Imagining Transformation: Applied Theater and the Making of Collaborative Future Scenarios

Abstract

A key challenge for geographers today is to enable and develop creative practice that imagines and engenders alternatives to existing political, economic and ecological practices. This paper examines the applied theater project The Factory of the Future. The project used critical creative methodologies wherein collaborative, improvised, speculative, and open-ended future scenarios were imagined. The paper reflects on the facilitation of the project in order to develop a practical understanding of how capacities for transformation can be nurtured through applied theater.