Changing the Script: Using Forum Theatre to Reimagine the Future in Later Life

Abstract

Dominant narratives told about older people typically foreground the past and downplay the significance of the future. This reinforces a particular ageism that is predicated not so much on how many years a person has lived, as how many years they are assumed to have left. This article explores the potential of Forum Theatre to produce emancipatory counterstories of ageing futures. We present findings from qualitative research conducted with older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic. Nine older adult participants co-created two Forum Theatre scenes (Waiting for Dot and Return to Wonderland), that were then shared and reworked virtually with a public audience of over 150. We argue that the participatory and inquiring techniques of Forum Theatre are useful in making visible how structural ageism operates in everyday discourses to marginalise, exclude and oppress people in later life, and to provide people with the opportunities to change the script by challenging such narratives and storying their own futures.