Resistance Reconsidered: Feminist Theatre and the Challenges of Reception

Not surprisingly, the discussion started out strong and then branched back to the topic of women playwrights.  I believe it is a result of Emily Sands study that has it in everyone’s minds, but I find it frustrating that we keep going back to the playwrights and leave no time for everyone else.  Or, perhaps women playwrights are due for a good monopoly of discussion and I just felt left-out since I’m not one.  Either way, that’s where it ended up.  However, let’s start at the top.

First of all, the question was posed “How are we defining feminist theatre?”  According to my notes, neither this question nor steps to answering it was visited for long.  I found this somewhat disappointing because I run a theatre company that promotes the role of women in theatre, so does that make us a feminist theatre?  Because we don’t exist to create one-woman shows about gender bias, or musicals about menopause.  We exist to create dialogue and actively employ women so they can have career changing opportunities that will help them break through the glass proscenium.  I’d like to know if people look at GAN-e-meed, think “feminist” and run away screaming.

The discussion continued to question whether specific marketing can devalue the content of feminist theatre and if feminist theatre is “unpalatable” to commercial audiences.  Eventually, this led to the conclusion that it comes down to geography and local community: the context for audience reception.  Which is the basis for building an audience in any theatre, not just feminists.  Of course, no one said that.  And then, of course, we came to the playwrights: It’s not about palatability, it’s about getting plays in the pipeline.

I have to admit, I think I tuned out a little as the session concluded because, as I noted earlier, a lot was said but very few Actions were proposed for making a difference.  There was very little innovation in this session, although there were a lot of play titles being thrown about that I now need to go read.  Huzzah.

Dramatic Lessons:  Training Teachers in the Use of Theatre and Dance in the k-12 Classroom

To be honest, I looked at the first handout and almost left.  But then it struck me that I could attend this session not as someone looking at publishing a book on pre-k theatre, but as a future professor who wants to teach this very topic.  So I stayed.  Learned some stats, played some games, and pretended to be part of the large intestine.

Here’s some stuff I learned and did:

• Goals for teaching pre-service teachers: 1 – Confidence in their own creative abilities, 2 – Help them become artists in the classroom, 3 – (Re)awaken their passion for teaching
• 93% of communication is non-verbal.  What?!  Really?!  No wonder emails always get people into trouble.
• “Even the most reticent teacher will welcome a way to make their work more complete.”
• Know the curriculum for the school you’re in.  Meet with teachers and find out what they need.  Other arts teachers will be your biggest allies.
• Teachers are terrified of [theatre] and administrators don’t understand what we do and why it’s important.  “They need the opportunity to learn the process.”
• Meet once a year and say “What do you need and what can we offer you?”

Risking Innovation Day 1: Directing, Debuting and Intelligencing

Risking Innovation Day 2: Nutshells and Photos

Risking Innovation Day 2: The Glass Proscenium

Risking Innovation Day 2: Writing & Falling Girls

Risking Innovation Day Two: Training Directors & Convincing Admins

Risking Innovation Day Three: Talk-Backs and Vulnerability

Next Up:

Day Four

• Risking Innovation in Directing Training: A Presentation of Manifestos on the Academy’s Approach to Training Directors for the Future

First of all, I would like to officially admit that it took almost an entire day of cogitating to figure out that when a professor or grad student says simply, “the Academy,” they’re simply referring to life in Academia, as in, at a college or university.  Like saying “the man” when referring to the government.

I normally forgo dignity and ask the foolish questions both for my own sake and those around me who are clueless too but this time I’m grateful I had the sense to sit it out.  Foolish would not begin to describe how I would have looked asking this question in this particular setting.

On to the panel…

Each participant read out loud a pre-written or thought-out manifesto on how to improve director training.  The largest pitfall appeared to be that directors left knowing how to direct only in a University, not in real life.  They also seemed to agree by the end that the manifesto for a Grad Student should differ from that of an undergrad.

It left me wondering first why on earth there even exists undergrad programming in directing since life experience really is what makes it possible to tell stories, and second what exactly I would get from going to grad school…other than the degree so I can then teach at colleges.  I don’t want to spend three years of my life not learning anything.  I just spent the last 10 years living life outside of the Academy and learning a helluvalot, I don’t care to stop now.  The purpose of returning to school is to learn what I can’t learn out here on my own with a limited budget.  But, if as they said in this panel, I won’t learn anything useful for real life anyways, how do I justify going back?  It left me disgruntled.

• Enhancing Teaching and Learning through Theatre: Support for Model Programs; Research Findings; and Collaborative Opportunities

Like most programs, this did not include prek as I had hoped.  The discussion began at k, and I was so tired and hungry by this session that I didn’t have the sense to get my hand up in time to ask for prek references.

