Performing text(ure)s of conviviality via playback theatre methods in Hong Kong

In this paper, we draw on concepts of conviviality to analyse a Playback Theatre performance from a group of university students in Hong Kong. We employ a contextualised multimodal analysis of this narrative performance to explore how various textual layers are woven together via chains of entextualisation during a storytelling cycle. These chains involve texts related to recent social upheavals in Hong Kong (protests and the pandemic), texts related to the methods of Playback Theatre (guidance and direction), and new texts (enactments of conviviality) that emerge from the performance. Through this analysis, we aim to demonstrate how participants use semiotic resources to reorient personal crisis signals into shared forms of conviviality. In doing so, we address how this textured performance of conviviality may speak to the transformative power of community theatre education for those in times of crisis.