Data collection

The study included analysis of students’ reflective diary entries. Ma planned 18 sessions over 6 weeks, with three 45-minute periods each week. The course structure included three parts in each section: literature study and group report for 45 minutes, PT action for 45 minutes, and review and discussion for 45 minutes (Table 1). Thirty-two graduate students majoring in school counseling and mental health education took part. They were two-year master’s degree students in education who after completing their two-year study would become teachers.

In this PT course, Ma was the pilot, and the members of the Beijing Playback Theater Training Group were the actors. After every class, students wrote in their reflective diaries their feelings and thoughts at each moment during the PT session. Everyone’s reflective diaries were collected at the end of the project. These 196 (32×6) reflective diary texts were the basis for the qualitative data for examining the teaching and learning process.

Data analysis

The 196 reflective diary texts were used for grounded theory analysis. This provided focused, abstract, conceptual theories that explains the studied empirical phenomena. Grounded theory research needs to code the data, which is a process of data conceptualization, categorization, determination of the core categories, and construction of the theoretical model. The coding is divided into three levels (Strauss & Corbin, 1990): The first level is open coding; it decomposes, examines, compares, conceptualizes, and classifies data. The basic steps include naming phenomena (with concept labels) and determining the properties and dimensions of the categories. The second level is axial coding; it recombines categories and subcategories by coding a paradigm model. The third level is selective coding; it systematically connects the core categories to its support categories, verifies the relationship, and complements categories that the concept has not yet developed. Based on the coding, we could clearly understand the effect of the PT on the students. Researchers suggested a psychological mediating model to explain the influences of PT on the students.

Values of the process of narrative

In Table 2, from self-orientation dimension, students showed more self-expression and self-awareness based on the process of the narrative or story.

Here and now, I want to renew my story with my parents in a new framework and with new perspective and experience, when I meet the past “me.” Now I would not take my parents’ expectations to copy over and pressure on my own shoulders like before. I accept their love, however I could not bear the way they love me, this is the respect for myself, but also the way to love them. (S5)

We see in S5 the development of self-subjectivity in a more positive direction. The new understanding and narration of their stories give the stories different meanings. This is the new experience and the reconstruction of an understanding of life.

Life stories do not simply reflect personality. They are personality, or more accurately, they are important parts of personality, along with other parts, like dispositional traits, goals, and values (McAdams & Manczak, 2015). Changing one’s life story is at the heart of many forms of psychotherapy and counseling (Adler, 2012). Storytelling may be the most powerful form of self-transformation that we have ever invented (Gersie, 1992, Holmwood et al., 2022). PT enhances the storytelling experience through play and action and offers a powerful experience as an aid to human expression. To construct a narrative of one’s past is one of humanity’s innate skills. Just as Salas (1996) discusses in his book Improvising Real Life that in life, there often appears neither rules nor direction.

Respect and empathy

In Table 2, from the self–others interaction, students show that they felt a deep understanding of respect and empathy. PT creates an atmosphere that can facilitate the sharing of students’ own stories (Fox, 1999). For most students, it is the first time that their repressed and hidden inner feelings and stories were told in public and acted out by actors; thus, they felt heard, validated, seen, respected, and empathized within the group.

My story was respected, what I had seen was indeed my story! When I saw the actors presenting my story perfectly, I cried. (S1)

The storyteller initially thought that personal experience was dull, and it was just a very small fragment of his ordinary life; however, he also found that his own story was beautiful and precious: my story is so moving! (S4)

Rogers (1961, 1970) stated that the essence of empathy or empathetic understanding is listening. Empathy establishes a direct channel to actors and the tellers, and the tellers see themselves in the moment. Hearing their stories accurately told shows respect for the stories and the tellers’ values. Students began to realize that their life stories have value, deepening their own sense of self belief.

In the PT, students appeared to show they were being considerate to others. They learn to respect each other’s life experiences and life stories, and they tried to understand feeling and experiences from the perspective of others. Being respectful and empathetic is central to a future teacher’s professional competencies, especially if training to be a school counselor or mental health education teacher. Further examples also suggest this.

Through sharing and discussion of stories, my childhood memories are revived, and I seem to realize a new self; The children I will face in the future may be similar to me in my childhood. The more I know myself, the better I understanding others. (S23) I have also realized that to be a good school counselor, it is necessary to experience “empathy” firstly, with no empathy experiencing, it is very difficult to be empathic with others. What I gain in this course is not knowledge but inner growth. (S24)

Through the playback theater, I realized how “empathy” happened. I was moved by “respectful,” “equal” and “inclusive” details. Although knowing the counseling theory cognitively, after learning and experiencing the playback theater, I really felt how to “respect,” “love,” and the feeling of being respected and loved. (S23)

Equality, respect, and inclusiveness in the field of the theater

From the dimension of self–others interaction in Table 2, students showed that they had more connection with others and their community. The field theory of learning (Lewin, 1942) has a concept of “life-space,” which is also called the psychological field. That field is the space in which the person moves psychologically. It contains the whole of one’s psychological reality—one’s self and what one thinks of or what one gains from one’s physical and social environment—an open, friendly environment in which trust is developed and is as essential in theater as it is in education.

