Gathering personal text for performance text: Rehearsal process and other thoughts

There are many methods for gathering text to use in a theatre process that involves interviewing real people and crafting a script or performance out of that material.  Outside of academia there are more or less ethical considerations taken into account, within academia these methods are seen as research on human subjects and come with different kinds of restrictions to protect the subjects.

Two well known examples in American theatre are Tectonic Theatre's "Laramie Project".  Following description is from their website http://www.tectonictheaterproject.org/The_Laramie_Project.html

In October 1998 Matthew Shepard was kidnapped, severely beaten and left to die, tied to a fence on the outskirts of Laramie, Wyoming.  Five weeks later, Moisés Kaufman and fellow members of the Tectonic Theater Project went to Laramie, and over the course of the next year, conducted more than 200 interviews with people of the town.  From these interviews they wrote the play The Laramie Project, a chronicle of the life of the town of Laramie in the year after the murder.  THE LARAMIE PROJECT is one of the most performed plays in America today.

The work of Anna Deavere Smith is another example.  "Anna Deavere Smith, actress/playwright, is said to have created a new form of theater. Prizes include a MacArthur fellowship, the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Award, two Tony nominations, two Obies and others. She was runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize for her playFires in the Mirror. She has created over 15 one-person shows based on hundreds of interviews, most of which deal with social issues. "

Watch Anna Deavere Smith on TED Talks

Choreographer Joe Goode creates dance/theatre; and uses dance/theatre methods to collect material (both word and movement) in his community projects. Other choreographers include Liz Lerman, Stuart Pimsler, Peter DiMuro, Cassie Meador....

My work involving creating script/movement material from interviews and interactions with communities of people includes Synchronicity Theatre's Women + War project, Between the Heartbeats: Celebrating and Honoring the Nurses (Cape Ann, Massachusetts) and Route 66: Go, Dad, Go!, as well as Big Sky Spinning (five communities in Montana). I was also involved in the seven-year cycle of story plays created with the folks of Sautee-Nacochee, Georgia.  Headwaters, produced by the Sautee Nacoochee Cultural Center.

The interview format is an interesting one.  What are the questions?  How will they be asked?  How will they be recorded?  Who will do the interviews? Who will perform them?

I could write a book (or at least a journal article) about all this.  It is on my to-do list. Meanwhile.  Here I would like to focus on our recent rehearsal and how the text was generated.

As I reviewed, and contributed to, the "Too Big" interview questions generated by our satellite partner team (Lisa Brenner, Evelyn Cruz Diaz, Maryelizabeth Anderson and Lesley Delmenico) I found myself wanting to gather questions rather than responses.  How to do that?

This was our rehearsal/generating process September 19th.
My goal - I wanted some text that I could layer with the movement material that we are generating that would evoke the kinds of questions the students are holding - the kinds of questions that have no answers.  I knew that to get to that "state" we would need to prime ourselves into a certain liminal creative space. Below is a description of the rehearsal/workshop.

After check-in and warm-up I introduced Liz Lerman's "Blind Lead" exercise.  It is similar to the theatre exercise where one partner is blindfolded and they are lead around to explore the space (the environment).  In Liz's version the "blind" partner is not blindfolded, but rather invited to close their eyes.  The guiding is more focused on a movement experience - how will you guide your partner through the space?  What different kinds of touch? It becomes an improvisational dance, one person with their eyes closed and their leader guiding through an improvisational dance of changing directions,  levels, flow and input.  Music plays in the background. After full exploration of this, including changing who is leading/who is being led, we moved onto a second step.

(Throughout the exercise, we pause to talk and reflect.  Participants are encouraged to stay "in" the improvisation, to not talk and to take care of their partners.  The use of music creates the environment for this, and for creative engagement with the movement.  I used Buckethead's Electric Tears album."

Sculpting: Again in partners, but this time with eyes open. One person "sculpts" the other person - but rather than placing limbs in a position, the sculptor "indicates" a movement suggestion by the use of different kinds of touch.  The sculptee responds to that impulse, arriving at a placement of their body in space. When the sculptor "tires" of sculpting, they place themselves in a still position in relationship to the sculptee.  Roles then switch.

Leading/Being Led/Leaving/Sculpting:
(Usually there is another step in here, but I jumped to this step directly because my dancers know each other and are comfortable moving improvisationally.)

