The Body and the App: Adapting Participatory Movement Group Methodology in Theatrical Performance to the Online Context

Abstract

This case study addresses the specific methodological and practical challenges faced in adapting a participatory movement group methodology to an online format. The case study reflects on a project that ran for 2 years and aimed to promote the empowerment of a group of vulnerable women through artistic participation. Although from different sociocultural backgrounds, these women all live in a deprived region and were or had been single mothers, a social situation that worldwide (still) faces variable prejudices and concrete obstacles. Veleda, the title of the project in question, is based on an ethnographic/participatory action research approach, anchoring the principles of emancipation through co-creation. In the context of the project, participants worked together with the technical team, all assuming responsibility for the process and the results. To operationalize this, the project used documental and applied theatrical dynamics. The pandemic context caused by SARS-Cov-2 brought unexpected restrictions, forcing Veleda to adapt to an online methodology. However, the project managed to develop all the expected outputs-two social and artistic research laboratories with two final public presentations, a theater play, and the launch of a reflection group. In fact, two additional outputs were developed during the process, both emerging from the online experience (e.g., quarantine notebook, poem-manifesto). In this case study, the focus is on the methodological turn of the project during the two main lockdown periods experienced in Portugal (Spring 2020 and Winter 2021). The transition was facilitated by the existence of a WhatsApp group created during the first confinement, which allowed the participative dimension to be maintained in a creative and fruitful way.