We would like to consider this action-research in the post-Covid pandemic, where relations within or out of schools have suffered (Franck & Haesebaert, 2023) and climate change time which both stimulate us to think of where we want to land ! (Latour, 2017). The specific aim of this proposal is to consider the documentary theatre practice partnership experienced through a workshop on the aim of Agro-Ecological Transition (AET). It lasted a week in December 2023 in the National Support Disposal of the French Agricultural Training System (FATS) in charge of experiencing and educators’ formation, thanks to Théo dramatist in the collectif Cortège de tête. Benefitting from last year experience mixing 2 teachers and 5 students, this experiment has been realized with 8 teachers and organised in the InstitutAgro (Montpellier, Florac campus). This theatre practice was chosen to experience AET, out of teaching sessions and understand the skills development. On one hand, the sensitive dimension of artistic practices to the service education partnership (Covez 2023, 2017, 2015) has been introduced. On the other hand, the capacity of embodying AET through artistic practices (Covez, 2023) has been shown. But the FATS encounters difficulties to transform the AET priority into reality, as this means professional posture changes. This can be observed when the Otherwise Producing Teaching program n°2 tends into a more efficient plan on transitions. Besides, Institut Agro has recognized the quality of the documentary theatre practice (ecoanxiety and bifurcation decline, empowerment in transformative actions) and aims to realize it at a national level. And the higher education school now uses the Socio-Ecological Transition as a major concern enlarging the approach. These evolutions encourage us to put transition at the centre of concerns, practices and praxis. Finally, Sharon Todd thoughts (2016) helps us moving our aim, so as to question transition in relation with education, formation and transformation as layered. The documentary theatre practice by teachers represents an opportunity to experiment and question these issues. As Michèle (one of last year’s workshop teachers) has received a regional creativity prize for her students’ performance on textile transition, this encourages us to consider it as a potential change in education.

The question is “Does a documentary theatre practice partnership contribute to teachers transition education ?”. Actually, the partnership action-research goes on, disseminating in high schools. It seems documentary theatre partnership is seen as efficient, valuable so as to change the habitus on individual and collective ways. The hypothesis is that it represents a specific tool for educational change in respect to transition, thanks to the presence of a research engineer-trainer and an artist dedicated to artistic matters. The risks are inherent to self-expression and expose before others and the performance is very stressful. Taking into consideration post-Covid work conditions and climate change anxiety, the partnership tended to welcome and respect all personal ideas, difficulties and assumed limits, caring people and present time (Fleury, 2024). The positions have been articulated with care, as debating and creating on transition, is a difficult task, dealing with sensitive positions. The theatre partnership brought comfort and empowerment to participants, that we wish to deepen. We want to understand the impacts of this active pedagogy relaunching the artistic partnership education value. Co-sharing while becoming aware of points of view and experience differences (Mérini, 2012), our sensitive common engagement (Théo and trainer) is still strengthening in the objective of creating a transformation through partnership (Laing & Alii, 2022) and prevent tensions (Capacchi & alii, 2022) within highschools. Participants express living a transformation, meaning education for real, and partnership could help a chosen and assumed transition.

The ethnographic methodological approach consists in interviews with the 8 adults and the artist Théo actor, dramatist and director, who prepared the project one year long, so as to adapt to the teachers participants. The approach is also nourished with participative observation, meetings minutes, diaries and small filmed interviews. The research is not finished yet, as the interviews are going on showing that transition at large was considered so as to be transformed as a matter of theatre, expression and communication before the public. On the theatre perspective, it is very important to specify the methodology used by the documentary theatre. Amongst different theatre types (Magris & Ali, 2019), Théo in Florac defines it as a récit fictionnel form. The workshop made of debates, growing shared concepts and problematics leads to the definition and creation of scenes (conceived through mise à plat methodology enriched with theatre and improvisation exercises). The themes emerged out of the reflexions and postures were: patriarchy, symbiotic relationships, traditional farmers, living creatures, hyper consumption and countryside exile in remote mountains! Between the scripts, the transition notion was criticized as very old, fixed to the agriculture profession, in need of a revolution, akin to cycle…or without any sense at all in the actual global context! This suggests that form and content were equally debated and co-created when the sense of humour, the street theatre, “the truth of the heart” or open questions were expressed to the public, underlying the complexity of the transition! The 45 minutes long representation was quite imaginative, meaningful and applauded. But the partnership allowing and organizing the workshop process is at the core of our study. Therefore the quality research is used so as to get a comprehensive view on the expectations or representations at work. The focus is strongly on teachers as half of them are Socio-Cultural Educators (SCE: partly teachers and also project activity leaders in high schools) while the others were French, Computing or zootechnics teachers. Only half were already concerned with artistic matters, SCE teachers. Besides, there was also one education assistant younger than teachers. This kind of status mix practice which got the highest mark assessment, is extremely rare and valuable. Besides, this extra-ordinary situation was pointed out very emotionally from the first day, increasing the artistic and research partners envolvement in taking care of the people even more, in regard of the sensitivity of the workshop.

The theatre practice was quite successful, the next step is to reproduce it in more highschools with envolved teachers. Emotional body use mixed with cognitive matters, seems to be much appreciated as the rhythm that was tence and demanding but helped creating a challenging and successful performance. Transformation is at the core of the practice where personal and professional experiences and documents are shared and allow a co-constructed creation and performance, getting from an individual to a group production. For all, such an active pedagogical and educational situation can only lead to a real change in transition. In that respect, the artistic partnership is considered as essential so as to get people to work together on such a complex concept. The accompaniment by the artist Théo was a key point as he led the collective and directed the theatre style groups to a structured result. His role as a dramatist is artistic while the IA research engineer’s one is to welcome and accompany them through the personal or group difficulties, impulse, balancing and sometimes getting out of the space to let them progress on their own. Both partners sharing this experience from morning till night allowed creating a sensitive and safe space where emotions, ideas could be expressed despite some tensions in relation with divergences. Regulating on artistic and professional/personal issues helped participants succeed the challenge of transformation revelling technical/general teachers can talk and work together “which is great!”. The partnership puts transformation to the service of transition education legitimizing participants’ point of view and experience and making them aware of what their future students theatre work could be! A partnership reassuring transformation capacities would transmit an active transformative empowerment back to high schools. Could it represent a “responsive” (Rosa, 2022) formation partnership ?

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