The Arizona Theatre Matters Theory of Change describes how attention to conditions can enlarge participation, experience, possibility, and emergence. It is not a promise that changing one condition will produce a predetermined result. It is a disciplined way of noticing influences that often remain invisible and of designing with greater care.
This public resource offers the conceptual structure of the methodology. The protected curriculum, participant materials, facilitator training, and certification process carry that structure into practice.
Arizona Theatre Matters begins with a simple observation:
People are often evaluated according to what they do, what they achieve, or how they participate.
Far less attention is given to the conditions under which those outcomes occur.
The Arizona Theatre Matters methodology is built upon the belief that meaningful change often begins when people learn to recognize and redesign conditions they previously took for granted.
The methodology therefore focuses less on changing people directly and more on developing the capacity to observe, understand, and intentionally shape the environments in which people live, learn, create, collaborate, and participate.
This process unfolds through five interconnected stages.
Stage One
Seeing Conditions
Many conditions become invisible through familiarity.
People often notice individuals before they notice environments.
They notice performance before they notice participation structures.
They notice outcomes before they notice systems.
The first task of the methodology is therefore perceptual.
Participants learn to identify conditions that may previously have gone unnoticed.
These conditions may be physical, communicative, sensory, social, organizational, cultural, relational, or temporal.
The goal is not criticism.
The goal is observation.
Because conditions that cannot be seen cannot be intentionally redesigned.
Stage Two
Questioning Assumptions
Once conditions become visible, participants begin examining the assumptions that shape their interpretations.
Many explanations that initially appear self-evident become more complex when viewed through the lens of conditions.
Participants investigate questions such as:
- What assumptions are operating?
- What evidence supports this interpretation?
- What else might be true?
This stage expands the range of possible explanations available to participants.
The purpose is not to replace one certainty with another.
The purpose is to create space for deeper inquiry.
Stage Three
Expanding Possibility
As conditions and assumptions become visible, new possibilities often emerge.
Participants begin recognizing opportunities that may previously have been overlooked.
- Alternative ways of participating.
- Alternative ways of communicating.
- Alternative ways of creating.
- Alternative ways of designing environments.
The methodology treats possibility not as an abstract ideal but as something that emerges through the interaction between people and conditions.
Different conditions create different possibilities.
Stage Four
Designing Differently
Insight alone rarely produces change.
Participants are therefore invited to apply their observations to real environments.
They examine systems, structures, processes, and practices they know well.
Through redesign activities, they explore how intentional changes to conditions might influence participation, creativity, learning, belonging, accessibility, and emergence.
The focus shifts from observation to action.
From analysis to design.
Stage Five
Supporting Emergence
The final stage recognizes an important limitation.
Emergence cannot be controlled.
No facilitator, organization, educator, or artist can guarantee creativity, insight, participation, or transformation.
What can be influenced are the conditions under which those experiences become more likely.
The methodology therefore encourages participants to think less about producing outcomes directly and more about cultivating environments that support possibility.
New forms of participation may emerge.
New forms of creativity may emerge.
New forms of connection may emerge.
New forms of understanding may emerge.
Conditions, Participation, Experience, Possibility, Emergence
- Conditions shape participation. Environmental, relational, communicative, sensory, temporal, cultural, organizational, and material conditions influence how participation becomes possible.
- Participation influences experience. The ways people can enter, communicate, contribute, pause, recover, and respond affect what they encounter.
- Experience expands or limits possibility. Experience can reveal possibilities, obscure them, or make them unavailable within a particular environment.
- Possibility creates conditions for emergence. When new possibilities become available, new ideas, relationships, capacities, forms of participation, or artistic practices may appear.
- Emergence changes the conditions that follow. What emerges becomes part of the next environment, allowing the inquiry to continue rather than ending in a fixed outcome.
This is not a one-way guarantee. Each element may influence the others, and the sequence may be revisited whenever conditions change.
What Changes?
The Arizona Theatre Matters methodology does not assume that changing conditions automatically produces positive outcomes.
Nor does it assume that every challenge can be solved through redesign.
Instead, the methodology proposes that conditions are often an underexamined source of influence.
By learning to observe conditions more carefully, participants become better equipped to understand outcomes, support participation, and create environments in which new possibilities can emerge.
The methodology therefore seeks a change in perception before a change in practice.
Because people who see conditions differently often begin designing differently.
And people who design differently often discover possibilities they could not previously see.
Citation and Use
Suggested citation: Arizona Theatre Matters. The Arizona Theatre Matters Theory of Change. Version 1.0, August 2026. arizonatheatrematters.org/the-arizona-theatre-matters-theory-of-change/
Public reading, citation, educational discussion, and links to this resource are welcome with attribution to Arizona Theatre Matters. Public access to the Theory of Change does not include permission to reproduce, teach, adapt, or distribute the protected What Might Happen If We Let It? curriculum, Facilitator Guide, Facilitator Training Manual, certification materials, or materials designated for participants or facilitators.
Continue the Inquiry
If conditions influence what becomes possible, what are we responsible for noticing before we begin to design?