Let Portland Playback help you make an event that no one would forget. We’re available to perform at a wide range of functions, including private parties and celebrations, nonprofit fund-raisers, and professional trainings.

Whether your goal is staff-development, a community mission, or a first-class roast, our accomplished actors bring the audience into the action by putting their stories on stage.

We’d love to work with you. For more information, please contact Artistic Director David La Graffe, 207-799-3489.

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Staff development and team engagement | Stories Onstage: Celebrating Your Experience | Partnerships in Education | Fee Structure

Staff Development and Team Engagement

Storytelling is a powerful tool for engagement at all levels of a small business or larger organization. This work has direct application to HR issues, leadership development, customer service and marketing.  The sessions can benefit your workplace with better teamwork, employee engagement and higher morale. Get your group unstuck and working together with this highly engaging and provocative training tool!

Internationally acclaimed Playback Theatre techniques are perfect for team building and issue exploration. True stories from working experiences are played back through a variety of forms and facilitated so that challenges are clarified and seen from a variety of viewpoints – possible options can then be explored.. By taking part, participants are then better prepared to work together toward beneficial solutions for a variety of issues.

Benefits and Applications:
•    Proven techniques to quickly identify core issues
•    A variety of exercises designed to encourage creativity and trust
•    Specific structures to get participants talking about their authentic experience
•    Proactive formats designed to get participation from introverts and extroverts
•    Suggestions for a variety of applications

Suggested Settings:
•    Staff Meetings
•    Retreats
•    Conferences
•    On-site Trainings on specific topics

Stories Onstage: Celebrating Your Experience

Stories Onstage is a celebration of the stories that make up our lives. These celebratory events are perfect for a holiday party, a retirement, or just a much-needed boost to your company’s morale. We create the right atmosphere of fun and discovery to get your crew telling true stories of the trials and triumphs in their working lives – and then give them the tools to create a wonderful group story experience. These techniques originated with the internationally acclaimed Playback Theatre and are perfect for group bonding and merrymaking!

Benefits and Applications
•    A highly engaging, interactive event completely customized to your workplace
•    Proven techniques for weaving true stories into a rich and meaningful program
•    A highly entertaining, engaging event your staff will remember for years to come!
Suggested Settings:
•    Parties
•    Retreats
•    Reunions
•    Conferences
•    Staff Meetings

Partners in Education

For children and young adults in particular, the Playback experience offers a fun and friendly way to enter more deeply into another’s experience, while amplifying their own role as performer and witness. Playback practitioners teach performance skills in movement, music and dialogue, but perhaps more importantly, they teach listening skills and a way to listen “between the lines” through focus on voice messaging and body language. Playback offers the joy of bringing stories to life through a variety of creative forms as a vehicle for positive change, while providing laughter, reflection, and connection for the audience. Playback has been used successfully as an intervention for bullying and diversity issues, and can be applied to any issue impacting the school community.

As a result of this session, participants will:

•    Participate and develop skill in a theatre based art form deeply connected with the real lives of students
•    Learn to take risks and deepen their participation with each other
•    Engage each other with compassion, humor, and surprise
•    Enjoy a line-up of fun engaging activities that invite a bit of risk in a safe and sustaining creative environment
•    Take individual responsibility for learning/teaching Playback forms within their company after the initial training
•    Build and strengthen a sense of community
•    Sharpen listening skills and ability to read body language and tone
•    Deepen capacity for empathy

Read more about using Playback Theatre to address bullying in schools.

Fee Structure

Negotiated at time of booking $750-$2500, based on
•    type of organization and event
•    length of program
•    location
•    amount of prep/rehearsal time
•    number of actors involved, etc.

What are people saying about us? Read some testimonials to find out.