Site-specific

I saw a community based performance recently that really got me thinking: How can we theatrically support people who we persuade to step on stage?  If you go to theatre at all, you’ve probably seen some cringe worthy productions where the acting is terrible, the writing is bad, the costumes are boring and the set is obviously just someone’s couch they brought to the space.  None of those things in and of themselves make a production awful but there can be some pretty insurmountable challenges in community (or community based) theatre.  I’m a process person – the product doesn’t always matter so much to me.  I love the devising, the workshopping, the playing and the “hot damn!” moments that happen when a group of people create together.  That creation might be a hot mess but I’m always less concerned with that than with making sure everyone is getting what they need out of the process.

I’m a terrible audience member though, for most things.  I’m critical, I’m judgmental, I’m a sigher.  I don’t go see much theatre anymore because I’m the worst.  Seriously.

So how can I, in good conscience, encourage people who don’t have experience as theatre makers to get up in front of their peers and give a part of themselves to a (sometimes, maybe hostile) audience?  Fortunately our audiences at the jail are very supportive and would probably continue to be so in the free world.  I know that I’ve been genuinely excited and moved by community based performances – I recently saw a group of young women from Garza High School perform and thought it was fantastic – so I’ve been thinking what makes a production stand out for me, versus what makes me a little disappointed I bothered leaving the house.

Theatricality.  You don’t need lights or music or much of anything to make a performance theatrical.  You don’t even need professional performers.  Well, gosh then, what do you need?  Michelle and I discussed this some because I’d like to make our next performance at the jail more of a performance, less a stand-and-read-your-work kinda thing.  The games and improv exercises are theatrical and fun, but how can we make the poems and written pieces more interesting to watch?

Michelle suggested we try and work in a site-specific way this last week and it was a wonderful change.  She invited to class to view the classroom (usually a pretty boring space) as a performance space.  We all walked around the room, exploring it and really looking at all the nooks and crannies.  Then she told everyone to do something that they normally do in the room – sit at a desk, stand at the whiteboard, etc.  We had to do this three times.  I had a hard time finding a third “normal” think to do – I seem to stand up a lot!  Then she asked us to do something that we wouldn’t normally do in the space.  Some of the women sat on the floor, one took the chair I normally sit in, one woman hid in the corner.  We did that three times as well – the last time I did a headstand against a wall which felt VERY weird.  The women had a great time and were pretty amused with themselves and each other.  They ended up in some pretty funny places in the room that I hadn’t even noticed before.

I told everyone that since we were looking at the room as a performance space, I had a line for everyone to say from their spots.  It came from a Sandra Cisneros poem I had brought in called, “Las Girlfriends.”  The line was “Been to hell and back again.”  I thought it would work well because it could go in so many different ways.  One woman was having a rough day, however, and when I asked everyone to say it aloud together, she burst into tears.  We spent a couple of minutes talking about what was wrong, and I asked her if she needed to be excused to get some water.  She left the room with a social work intern from ACC (who is fantastic in our class) and we continued.  We each said the line from our spots in the room and as it went around, women started to add to it

“Been to hell and back again, and I ain’t going back.”
“Been to hell and back again and I survived.”

We all took a few deep breaths when it was over and I passed out the poems.  Along with “Las Girlfriends”, I brought in “The Clasp” by Sharon Olds.  Both are powerful poems in their own way that deal with love, loss, violence and pain in very different manners.  I liked the contrast between the two; Cisnero’s is devil-may-care and humorous while Olds really goes for spare, dark language that makes you feel like you’ve been gut punched.  We read both of the poems out loud and discussed them – then I told the women that we were going to write our own poems based on our own memories.

I gave the class three minutes to write down 50 memories as fast as they could.  Just words or phrases so they would know what they meant.  It’s almost impossible to get to fifty but you want everyone to really try.  I got to about 26 – some women had over 30 while others had fewer than 10.  I then asked them to star three that really interested them.

“What?  Only three?”

I let them do that and then told them they had to narrow it down to one.  After they had, we free wrote about that one memory for about 10 minutes.

“Don’t worry about a poem or even a story.  Just write about it.”  I participated as well – I had a memory that had worked itself to the front of my brain that needed to be sorted out on paper.  The time flew by.  The women who had gotten so upset came back in the room but I told her she could sit this out if she needed to take care of herself.  She said that she would – it seemed her memories were too much for her that day.

Once the freewriting was up, I told the class to look over their work and pick the best lines and phrases from it, to take what was really good.  Then, on the back or a new sheet of paper, write those lines down in whatever order they wanted and to add or subtract from them as they saw fit.  We took another five or ten minutes to do this and once again, it wasn’t really enough time but I got a poem scratched out and most everyone something finished.

“Pick another spot in the room,” I said.  “A good spot for your poem.”  We all found places in the room and read out poems out loud to ourselves.  Then we picked a line and each woman said a line from her poem into the room.  We didn’t go in any order – I just asked everyone to say a line when they felt like it.  To my surprise, this went really smoothly and no one stepped on anyone else.  After that, I asked if anyone wanted to share her entire poem and several women volunteered.  As a group, we traveled to the woman’s spot in the room and she read her poem from there.  When then moved around the room as different women presented their poems.  I read mine and we ended with Michelle’s.  It was lovely, and the moment of fear I felt before sharing my own poem reminded me of how vulnerable some of these women must feel.