There were a lot of references to research I already knew about and some questions/comments about the lack of support from administrators in schools for the inclusion of theatre arts in the school day.  Yadda yadda yadda.  Same old discussion with, yet again, no active solution proposed.

And so ended Day Two of the ATHE/AATE conference, Risking Innovation.  Finally.

Next Up:

Day Three

Here we go again.  More ATHE conference Day Two for you.  Previous posts are listed at the end of this one.

• Writing About Theatre Practice

This may be old hat for the professional writers out there, but I’m a lover of writing, not a pro so this little panel held a lot of useful info, even though I walked in late.

1. “Nostalgia” for discoveries and experiences (as a teacher, director, whatever) can be a hindrance because these things need to be re-examined and formulated into scholarly language.  In other words, take a step back and take your heart out of it just long enough to see what’s there for others who don’t have your personal memories.
2. Get a couple of samples of the journal first before submitting.  I’ve heard this before, and I have yet to do.  I guess I will now since it’s been said to me so may times!
3. Articles need an argument and a theoretical exploration.  “reframing an experience in terms of an argument.”  Right, that would be why all my ‘essays’ read like poetry; I rarely have an actual argument.  Ha!
4. Journals to explore:  Theatre Journal, Theatre Topics, Players Journal
5. Don’t worry about cutting things down because it could be the case that “the thing that you have to cut from this article is the kernel of the next article.”
6. Only peer-reviewed journals will be considered for a tenure track.
7. “You must eliminate every word in that sentence that doesn’t deserve to be there…good writing is good writing and scholarly writing doesn’t have to be baroque.”  -Robert Barton

• Risking Theatre for the Very Young – Art, Education or Experimentation?

This presentation was a delightful introduction to an educational program at University of Wisconsin-Madison spear-headed by Manon van de Water.  She discovered a script that was then translated into English for children called “The Falling Girls.”  Two girls fall from the sky into the dessert.  There is a girl in the dessert who draws them pictures.  The two girls fight and try to figure out how to get back to their planets.  I only saw excerpts and haven’t read the script, but is certainly reminiscent of The Little Prince.

The goal, as described by the musician, Jonathan Brooks, was to “provide a landscape where very young children can making meaning for themselves.”  And, it appears they did just that.  The set was vertical, with many places to climb, swing and grab.  The three girls, dressed all in white were deeply physically engaged, having spent months working with improvisational movement techniques like viewpoints, Meyerhold, and Grotowski.  The children came to the theatre and went through a pre-show sensory/aesthetic experience that lead them into the theatre: a tunnel with textures, a “Hamster disco,” and lights.  At each point, children could choose to take another path around the sensory experience if they wanted.  They were empowered to make their own choices.

On entering the theatre, the actresses were already on stage, a disco ball rotated on the ceiling and the children could slide down a plastic slide before taking their seats on fuzzy faux fur mats.  Unlike traditional theatre that has a clear beginning, the beginning felt blurry, allowing the children, through various empowering sensory experiences, to slide effortlessly into the role of audience member.

One actress said the challenge was “combating adult preconceptions of what children enjoy and what is appropriate for them.”  And then the two actresses, in costume, did a gorgeous movement presentation for us.

What I found the most exciting about this project is that although the production was supported by an education team that worked with the children and created the pre and post-show experiences, the show itself was created by artists with very little knowledge of early childhood education.  Just enough humanity to understand that kids are smart, receptive, curious, and genuine, and that was enough to push this project forward with might.

Next Up:

• Risking Innovation in Directing Training: A Presentation of Manifestos on the Academy’s Approach to Training Directors for the Future
• Enhancing Teaching and Learning through Theatre: Support for Model Programs; Research Findings; and Collaborative Opportunities

Previously in Day Two:

• Risking Innovation Day Two: The Glass Proscenium

I am propping my eye lids open with rye crackers.  Yes, I’m really that tired.  Today was packed.

• The Glass Proscenium: The State of Women in Theatre Today. Holy Panel.  These ladies are in the tops of the field and in the top of their game.  It was a good good panel.  I will report in full tomorrow when I’ve had time to disseminate.
• The Falling Girls: Innovative Theatre for 4-6 Year Olds. Incorporating pre and post show sensory, kinesthetic and artistic sessions for the children.  A fantastically innovative approach to bringing them into the space, and a beautiful sample performance by two talented actresses.  The rye crackers are starting to crumble so you’ll have to wait for this one too.
• Publishing Your Practice. Editors of three theatre journals told us how to get out writer’s game on.
• Many Studies and Examples of Research that Prove that the Arts in Education and in Collaboration Make Us Whole People.  If I couldn’t write about the Falling Girls, there’s no way I can get into this one.

