Is this REALLY a "different" way of working?

The other day, as we were finishing up a discussion of Community Based Theater and what that is, how what we're doing is different than the companies described in our readings, and how what we're doing is related to community engagement and social change, a really very important question came up: someone mentioned that all of the techniques and ways of working we've been studying are really all just research; good research practices, maybe, but in terms of the actor's process, they all fall under the blanket of research techniques.

I think, to a certain degree, this is very true! These are indeed all methods of research, in the same way that, to my mind, every single production of a play can be considered research on that play. And a performer's work can be considered research on the formation of identity. But in terms of an actor's research, I imagine what we're doing a bit differently than research an actor conducts to lend his or her character a note of "authenticity," which I take as the goal of method actors and others who conduct character based research.

In order to explain this, first I should say that part of the idea of this class is based on the concept that actors are very important public figures: that they not only reflect the world around them, but also produce images that shape how people understand themselves and their world. Actors, in that sense, are to me very important public intellectuals who carry out ideas with their bodies and voices. And these ideas are, very significantly, often about identity.

But another part of the idea of this class is that "identity," rather than being a solid, constant, unchanging idea or type or mold into which a person (or an actor) steps, is an ongoing process that is built and changes gradually. So identity, contrary to popular understanding, is not formed by the individual before he or she steps into the world. It is created in collaboration with the world in a social and public way.

So when the actors in the class look at the play, and see the characters Chuck Mee has written, those characters are only pieces in a bigger puzzle. Yet another part of the equation here is what Mary Overlie calls thinking "horizontally" rather than hierarchically. Mee's words are, of course, incredibly important. But so are the words of the people in the community with which the actors will speak. And they all take on a sort of equal importance, as does the actor's own background. Further still, this is a kind of "Participatory Action Research" for actors. It's not about taking and using people's stories, so much as in discovering what the process can yield in terms of building new communities and talking about ways to solve problems.

It's also about collaboration: seeing the character you put on stage as a cooperative effort between you, the playwright, your colleagues and the community at large. At the Cornerstone Institute this past summer, we had a class in which we discussed different kinds of working together to solve problems, one of which was "collaborative." And "collaborative" was defined as two parties coming together to create something that didn't exist before. Through your collaboration with the community (however you define or build it) on these characters, you are creating several new things: a character for the stage which provides the audience with a way of seeing the world, a new relationship and community, and potentially new ways of solving problems.

I encourage you to go back and read again some of the ideas behind what we've been studying this semester -- Viewpoints, solo performance, ensemble performance and community based arts -- and see how you as a creative artist might consider your work to address these same kinds of concerns, incorporate the same kinds of philosophies of democracy. After this project, you may decide this kind of work is not for you. But for your work in this class, see if you can momentarily shift your perspective on the actor's work and on research just slightly.

I'll close with some words from photographer Tory Read, whose work with Picture Projects in NY was featured in A Beginner's Guide to Community Based Arts, and explain how I see them applying to the work of actors. She writes,

I took some time off to travel to Indonesia where I documented an experimental community-based reforestation project. Seeing a community galvanized towards one goal was inspiring. The participatory process was quite powerful. While taking pictures, I thought to myself, "Instead of just documenting it, how could I put photography into an activist role in the process. What if people used photography to identify issues, develop strategies, and solve problems within their own communities?"

Having been an actor myself, I know that actors are, in fact, creative artists. And theatre itself already galvanizes a community of people towards a common goal; we as groups have a lot of power to build new worlds. My feeling is that making the research, production and feedback processes more actively engaged in conversations with the community might allow us to open up our power and share it. This is inspired, in some ways, by Boal and Theatre of the Oppressed, I think. But it takes into account that people who train to be actors and are interested in having that social role do have a certain kind of presence and power onstage. So rather than making audience members into actors, it engages them earlier in the process as active, creative members of the ensemble. It's just a matter of tweaking, slightly, one's understanding of how the theatrical process and actor/audience relationship works.

