Educating the Local Population About the Need of Environmental Protection Through Participatory Educational Theatre (PET) With a Focus on Sundarbans

Abstract

Participatory and community theatre are applied from radical theatre traditions. Participatory education theatre (PET) has been aiding natural resource conservation projects around the globe. This book chapter elaborates on the role of PET as an effective tool in implementing socio-environmental projects. The genesis and evolution of PET from traditional theatrical forms are showcased in this chapter. The benefit of PET is turning the passive audiences into active participants, which helps in project implementation. As dramatic pretend play games (DPPG) help enlist behavioural changes in audience, PET also caters to more acceptability of any project's critical take-home message to a broader audience. This concept was tested in a socio-environmental project in the disaster-vulnerable Indian Sundarbans, with positive outcomes and has been instrumental in project compliance with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 10 (reduce inequalities) targets by challenging the existing class, creed, and religion-based social dogmas.