Only two more hours of the most amazing theatre class I've ever taken.
I finished my final paper for the class I have been taking this semester. I am sad to see this end. This class was more than just an academic exercise in theatre. It was a semester full of weekly workshops in a technique that reinvigorated my theatrical soul.
Theatre doesn't have to be just about "the business of show" or malcontent artists trying to separate "art" from functionality.
There will always be discontent in the artist's life, or else there is no reason to make art. Be it a lack of beauty in the world that needs to be filled with a song, or a political message that cannot remain silent, or an intellectual conundrum that must be worked out on the stage, or something else, but art can't be made from a place of the contentment provided with the status quo.
This class, however, also taught me the usefulness of art in dialogue. Not the faux dialogue of staging a contentious performance that spurs conversation, but the true dialogue of a group of people - not artists or activists or students or politicians or whathaveyou, just people - sharing their experiences and coming together to critically examine their collective situation.
Last week, I took part in a Forum Theatre production dealing with the topic of HIV/AIDS awareness in the Minnesota African immigrant community. We had read about the interactive Forum scenes and how they work. We had practiced running a Forum workshop in our class. In class, students knew all the "rules" for how Forum was to work and either played along, creating a falsely ultra supportive atmosphere, or intentionally overplayed the possible obstacles we would face in the "real world" (which was helpful for practice, but did not really encompass the feeling of a real world Forum scene). So we had no idea what to expect when we got to the site last week for our Forum.
Would the audience show up? If so, how many people? Too many? Too few?
What if they don't want to get up and participate?
What if we get in over our heads with a sensitive subject and loose control?
What if we are boring and no one cares?
Well, our fears were all moot. By the end of the night, what had started with a group of mostly strangers walking around a room, playing some light theatre games as "getting to know you" exercises (or community building, as they are called in the social change theatre literature), eventually turned into a community of people who did not want to leave the building when our scheduled time in the space (which we had originally feared would be too long) was up!
The way Forum works is that the audience members (or spect-actors) watch a scene in which a main character has a desire that is unfulfilled by the end. On a replaying of the scene, the audience then has the opportunity to change the outcome of the scene by replacing the protagonist and making different choices. The point is not to come up with one "correct" solution to the problem, but as a community work on the problem and analyze the sources of oppression and the effects of different choices.
In our scene, the spect-actors were hesitant to step on stage and take on the part of our protagonist. But after a few attempts at giving directions to our actress in the role, one woman eventually had the courage to step forward and try it herself. This let loose a flood of attempts, and we had to stop only because we ran out of time, not because of a lack of enthusiasm or tactics.
And this was only one short sub-scene in our scene (one that dealt with the obstacles in the home). There was enthusiasm and interest in working on at least a few other parts (obstacles in health care and obstacles with friends).
My crisis of theatrical faith? Well, I wouldn't say it is over. I haven't purged my soul of meaningful social theatre, but now I have experienced that there is important work that my art can do, and I am not just doomed to a life of mindless Hello Dolly revivals at dinner theatres. So I have come to terms with my crisis, and now I can embrace the personal crisis and use it to work on the larger crises, rather than just freaking out.
(It also helps that my final paper was about the feeling of powerlessness and the bystander mentality of would-be activists in our society)
Posted by silsby at May 10, 2005 05:55 PM