Finally, one step that changes that relationship is the act of creating a separate "character study" composition that exposes, to some degree, the process behind the development of your character. Through making public some of the intellectual and physical work you're doing, you make it possible for people to examine the different components of the identity you've created, see the complexities and contradictions, and use that work as a basis for larger dialogues. Instead of only representing a character as "real" and as believable as possible, this reveals the process and movement and choices that inform your work, opens it up from the beginning, and allows critical discussions about it to happen on a different level. It's sort of akin to the work scholars are required to do: they're expected to support the argument they're making with detailed and specific evidence.

I hope this clarifies, in some sense, the goals of this experiment! Feel free to disagree, give your thoughts, specify some advice, etc. That's what this is all about: encouraging people to talk about ideas and choices and issues in a constructive, creative way.

Our Reading

The reading on Saturday went really well! It was very interesting to hear the play be read aloud, as always, it's easier to find specifics having it been read out loud as opposed to scan reading in my apartment. A few details I missed before:

1. The running joke of "Ariel enters from one side, turns and turns, and exits the other side." I noticed that happened the first time, but I didn't notice how often she did it throughout the show. I think it adds to the absurdism of the play, which is where it needs to go immediately. Otherwise, the audience will get stuck in a realistic set of mind and the rest of the show will come across as bizarre rather than entertaining.

2. How massive the cherry blossoms are. We see them enter as they go into the forest, and I don't think they ever leave. I see a lot of cherry blossom designs on wedding invitations and wedding cakes, so I know it's not unusual for cherry blossoms to be a part of weddings. But I also recently did some research on cherry blossoms, and it seems they are known for their quick bloom; intense, beautiful, delicate, and fleeting. Because of this, they are often associated with the passing of life, which is described the same way. I really loved this idea, especially after reading the play aloud and discussing what the funeral scene meant. It was the remembrance of mortality that put people into true perspective of life, of marriage. Perhaps the overwhelming cherry blossoms were some kind of foreshadowing? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_blossom)

3. When Father Thane enters the second time on the line, "I beg your pardon. I'm told there's been a death?" The stage directions follow with, "(And then he is immediately marginalized as the scene goes on...)" From there on to the end of the show, Father Thane is not able to complete a full sentence due to the constant interruptions. I'm not sure what this means, but he is the only character described as "marginalized". However, he is not left alone at the end of the play. James is. One would assume the priest, who vows to live a life of celibacy, would be alone at the end of the wedding play. But Julian leads him off the stage (which is also something that can be interpreted further as we know from earlier that Julian is in love with Father Thane). I find this incredibly interesting that in A Perfect Wedding, the priest is marginalized, while all of the other characters, despite their sexuality, culture, or beliefs, seem to iron on their differences. Perhaps this is a social commentary on how our society views religious leaders?

Those were a few things that came up for me that didn't come up in discussion. I was very pleased to see a few people from very different backgrounds in our reading, and it was so fun to hear them reading along with us.

Public Reading and Community Based Theatre

After spending some time on ensemble building, having the experience of staging our own stories through solo performance, and practicing interviewing and listening to other people's stories, we've moved on to the section of the course on community based arts. And as we begin to talk about how a "community based" rehearsal process is different than what we're used to doing (as well as how using these techniques as we rehearse a play that has already been written differs from devising a play with and for a particular community), we've begun to try to make contact with people outside of our class and ensemble. The idea behind the public reading we had a few weeks ago at the library was this: usually, a company begins a rehearsal process around a table reading the play together. This happens just weeks before the actual production is to be staged. We had this reading much earlier, and invited the public to attend, so that the phase of research and rehearsal will extend for a longer period of time than it normally would.

One of the books we're reading regarding Community Based Arts, entitled A Beginner's Guide to Community Based Arts, is a useful book, written in "comic book" format, that is intended for use by people working with young folks who are creating art with an interest in social change in their communities. The book is helpful in finding goals for what we're doing and giving us ideas as we move ahead.

The authors of that book identify three premises on which community based arts are often based. They are: 1. Creativity is a Muscle, implying that all people are creative and simply need to be given the opportunity and encouragement to exercise and build that muscle. Art is not relegated to a few select folks; 2. Art is Information, which I take to mean that through the process of creating art, new and important knowledge is created. Theatre can be fun, but it's also a valuable way of examining and organizing information about significant problems or issues; and 3. Communities are Cultures, which I take as meaning that every group of people who define themselves as a community has its own way of making meaning through language, art, ritual and stories.

