2015 marked the 70th anniversary of the American atomic bombing of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Amidst the commemorations in Hiroshima, London Bubble Theatre staged a performance created by an intergenerational Japanese cast from interviews with elders who experienced the day. Grandchildren of Hiroshima , in its performance and devising, troubled the idea of a nuclear war “bystander,” proposing that in fact there are no more bystanders, and all are participants in the history of the bombs’ performative power.

The Asian tsunami killed approximately 225,000 people and led to an unprecedented humanitarian response, but who received the aid and how the story was told owed as much to pressures of performance as to the duty of care. How and why do certain disasters take the limelight to the detriment of others?

What happens when the theatre is implicated in the horrors of the situation it displays? Who can judge the truth of one story against another? Should we champion a narrative that denies the rhetoric of war, and deny the narrative that champions the need for war?

Deploying social theatre in TDR is performative—as likely to bring about as it is to describe. Social theatre is not a meeting of two distinct unrelated wholes. It is the dynamic meeting of theatre and social work, an interaction that can change both disciplines.