In PT, the whole atmosphere of the field is equal, respectful, and inclusive. The value in the field is a basic attitude of caring and friendship for each other and respecting the confidentiality of the group. Through sharing, listening, and acting, there is interaction among the actors, audiences, and the tellers, in which there is a flowing warm support, and connection to all the people in the field.

Fox (2007) mentions, the “red thread”¹ that may take root in the empathetic process that occurs in PT. The sharing of individual differences does not isolate each individual, the stories have their inner connection, the participants can dialogue between them, and that is the primary function of the red thread in PT. Most of the stories they told had commonality. It involved peer relationship, teacher–student relationship, and parent–child relationship. The similar experiences promoted their mutual recognition and connection. “I am not alone, our hearts are very close” (S2). “I found that we like a big tree, its branches split in different direction, however we still are united tightly around, it is difficult to separate” (S31). Different experiences promoted mutual understanding and learning. Student A told the story of a conflict with her mother. Then, B told a story about how to deal with a conflict with his mother. Someone shared a sad love story, others shared a happy love story. Situations like this often happened. Thus, the stories that emerge in PT can be diverse and offer multiple perspectives, views, and experiences, helping individuals to acquire what they individually need from the PT experience.

Aesthetic Distance and Artistry of the Theater

Aesthetic distance

We shall now consider these mechanisms by understanding what the changes for each student were and what triggered their self-development. According to Boal’s (1995) concept of “spect-actor,” the teller keeps a certain psychological distance in watching the action, so that they can be fully objectively understood. Conversely, one student feels he could jump out of the scene and see the problems clearly. “I was pulled out myself when watching the performance. When I was in or out the of the story, I was in two distinct cognitive states, and I suddenly saw my own irrational beliefs” (S19). This is the aesthetic distance triggered by the storyteller’s self-reflection.

Jones (1997) suggests that empathy and distancing can be used as a way of keeping clients safe in a drama therapy context, and this idea of empathy and distance is central to drama therapy and psychodrama. Narrative story telling itself is a sharing process of one’s own empathy and self-inner experience. Essentially, the “self” has a group of perceptions that allows self-reflection in the individual phenomenon of the field. There are also many perceptions that we cannot realize when looking closely at self. By using memory, restatement, and reconstruction, we can create some distance from an original event and PT can integrate this self-experience from an objective distance. McLean et al. (2007) suggests that young adults author a narrative sense of the self by telling stories about their experiences to others, monitoring this feedback from the telling, and editing of their stories in light of that feedback, thus creating some distance through which to examine it and gaining new experiences and telling stories about a new perspective. As they create stories that, in turn, create new and alternative aspects of self and personal understanding. For example, S5 said after the course that he used a new framework in his relationship with his parents. He no longer accepted all his parents’ demands, and he gave himself room for growth.

Artistry of the theater

Aesthetics can be considered central to the healing medium. Aesthetic distance is a central focus in drama therapy (Jones, 2007). In the aesthetic space of theater, there are two dimensions: the affective and the oneiric. These two dimensions exist only within the mind of the subject. Memory and imagination project subjective dimensions on to—and into—the aesthetic space (Boal, 1995). Drama therapists create play spaces for their clients in which they can create aesthetic distance to create a safe space (Jones, 2007). Similarly, in PT, such unique techniques as sculpture, flows, pairs, tableau, three-sentence story, three-part story, etc., in which the actor’s body is a powerful tool for aesthetic presentation are used. The embodied performance partners with imagination, and integrates sound, movement, music, and spoken word. All constitute the theater aesthetic elements of the PT. “Art is everywhere, and the performance of the actors and musician show artistry. I think this artistic existence is a kind of beauty, so that we can accept the original self, and art is more conducive to emotional outpouring”(S2).

In PT, the actors, pilot, and musicians reflect on the story and perform meaningful actions in the context of the art form. The concentration of the aesthetics gives clarity to the story and gives it context meaning and expression. Through this artistic expression, the character’s challenges can be presented and the tellers and audience have chance to experience the creative and imaginative process. Coupled with the spontaneity of the PT they are offered the opportunity to take ownership of their own life situations and begin to grow and enhance their individual decision-making process. “Their performances promoted healing, and everyone was moved when they saw their stories made into art by actors and they became gifts to themselves!” (S13) The focus of the aesthetics of theater makes the story proof of its meaning and purpose.