Theatre that Reconnects

The Art and Science of Reconnecting with Self, Others, and Nature

Theatre that ReConnects is an evolving embodied research practice and social arts framework dedicated to restoring connection with self, others, and nature. Rooted in a decade of awareness-based action research, it draws on The Work That Reconnects (Macy & Johnstone, 2012), Theatre of the Oppressed (Boal, 1979), Social Presencing Theatre (Hayashi, 2021), and other participatory and eco-embodied methodologies including Dragon Dreaming, focusing.

Emerging from the lived experiences and co-facilitation work of Ilaria Olimpico and Uri Noy Meir (TheAlbero Collective and ImaginAction), Theatre that Reconnects is both a practice and a research field. It offers tools for integrating creative inquiry, embodied presence, and systems thinking in service of collective well-being.

Workshops, residencies, and labs serve as living research sites, where knowledge emerges through doing, sensing, and reflection. Each encounter becomes a site of co-learning—documented through journaling, image theatre, and collective mapping—supporting the iterative development of methods and the surfacing of transformative patterns.

Why Theatre that ReConnects—and Why Now?

We are living in a time of rupture—ecological collapse, social fragmentation, and spiritual disconnection—that calls for a paradigmatic shift from extractive systems toward regenerative cultures rooted in care, creativity, and interbeing.

Theatre that ReConnects cultivates core human capacities:

• Embodied awareness as a response to disembodied systems of control

• Creative expression as a path to reclaim voice and vision

• Relational presence as a foundation for ecological identity and mutual care

This approach supports practitioners—educators, facilitators, artists, activists, caregivers—in making visible and viable new ways of sensing, learning, and acting together.

A Growing Field and Practice Community

Theatre that ReConnects is not a fixed method but a living field of practice, co-created by an expanding community of facilitators, researchers, and participants across cultures and contexts. Together, they experiment with how participatory theatre and eco-embodied arts can accompany transitions toward life-affirming futures.

An emergent outcome of this work is a map of relational shifts—a pattern language grounded in participant experience—that traces movements from disconnection to reconnection, from power-over to ecologies of care. These patterns are not only outcomes but ongoing practices of becoming more fully human in relation with the world.