This last one is very significant to us with this project, because rather than going into a particular culture defined by geography, for example, we are trying to expand the boundaries of our own small classroom/rehearsal community and create a sort of culture surrounding our rehearsal process. That is, we are trying to generate community through the shared experience of working on this play, and to do so by having conversations about the characters on which the students are working.

Another really useful part of this book that may help in explaining the process we're using is the acronym the authors use for the process of creating community based work. The acronym is C.R.A.F.T., which stands for Contact, Research, Action, Feedback and Teaching. The important thing to note about this is the focus of most theatre is what these writers call the "action" of putting on a play, and this is most certainly important to us in this case. We have a production to stage March 2-6. But for community based work, the production itself shares equal importance with the other stages of the process, and work on it starts earlier and extends after the actual play happens.

So, right now, we are alternately in the "Contact" and "Research" phases for our production. We are seeking people who might help us as we build the characters for this play; and we are starting to think about and discuss the different ideas in a way that can be somehow productive for everyone involved.

Before I wrap this up, I'd like to say a few words about the reading itself: There weren't a lot of people in attendance who were not in the class, but the handful who came were patient, engaged and thoughtful. There was a lot of insightful feedback about the play and our process. During the reading, we had people from the class read, as well as people from the outside community. And it's important to note that we did not cast according to type of any sort. People just volunteered to read. And more than one person noted how interesting it was, given the topic of the play, to hear women read men's roles, or a non-Indian woman reading an Indian role, etc. And this is how we're working as we continue on ... the students in the class have chosen characters according to interest, they haven't been cast according to type. And they are playing people, sometimes, with whom they have very little in common.

There's a great deal in the play about people defying others' expectations of them, and we hope that this will be emphasized by the casting. It will be an unusual thing for audiences to pick up on, and some people may be bothered by it. But the hope is that through this extended process of research, the actors will learn a great deal through building identities different from their own. And that crossing lines of difference in this way might emphasize one thing that stood out to me hearing this reading. One character, at the end of the play, says "...we all live under the same sun, and we all breathe the same air." In some ways, this is a profoundly humanist play, but in a way that also respects human beings' right to difference from others in their various communities.

Many other things came up during the reading that could begin interesting conversations, and I hope to write more about those as we move ahead with the "Contact" and "Research" phases of this process. But first, I want to continue to ask for people's help in building this community: if you are reading this, please feel free to read the play and add your comments about it and the thoughts it brings up for you (personal connections, problems in your community, ideas for staging, etc.), either here on the blog or on our Facebook page (which you can access by clicking on the link at the top right of the page.

More soon ...

Solo Performances!

I was so impressed with all of our solo performances in class!! I thought each piece brought a sense of personality and vulnerability, and I feel like we all bonded through the experience. It was so fascinating to see a glimpse into each person's life, even for a simple five minutes. Having said that, I also wanted to point out the excitement of being a playwright and seeing my friends as playwrights. I had never thought of myself writing my own work, but as I was creating my piece, I was literally going through changes in a script that hadn't been written on paper yet. At first, I did write everything down. I worked every line out in my head and put it on paper, including stage directions. And then I began working the piece, which was an entirely new realm. I had to change so many things! I threw most of my original script out (which was very difficult because I had put so much thought into it) and I re-worked a lot of bits. Originally I had two characters in the script, one character convincing the other of all the benefits of being bulimic. It made the piece ten minutes long so I cut down to just one character. Besides, it is a solo performance, right? But when I really put it on its feet, the piece came together on its own. I knew exactly where to go onstage, where to fit in my song and ten consecutive seconds of silence. It really was like magic. I think that says something about the "traditional" way of theatre, where there is a playwright, a director, and actors. As we combine all three in ensemble work, I find that the process is running much smoother than I ever imagined! I wonder how this will change when we work on a bigger piece with the whole class involved. I am curious to how you all became playwrights for your pieces. What worked for you? What was your process?

