BEDROOM THEATRE: A PRACTICE-LED THEATRICAL METHOD FOR INTIMATE SOCIAL REFLECTION AND RELATIONAL REFRAMING

Abstract [English]

Contemporary theatre has increasingly shifted toward intimate, socially responsive forms that challenge conventional assumptions about space, spectatorship, and the ethics of representing private life. This article elaborates Bedroom Theatre as a new performance method anchored in the bedroom—not as a literal venue, but as a conceptual and dramaturgical constraint. Bedroom Theatre selects narratives that are plausibly and meaningfully “bedroom-only”: incidents shaped by privacy, vulnerability, secrecy, relational negotiation, and the threshold between care and harm (e.g., infidelity discovery, conjugal misunderstanding, coercive silence, self-harm risk, domestic conspiracy, trauma disclosure). The method is defined by a micro-cast (typically 2–3 performers, with 1–2 additional roles only if essential), close audience proximity, compressed dramaturgy, and a deliberate refusal of sensationalism. Crucially, Bedroom Theatre interprets difficult incidents through dialogue, empathy, and non-violent relational inquiry, aiming to provoke audience reflection and potential reframing rather than judgment, escalation, or spectacle. Positioned within practice-as-research and applied theatre a tradition, Bedroom Theatre is presented as therapeutically informed but not therapy: it does not claim clinical outcomes, yet it designs conditions for social reflection and relational learning. The article offers a formal framework (principles, dramaturgical model, spatial grammar, rehearsal protocols), addresses ethical safeguards (anti-voyeurism, psychological safety, responsible depiction of self-harm and violence), and proposes evaluation pathways for future empirical study.