Fox was a student of improvisational theatre, oral traditional storytelling, Jacob Moreno's psychodrama method and the work of educator Paulo Freire.
This group, while developing the basis of the Playback form, took it to schools, prisons, centers for the elderly, conferences, and festivals in an effort to encourage individuals from all walks of society to let their stories be heard.
[7] and São Paulo, Brazil,[8][9] Russia, United Kingdom, Israel, Hungary, Hong Kong, Australasia[10] and Sweden.
The Playback Centre keeps an online list of affiliated schools[11] There are regular and semi-regular Playback gatherings and festivals in different parts of the world, including in Finland, the UK, Italy, Germany, Eastern Europe, Israel, Hong Kong, Nepal and India.
IPTN conferences have taken place in Sydney, Australia (1992), in a village north of Helsinki, Finland (1993), in Olympia, Washington, USA (1995), Perth, Australia (1997), York, England (1999), Shizuoka, Japan (2003), São Paulo, Brazil (2007), Frankfurt, Germany (2011), Montreal, Canada (2015), and Bangalore, India (2019).
Playback Theatre is used in a broad range of settings: theatres and community centres (where performances take place for the general public), in schools, private sector organizations, nonprofit organizations, prisons, hospice centers, day treatment centers, at conferences of all kinds, and colleges and universities.
Playback theatre has also been used in the following fields: transitional justice, human rights, civic dialogue, refugees and immigrants, disaster recovery, climate change, birthdays, weddings, and conferences.
[13] Playback Theatre is used to provide a forum for the exchange of diverse experiences in such contexts as the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebrations examining on racial conflict and reconciliation; incarcerated men and women; immigrant and refugee organizations and their host communities; events honoring human rights.
Other examples include: A project in Afghanistan trains victims of violence to enact each other's stories in the context of transitional justice.
Since the mid-1990s Playback Theatre and allied techniques have increasingly been used as an effective tool in workplace training of subjects such as management and communication skills and diversity awareness.