Climate education often succeeds in raising awareness while stopping short of shifting what learners actually do. This pilot study tested whether asking students to write and perform their own play about local environmental problems might narrow that gap, using forum theatre to bring the audience into the action. It is a small study, but an unusually well-documented one — the workshop is described session by session, so the design can be borrowed and adapted rather than just noted.
The authors argue that conventional, lecture-based climate change education has had limited success in translating what learners know into what they do, and that "alarmist" framing can produce disengagement — what they describe, drawing on other researchers, as green fatigue (a general oversaturation and loss of interest in learning about climate change). Their proposed alternative is to build efficacy — both self-efficacy (belief in one's own capacity to act) and collective efficacy (a shared belief that a group can act together) — through participatory arts. The study is positioned as a pilot in a research area the authors describe as thinly evidenced.
The study took place at a single university campus in Sonipat, Haryana, India, and used a mixed-methods, pre-post design with no control group. Recruitment was purposive and convenience-based: of 166 responses, 72 undergraduates aged 18–22 (mean age 19.15; 74% female) completed the pre-test. Attrition was high (72.2%), attributed to competing academic commitments, and only students attending at least six of eight sessions were retained, leaving 20 participants at post-test. The intervention was a four-week workshop of eight bi-weekly sessions of up to ninety minutes, combining theatre training with climate content. Students were assigned one of four India-specific environmental concerns, developed 8–10 minute scripts from local news and their own experience, and staged the resulting play outside the campus cafeteria. Quantitative measures were the New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) Scale, the General Ecological Behaviour (GEB-50) Scale and efficacy items adapted from an existing study, analysed using paired t-tests. Qualitative data came from one post-performance focus group discussion, analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. A separate audience survey captured responses from 76 student spectators.
Key findings.
1. The study found statistically significant pre-post improvements on all three quantitative measures: environmental attitudes (NEP), reported pro-environmental behaviours (GEB-50) and self-efficacy for climate action (all p ≤ .001, n = 20).
2. The authors report that participants described the workshop as a catalyst for climate action efficacy, with 14 of the group noting a shift in their belief that individual involvement matters.
3. Six participants described adopting small everyday changes — reusable cups, fewer disposable items, consolidating online orders — and encouraging friends to do likewise.
4. Participants emphasised the need for novelty in how climate messages are delivered, and for solutions framed as convenient rather than burdensome.
5. The analysis identified substantial non-climate benefits: rest and rejuvenation (13 participants), confidence and self-discovery, including transfer to public speaking elsewhere (11), and a sense of belonging among peers who shared their concerns (6).
6. Among the audience, 77.6% reported that watching the play sensitised them to climate change, suggesting a possible spillover effect beyond the participants themselves. Implications for practice.
Educators wanting to try this will find the paper unusually specific about what it takes:
a facilitator familiar with the materials, three to four hours per week for four weeks from facilitator and participants, a safe rehearsal space, an open performance area, basic sound equipment and small incidental costs.
The authors suggest staging performances in public, everyday spaces rather than auditoria, to reach peers who would not attend a climate event. They recommend some improvisation training for whoever plays the "joker" (the facilitator who mediates between stage and audience in forum theatre), and propose a train-the-trainer model to reduce reliance on specialist theatre skills.
Given the dropout the authors experienced, they suggest embedding the workshop as a credit-bearing course, while acknowledging this may reduce the intrinsic motivation that voluntary participation brings — a trade-off worth weighing in any setting where attendance is optional.
The Bottom Line
This pilot study from India tested whether making theatre about climate change can shift how young people think and act. Researchers at a single university ran a four-week workshop of eight sessions in which students wrote and staged their own play about local environmental problems, using forum theatre (a participatory form in which the audience suggests alternative actions for the characters). Seventy-two undergraduates started; twenty completed the workshop and the post-test. Comparing before-and-after scores, the authors found statistically significant improvements in environmental attitudes, reported pro-environmental behaviours and confidence in personal and collective climate action; a focus group discussion pointed to a stronger sense of responsibility, new friendships and personal growth. The sample is small and self-selected, so the findings are indicative rather than conclusive, but the study offers educators a detailed, low-resource model for creative climate learning.