This paper examines the ethics of the contract between the performer and client group in applied theatre practice. The paper examines the problematics of the conventional drama framework as a fictional space of pretence. What are the ethics of activities carried out in a context of disbelief? How can the contradictions between the agreement to 'pretend' and the encounter with real lives be addressed? The work featured is undertaken within a self-reflexive framework wherein the concept of being 'in role' is not allied with deception. All the companies and practitioners featured use modes of participatory theatre in which the collaboration between the performer/animateur and the spect/actor or client is negotiated in a space between the 'real' and the 'not real' so that the participants are conscious that the situations played out, although 'live' are both real and not real while the performers are more explicit about their roles than in more conventional theatre frameworks. This space between performance and ordinary life, as I will demonstrate, is a space for intervention and change.