This article is an overview of research underway which investigates early school leavers' experience of school exclusion and oppression. Augusto Boal's "Theatre of the Oppressed" has been implemented as a research methodology to provoke dialogue on this aspect of early school leaving, and to afford participants in second-chance education a space in which aspects of their stories can be given voice and made visible. In this paper I will present a summary of some of the work, and an illustration of how Boal's techniques have been adapted in an attempt to create a more transformative and collaborative research process.