape it with their presence. This reinforces the participants’ subjectivity while ensuring that the aesthetic outcome emerges from the convergence of both individual and collective experiences.
Thus, the relationship between process and product is reciprocal: the process forms the foundation of the product, while the product represents the visible, observable, and shareable dimension of the process. In Theatre of Experience, the audience is not a “passive observer” in the conventional sense. Instead, the audience is invited—directly or indirectly—to intervene in the process, share the experience, and, at times, play an active role in its creation. In this way, the audience becomes not only an observer but also a component that shapes the experience, contributes to the process, and expands the layers of meaning in the product.
Consequently, Theatre of Experience transcends the duality between process and product, creating an aesthetic and pedagogical space where participants become subjects. This space can be defined as an experiential environment that fosters both individual transformation (praxis) and collective creativity (co-creation).