Re-thinking the fiction-reality boundary: Investigating the use of drama in HIV prevention projects in Vietnam

Abstract

Drama is often used as a tool to investigate experience and to assist people to rehearse for change. Dramatic portrayals, however, can reinforce rather than challenge limiting stereotypes, and there is the potential for a positivist approach to research through drama to contribute to a pathologising of the subject and to limit the possibility of change. Assumptions are commonly made about the protective nature of the divide offered by the drama, but within the naturalistic tradition, a certain rule-play may confine the role-play, with actors replicating social norms and dominant storylines in order to create a level of believability or verisimilitude. For change to occur one must rupture the..