Since you’re not getting anything remotely resembling a re-cap today, feast your eyes on 2.5 days worth of photos:

Day One

Only at a theatre conference would there be actors rehearsing in the lobby and making weird whooping noises.

Howard Gardner

Check out the sneaks.  Holy ’80s, Batman!

Day Two

Glass Proscenium

Falling Girls

Well, after my 24 hours of crazy hunger, elevator riding and luggage pulling, I finally made it back to the actual conference in one piece, registered and got me all settled.

I squeezed in two sessions which I will now mis-name because my huge conference booklet (it would be more apt to call it, instead, a medium-sized text book) is up in my dorm room and I’m not trudging all the way up to get it.  My photo uploader is there too so you’ll have to wait until tomorrow for photos.  Oh, yes, I’m the geek with the huge camera who’s taking photos of random things.

Let’s see…

The Directer/Choreographer Relationship in a Non-Musical. I dropped in on this one unexpectedly since I skipped out on my original choice which I found it highly uninteresting.  This one, it turned out, was significantly more interesting.  Three Director/Choreographer pairs presented slides and videos of their work that used movement or dance in a non-musical and discussed how a Choreographer and Director relationship might work in such a situation.

The moderator and lead presenter was non-other than the woman I’ve been contacting via email about grad school next year!  Score!  I made sure to ask a couple questions (which was easy since it was a very interesting topic and they were genuine questions) and then said hello afterward.

All three pairs did a good job discussing their process and collaboration.  If you know my work, you know that I love incorporating movement and usually do so even when it’s not called for in the script.  I’ve never worked with a choreographer to create it, so now I’m inspired to do so in a future project.  I love to collaborate with designers so I imagine it can only be beneficial and exciting to have yet another artist with which to throw ideas around.

AATE New Guard Network Debut Panel. To be honest, I’m not sure why they’re called “New Guard” but they were all young professionals who have not presented at this conference before.  Four very interesting talks about their scholarly work:

• the first uses video and sound media to work with children in a hospital who create their own stories about their lives.  This was really interesting and clearly beneficial but it was never made clear what his has to do with theatre.
• the second discussed the uses of Facebook by middle and junior high students and how that intersects with theatre.  His general conclusion was that since there is no proof that social media is bad for students and there is proof that it actually increases real life social interactions within the community, then he figures he’ll go with the flow.  What he didn’t say, is how he actually uses facebook with the kids.  That’s what I was really interested in.
• the third was a fantastically articulate and well-spoken young woman from Chicago who has been spear-heading, along with her colleague, a city-wide program to promote dialogue, integration and innovation among the disparate arts education groups in the city.  I’m envious of her ability to articulate her agenda; she has garnered dozens of high-profile advisory board members and is beginning to get actual funding, all in under a year.
• the fourth speaker read her article concerning love in theatre: not the acting of love or telling of love, but the love from which stems the heart of a teacher who teaches applied theatre.  I will be reading up on P. Friere as a result; I’m unfamiliar with the author.

Keynote Speaker: Howard Gardner.  I have to admit, this is what initially drew me to this conference.  I grew up with his ideas of intelligence.  Many similar ideas were integrated into the curriculums of the alternative learning schools I grew up attending.  I became even more interested when directing Electra last year.  I, for the first time, realized that I had an actress who was far more cerebral than I and I needed to learn to work within her style of learning rather than shove mine on top of hers.  I started to experiment with new ways of communicating ideas so she could comprehend them more fully.  After a time, it worked.  I began to wonder if anyone had really experimented with using the Multiple Intelligences Theory to teach acting and if it might just make the inside/outside acting debate entirely obscure.  However, I have found his books hard to understand so getting to hear it straight from the source proved to be too much of a draw to stay away.

He was an excellent speaker and held my attention easily.  He gave us a quick run-down of the history of measuring intelligence (IQ and standardized testing),  and defined Intelligence:  A potential to process information a certain way that is of value to a certain culture.  Wow, far more open-ended than I thought.

He rain down the list of intelligences, with an example for each.  At the start of the list are linguistic and logical/mathical which is, Mr. Gardner says, what Western education and intelligence is measure on so “as long as you stay in school, you’ll think you’re smart.”  Did I mention that his excellent speaking also included a very fine sense of humor?