Different Ways of Working, Part 3: Solo Performance

The next part of the syllabus this semester was about solo performance, and in preparation for writing and performing students' own stories, we viewed and discussed a number of different artists who work in a long tradition of people performing stories -their own or people's they know- by themselves on stage. It seems useful, since we'll be asking people to share their stories with us, to recognize the weight of telling something about yourself in a public way; and at the same time, it's a way of understanding what things in your life shape your identity and your own perspective, beliefs and behaviors.

The other thing that seems compelling about the form to me is that it often comes out of a desire to tell stories that aren't always told in mainstream theatre or film contexts. Many of the artist we discussed felt frustrated by the way they and people in their own communities were misrepresented or under-represented in plays and movies and in other media. Here are a few of the people we studied:

Peggy Shaw



Danny Hoch



and Rhodessa Jones

.

While each of these performers has a very different style (and it's kind of hard to get a sense of the actual performances, since these videos are very much about their reasons for working and their methods ... which I also find helpful), each works from a desire to resist or overcome predictable and often destructive patterns of representation. We also read Jo Bonney's introduction to a collection of solo performance scripts Extreme Exposure and watched videos of other performers telling their own stories, and my comments on those can be found in this earlier blog entry. This time around, watching these videos and discussing the work, I was struck by the courage these folks have in that they are essentially carving out places for themselves to be seen and heard. They are frustrated with the limitations of what actors are expected to do or be.

The students, having used these artists as inspiration, used the Viewpoints and composition to create their own solo pieces, theatricalizing their own stories in some really funny and smart and moving ways. (Again, a description of this process can be found in a blog entry from a previous semester.).

We then moved on to discussing a different kind of solo performer, Anna Deavere Smith, whose work is featured in the video bar on the right side of this page. We spent some time analyzing her work because the students will be practicing the kind of re-enactment she does as they interview community members in preparation for characters in A Perfect Wedding. Another thing I noticed in reading her work this time around was that, while she focuses on other people and their stories (as opposed to her own autobiography), and in fact began her work in part because she was frustrated with the "self-oriented" approach, she also in some ways was resisting the limitations of work offered by more conventional ways of working in contemporary American theatre. She shares with other solo performers a need to find different ways of working, along with an intense awareness of the power of telling a person's story publicly.

I plan to write more soon about our public reading, which I thought went quite well. One interesting thing I'll note here, though, is that there is some overlap between some of the themes of Mee's play and the work of the artists cited here. I noted, as did others at the reading, that there's a lot in this play about defying expectations: the characters often end up being the opposite of what you expect them to be. This seems to be another thing all of these solo performers have in common: pointing out that people's identities and behaviors are complex, sometimes contradictory, and often unpredictable.

Reading Tomorrow! And Livestream!

Hi, everyone. I'm very excited about launching our rehearsal process with a community reading of the play tomorrow at the Main Library in Louisville at noon. I hope you can join us, but if you can't, here's some news:

We'll be livestreaming the event, and you can watch it here! If all goes well and I don't screw up the camera and if the Internet connection is sufficient, you can get a free broadcast of this first read-through and discussion of the script. And even if you can't watch tomorrow, you can access it on-demand! Here is a link to our Livestream page so you can watch anytime. (Unfortunately, because we have no money, our Livestream account is the free one, which may mean you have to suffer through some ads over which we have no control. But, hey, it's free!)

Watch live streaming video from actingperformanceandcommunity at livestream.com

For those interested in participating, here's some information about how we'll shape our discussion about the play: tomorrow I'll hand out paper and ask the attendees to jot down answers to the following as we read:

1) Note anything at all that stands out to you in any way: an image, a turn of phrase, a relationship, etc.

2) Note anything that reminds you of something in your own life: personal connections.

3) Note anything that brings to mind a particular problem in the local, national or global community: social relevance.

4) Do you have any suggestions or ideas for staging that we might take into account? Are there specific things to which we ought to be paying close attention when making choices?

If you'd like, you can listen in on the livestream or just read the play and respond to these questions on here or on Facebook or via email (amy.steiger@louisville.edu).