Nowadays, the word participation is a frequently used term in the scientific, artistic, and social policy discourse. Its popularity contributed to making it a cliché, but participation is “too serious and ambivalent a matter to be taken lightly”, as Majid Rahnema writes in his study, Participation. In this paper, I take a closer look at the concept of participation and the practice of debate theatre to explore how the participative form of debate theatre contributes to the awakening of the demand for an active citizenship, for the life of vita activa.