I think the hardest part for the audience to hear came with the heading Do Arts Make You Smarter?  Because the scientific answer is “no.”  It’s exactly what the Wallace Foundation published in 2006 (this reference is from me, not Mr. Gardner).  There a plenty of intrinsic values that we all can find through anecdotal evidence and see through simple observation, but the research clearly indicates that there is no evidence that doing music will make you better at math.  This is because the research itself is inherently flawed.  Mr. Gardner posits that they are measuring the wrong end-point.  Of course music won’t make you better at math, but it will make you more aware of listening, feeling, and finding rhythms which make you a whole person.  And then he gave us the good news, he has a colleague who is being published later this year who has done research into Theatre and Empathy in children ages 8 to teen.  And the evidence is in..doing theatre makes children understand empathy!  We will finally have some proof as to what we all know.  So, Mr. Gardner continued, the idea is not to attempt to apply the arts to subjects and measure their affect, but discover what it is that the arts actually do and then find applicable ways to use those findings to create whole people.

His final message, though, was the most important, “I could care less what intelligences you use as long as you get to do what you want to do.”

And, then, of course, he pitched his next book.  And, yes, I went and shook his hand.  I hate doing stuff like that but my mom would have been very disappointed since she likes to remind me that he came and observed us at our alternative-learning school and then gave a talk in which he used me as an example as a specific intelligence.  He was very uninterested in my childhood story even though he took a prominent part.  Alas.

And so ends day one.

Stay tuned for day two and some pics.

1. Engage the guilt of your roommate to entertain your child while you finish packing.
2. Engage your child to hunt down your cell phone which you thought was packed and, as it turns out, was in your bag all along.
3. Drop off child at friends house.  Pretend to be brave.
4. Bus to Boston.
5. Sit and wait for train reading about corn-fed cattle vs grass-fed cattle.  Delish.
6. Train to NYC.  Feel ill after attempting to work.  Give up work.  Try again.  Feel ill.  Give up.  Still feel ill.  Arrive in NYC and attempt to catch cab.  Feel overwhelmed by blinky lights and very very tall buildings.
7. Realize that you’re standing one block beyond a taxi stand, which would account for all the cabs being full.  Also realize that you’re starving.
8. Find Taxi stand.
9. If a man in a uniform ask where you’re going and then says to follow him, presumably to a cab, don’t follow him.  He’ll likely dash ahead and when you stop and wonder why he’s walking so fast he’ll come back and yell at you to follow him to another hotel and which point you’ll be forced to yell back that you’re not going there, you’re going to your own hotel.
10. Walk back to taxi stand and watch as the aforementioned scam-guy places people who are not in line into taxis ahead of you.
11. Wait until he goes away and then steal your own cab.
12. Arrive at hostel and check in.
13. Find room and enter.  Be overwhelmed by the stench of sleep, the heat of a box with no external windows and the dawning realization that you’re staying in a shit-pile.
14. Prop door open with garbage can since there are no bed lamps, remove roomie’s damp clothes from your bunk and place kindly on hooks, make-up bed in dark, go use facilities while attempting not to touch anything.  Climb into bed, remove pants since it’s a hotbox and attempt to fall asleep.  It’s close to midnight and you’re still starving.
15. Wake up at 5 as bunk mate zips and ruffles and crinkles and zips some more.  Chuckle to self as door closes behind her and sleepy roommate mutters: “I think I’m gunna scream.”  You feel the same way and try not to think about the size of the closet you’re sharing with two stinky girls.
16. Wake at 7:45 after lying in bed since 5 and pretending to sleep.  Take scaldingly hot shower while trying not to touch anything.
17. Leave hostel as quickly as possible.  Find bagel and scarf it down thankfully.
18. Find hotel for conference and ask for a room.  They’re full.  There’s a room across the street, only $350 a night.  Lovely.  Call ex-hubby and cry for a minute or two.
19. Ask for wifi.  Not free.  Must pay.  Find another reputable hostel up-town and call in a reservation.
20. Return to shit hole, pack up bag, roommates are still asleep and still stinky.  Get refund.
21. Return to conference hotel to stash bag.  Run into old friend in lobby.  Old friend who you had a major falling out with and haven’t spoken with in close to four years and now gets to give you a fake hug and a fake smile and see the tears in your eyes as you struggle through your morning.  But, don’t worry, you’re an independent, in-charge gal.  Swallow, inhale, and move-on.
22. Luggage is refused by bellhop even though concierge told you it would be okay.
23. Call new hostel to confirm luggage storage.  Catch cab.  Have enough of a brain to tip the bellhop who loaded you in a cab and reply very nicely that “Yes, you did have a good stay at their lovely hotel.”
24. Acknowledge that you are, indeed, watching the bare ass of a man walking down the street as he carries a pile of his clothes in front of him.
25. Arrive at new hostel.  It’s airy, clean and full of resources.
26. Confirm reservation, store luggage for $5, collapse in a heap in the wi-fi corner and ease your heart by broadcasting to the world.