Promoting Kindness Through the Positive Theatrical Arts: Assessing Kuwait’s Boomerang Program

As positive psychology expands its range of strategies to raise levels of flourishing, many interventions have been identified with new ones emerging. The positive arts offer a new avenue; one such intervention is drama and theater that can benefit subjective and social wellbeing as these offer individuals the opportunity to empathize with others, as well as consider alternative ways to act and think. These can be valuable for bullying prevention. Kuwait's "Boomerang" anti-bullying theater program designed to increase social kindness is one such example. The tools of applied theater were taught to teachers and/or school counsellors of during a six day training workshop. They in turn, trained seven to ten students who were real life bullies, victims and bystanders in their respective schools to become actors in each school’s culminating theater play. Participating acting students and audience members were assessed to determine the effects of the program on perceptions of school kindness, depression, life satisfaction, subjective wellbeing, social cohesion and trust, perceptions of school climate. Data collection was conducted across 7 private middle and high schools, with the final pre-intervention sample consisted of a total of 216 participating students and 1207 observing students (N = 1423). The quasi-experimental study shows that the intervention was successful in increasing perceptions of social cohesion and trust, a positive school climate, and student life satisfaction; however, there were no significant effects on outcome variables. This multi-school intervention improved overall school climates and shows promise in addressing bullying behaviors.