• Start with a partner, one with eyes closed and the other leading.  After awhile you may stop your partner by placing two hands on their shoulders to indicate that you are stopping.  At that point you may leave them, and go find another partner.  
• Or you may sculpt them, and then leave them. 
• Sculpted partner may choose to stay in the sculpted shape when they are left, or go to a neutral position. 
• At any point anyone may choose to switch roles.  If you have been left and you decide you want to be a leader, you may open your eyes and find an available partner.  If you have been a leader and want to close your eyes, you just stop and close your eyes and wait for someone to take you.

Music continued to play, and I began to layer text (I had told them I would be doing this).  I borrowed the text from a commencement speech by Patti Digh, "The Geography of Verbs"
I found the speech to have some compelling ideas.  I hoped that if the dancers were engaged in this physical activity of a "journey", that hearing the text might open up some ways of thinking about their lives after graduation that I was hoping to get to.
Here are some of the pieces of the speech that I used:

"Map-making is almost as old as human beings.  No one knows where or for what purpose someone got the first idea to draw a sketch to communicate a sense of place, some sense of here in relation to there."

"Where is your here right now? And where is your there? How can we map between those places?" between your life at Grinnell, in college, now and where you will be after graduation?

"We orienteer through our lives like explorers, or not.  We leap, or we don't.  We see the space at the edge of our seeing as either a boundary - or horizon.  And explorers are only explorers if they don't know.  Safety is not part of the explorer's world - it is knowing that forms their ground truth. That's what it means to explore and to map new places."

Here is a link to Digh's speech.
http://www.guilford.edu/blog/2012/05/05/the-geography-of-verbs-commencement-remarks-by-patti-digh-82/


When we brought the improvisation to a close, I distributed paper and pencil and asked dancers to write down questions that roll around for them as they think about their futures, their lives after Grinnell, as they embark on their journey into their lives.

Here are a few minutes from the improvisation.  Emma (our AD/SM) thought it was so beautiful she wanted to capture some of it on video.

Here is what the ensemble members wrote in response to the prompt :

"Will I stand out? Will people notice me? How can I meet people? Which path will I choose? How can I make the world more beautiful? Which values will I hold onto? Which values will I change? Who will  be important in my life? What will motivate me? Who will I love?"

"What do I want? How do I keep from settling? Who do I want to share my life with? What will my days look like? What are the things I will have to give up? Will I encounter heartbreak? So where am I going? Where do I go from here? Will I have regrets?"

"Am I good at more than one thing? Am I somewhat good at a million things but not proficient in one? Will I be able to support myself and still have time to read and drink tea every  morning? Will people be attracted to me? Will I be cowardly? Will I make a difference? Will I stay healthy enough to do the kind of physical work I want to do? Will my peers and professors support me as I transition into a life that lacks academia?"

"What am I doing? Who will I be? What will I do? What do I want? Can I actually have a career? Grad school? Go to Europe? Family? Peace of mind? Disney? State Department? TFA? Can I live off doing what I love? Lonely?"

"Will I be constantly exhausted? Will I be satisfied? Will I be? Will I feel alive?"

"(1) What if I realize that I do not like my job? (2) How will I stay in touch with all my friends? (3)Will I be sad to find out that people and things change when I'm away?"

"What do I even want to do now? How do my passions translate into 'real' life? WIll the working world accept me? Does it matter? How will my priorities change?"

"Will I change? How will I find my place? Who will I share meals with? Why did I decide to shape my life this way? How am I going to deal with insurance? Where will I live?"

"What am I going to do? Will I do what I love? Who will be there? Will I be happy? Will I feel satisfied? Is this where I want to be? Will I be judged? Is this the life I've dreamed of? How did this happen? How did I get here? Will I survive? Will I still be in love? Is there support for me? Is this too good to be true? Why am I so frightened? Am I going 'down' rather than 'up'?"

"What is it that makes me happy? Will I get a job that I will enjoy? Will I be good at my job? Will I be able to finance myself? Will I find the respect I want from colleagues? How will my old friends react when I go back in their life? Will the love of my life continue to be the love of my life?"

"When will I be free? Will I ever be able to do what I want? Will I survive? (Yes) Can I be proud of my work?"

"What if my passions change? How will I know which opportunities to follow? What about my family? What if I fail? Will I be happy? How do I choose between myself and others? When does it end? Should I give up? How long will it take?"

"Who do I want to be? Where will I end up - or will I be stuck? What am I willing to sacrifice? Do I even know how to budget? What am I qualified for? Am I a hard enough worker? Am I setting myself up to alone? Where will my friends be? Can I handle five more years as the 'single' friend? Am I ready to be on my own? How much am I committing to? Do I want to be close to family? What if I never have kids? How long is 20 adult years? Can you work too hard to have time for a family?"

This was a long post.
More to come.