Performing Fire Governance: Co-Creating an Integrated Fire Management Plan through Legislative Theatre in Eastern Angola

Fire regimes are changing globally, yet dominant fire governance remains centred on emergency response and suppression, often neglecting fire’s ecological functions and cultural significance. Although community-based burning practices persist across many fire-dependent landscapes, particularly in Africa, they rarely receive institutional recognition or appropriate governance. Integrated Fire Management (IFM) and Community-Based Fire Management (CBFiM) frameworks have called for bottom-up approaches that integrate biological, environmental, and social dimensions while prioritising local governance and customary fire practices. However, practical mechanisms for eliciting socio-cultural values, operationalising participation, and addressing power asymmetries in fire decision-making remain limited. Here, we document the application of Legislative Theatre (LT) as a participatory approach to co-develop an IFM plan in eastern Angola. Through 37 stories based on lived experiences and collective, performance-based problem-solving exercises across seven villages, communities articulated diverse fire uses, values, challenges, and shared norms for improving local fire governance. Our findings show that theatre-based methods enabled the expression of embodied, emotional, and experiential knowledge often overlooked by conventional engagement approaches, while supporting knowledge co-production and participant agency. We argue that LT and storytelling provide practical tools for strengthening the socio-cultural dimensions of IFM, provided they are carefully facilitated, culturally adapted, and supported through long-term engagement.