Social justice: hearing voices of marginalized girls expressed in theatre performance.

In this article we describe a research project studying the strengths of adolescent girls in an open custody treatment group home. Although the literature is replete with research about the deficits of girls in conflict with the law, their strengths are poorly understood and seldom researched. Understanding these girls' strengths fulfills a nursing mandate to foster social justice by challenging the status quo of the prevailing social order. A theatre performance of the research findings resulted in a profound audience impact. Arts-based research and participatory action research offer new ways of accessing marginalized populations' strengths and challenging harmful societal assumptions.