Playback Theatre – When Your Story Comes to Life

Playback Theatre grew out of the same tradition but carries a unique spirit. In a Playback performance, stories are told not by actors or directors, but by the audience.
Someone from the audience shares a personal story — it may be lighthearted, touching, or deeply moving — and the actors, guided by a conductor, spontaneously re-enact it through movement, sound, and emotion.

The magic of Playback lies in being seen. The storyteller witnesses their own story reflected back to them, often discovering new layers of meaning. Meanwhile, the audience connects through empathy — realizing that someone else's story could easily be their own. This is where shared humanity takes form.

György Ádám Kiss – Bringing Playback to Hungary

Playback Theatre was brought to Hungary by György Ádám Kiss, a psychodramatist and pioneer of experiential approaches to human connection.
In his book Where Free Thoughts and Feelings Are Born, he explores how spontaneity, creativity, and play can open the door to authenticity and healing.
For Kiss, the heart of Playback is not a "good performance" — it is connection: the moment of genuine, human resonance between storyteller, actor, and audience.

During my training and on my personal journey of self-discovery, Playback and Ádám's warm, direct, and liberated personality were profoundly formative experiences for me.
The first Playback group I attended began with him saying that we are all equals. That although he has been leading groups for years, and as a group leader he carries a responsibility that we, as participants, do not — as human beings, we are still equals. We are equal and free.
This thought struck me deeply. It took some time, though, for it to truly reach my heart.

Then he added, jokingly: "One more very important thing — and remember this well — Ádám is very handsome! Be sure to write that down."
And that's how my journey into the depths of self-knowledge began.

Years later, Ádám asked me if I would write a few lines about what Playback had given me, because he was writing a book and thought my reflections might fit in somewhere. Of course, it wasn't mandatory — I could say no.
This is what I wrote:

"For me, Playback drew back the curtain in the theatre of my soul, and through that, I met myself honestly — perhaps for the first time in my life.
What has remained with me most vividly is a Playback group where we worked with the grief that had been unresolved in me for years. It was an incredible experience to see the actors play out and embody the feeling — the experience — that I couldn't live through back then but that had been haunting me deep inside. I can still see the scene before my eyes whenever I think of it. It was truly a cathartic moment — I felt as if a great weight had been lifted from that emotional backpack I had been carrying for years."

Other memories come to mind too: when, at the Single Parent Center near Kálvin Square, my groupmates and I pretended to be little horses — neighing and trotting up and down. People looked in through the windows, and it didn't seem like they thought we were particularly normal.
Of course, normality is relative — it changes with time and culture — as I once learned from Atkinson's Psychology, and as I keep rediscovering again and again: how relative and ever-changing it really is. But that's another story.

For ten years now, Playback, Psychodrama, and Ádám's professional and human quality have accompanied me on my path. I am endlessly grateful to him for the wonderful experiences and insights I have gained. And even though I don't work with this particular method myself, I experience daily — in my work with clients — that his words still echo in my ears and in my heart. Through him, I received a therapeutic and human example truly worth following.

In Essence

Psychodrama and Playback Theatre remind us that self-discovery does not always have to be serious work — it can be movement, laughter, tears, and play all at once.
Through play, what once hurt can be revisited and transformed. In that moment of expression, something new can be born — understanding, release, or simply the joy of being oneself.

Because playing — with ourselves, with others, with life itself for life itself — is, indeed, good.