Oceans

In this chapter, the three co-founders of Empatheatre (a collaborative theatre collective) share theatre-based practices and principles that seek to foster inclusive ocean governance through participatory storytelling. This case study focuses on two South African theatre productions that brought together artists, researchers, customary rights holders, and local communities, addressing the exclusion of small-scale fishers and Indigenous peoples from ocean-related decision-making. Falling within the thematic area of oceans, they show how, through employing a transdisciplinary and trans-epistemological approach, Empatheatre offers a democratic “third space” for dialogue, integrating art, science, and social learning. Through public storytelling, the initiative deepens empathy, amplifies marginalised voices, and challenges conventional models of public participation. The performance serves as both a public engagement tool and a platform for legal and environmental advocacy, and democratises research that can be undertaken in embodied, social, and collaborative ways, that honour local protocols and customs. These case studies surface novel ways in which theatre can transform governance by bridging diverse knowledge systems, promoting empathy, and reimagining ocean governance as an inclusive, participatory process. These cases highlight Empatheatre’s potential to create spaces for democratic engagement and social change, offering a model for addressing complex environmental and social challenges, that track new pathways for inclusive, embodied, and collaborative approaches to building health praxis within the environmental humanities. Keywords: Empatheatre, Public-Storytelling, Transgressive learning, Ocean governance, arts-based research.