The poems I heard were beautiful and I wish I could share them here.  I’d share mine but well – it’s a little too personal to put out on the big, bad internet.  Maybe I can get Michelle to post hers!

Working in a site specific way really did open up the idea of theatricality in the jail.  Even though we can’t bring in much and often only have an hour or so of rehearsal time before a performance, placing these poems in different parts of the room on different levels changes the entire feeling of the performance.  I think all theatre should have a little magic in it, a little something that takes you out of your ordinary world.  If we can transform a jail classroom into a creative space, why not take it one step further and make it a performative space?

-Katherine Craft

Reaching Beyond

Today, Michelle and I went into the jail with the intent to finish the Blagg. We had our lesson plan all typed up and we spent a good twenty minutes before class going over the fine points again. Since neither one of us is extremely familiar with the Blagg, we wanted to make sure that we could lead it confidently.

The women were about thirty minutes late today and when they came, several were obviously frustrated. As I handed out paper for freewriting, Ms. S told me, “We need to have a discussion after this.”

“Oh?” I said.

“About this class.”

“Oh,” I said again, “is it bad?” She smiled and didn’t really answer. “You’re making me nervous!” I said.

We finished freewriting; I pulled up the rolling chair and said, “I hear that there’s a discussion y’all want to have.” The women looked at each other quickly.

“Yes,” Ms. S said. “We’ve been talking and the class thinks, we all agree, that we don’t want to do the thing that we did last time.”

“Okay,” I replied. “I hear what you’re saying – you don’t want to do that. I’d like to hear why. I have my own theories about it – in fact Michelle and I both had reservations about doing this – but I’d like to hear your thoughts about it.

Several women spoke about why they didn’t want to continue the Blagg. I heard:

“We know what our lives are like – we don’t want to act it out.”
“This is too close to our real lives.”
“This is just a repetition of the one we did with Humpty Dumpty. We liked that one – that was fun, but this one is just the same thing.”
“This class is the only time we don’t have to think about those things. This class is for having fun and getting away from all that.”
“In this class, we reach beyond all of that.”

It was the “reach beyond” that really struck a chord with me. It reminded me of something that the PRIDE program coordinator said: “Your class helps open up possibilities for the women. When they come in, they’re in survival mode and you help them move towards possibility.” I think the PRIDE program itself does this as well, and our class has a unique way of bringing new ideas and experiences to these women.

“I’m really glad y’all felt comfortable bringing this to us,” I told the class. “This shows me that you have ownership of this class and that’s what I want, so thank you.” At some point in this, I switched from using “I” to “we” and pointed at Michelle. Everyone laughed and said I was trying to put the blame on her. Michelle got up and pretended to walk out in a huff. I felt like the discussion went well and I understand why the class was reluctant to pursue the exercise further. Michelle and I agreed that the structure and aesthetic of the class up to this point has been very different than what the Blagg represents. If we set up our class as place to explore their lives head on, then this might work and the class might be willing to go with us. As it is, we have set up the space as a kind of escape from the realities of the jail so I imagine that to be dragged back there was unsettling.

Lois Weaver of Split Britches ran a workshop with incarcerated women in England that didn’t touch on their own lives at all. She’s a performance artist who created the character of Tammy Whynot for her own performances – she took this character into the prison and facilitated the women creating their own fantasy characters. My professor at Goldsmiths, Caoimhe McAvinchey, wrote about this and she noted that while much of the work with incarcerated people focuses on their past and how to correct that, this dealt not just with their futures but with all of the wildness of what could be. With Lois Weaver, that “what could be” wasn’t rooted in day-to-day reality but in fantasy. Fantasy has always played an important role in my life – indeed, being able to imagine numerous possibilities for myself and for everything in general feeds me as a person as an artist. I can see what a powerful tool it can be in an oppressive place with women who might feel trapped by their lives and their circumstances.

The discussion today is helping me clarify what Conspire is about and what we’re trying to do. I’m not completely there yet, but Michelle and I had that “what is the point of this?” conversation in the car today. It’s about that reaching beyond, that possibility. Despite the failure of the Blagg, I’m so happy we tried it. Even when things go wrong, they can lead to something so right.

-Katherine Craft

The Work

What is “the work”? I thought about this a lot this past week as we interacted with different members of the staff at the jail, taught our short workshop, and visited their Job Readiness class. Applied theatre practitioner James Thompson notes that people on the outside of a prison theatre program tend to think that of drama event—the workshops and performances—as “the work.” But so much invisible work runs in the background of these more visible (at least, visible inside the jail) moments. Thompson adds that in applied theatre work, it’s actually the “complementary practices” that take up the most time*.

What are our complementary practices with Conspire Theatre? Going through orientation, chatting with security officers, brainstorming future programming ideas with the education coordinator, visiting other instructors’ classes at the jail, connecting with people who might want to help, grant writing, researching lesson plan ideas, emailing, social networking…the list goes on and on. Sometimes I call this “the work before the work.”

But complementary practices are not merely preliminary work—they’re central to our process. Each personal interaction that helps someone understand more what we’re doing and why is “the work.” Our presence as theatre artists at the jail is “the work.” Showing that helping incarcerated women laugh and play and create together has value as a way to shift their feelings about themselves—that is “the work.”

I’ve been thinking so much about the young woman I connected with during the Job Readiness class. As Kat wrote, I have a background in job aptitude testing and research, and love talking with people about the kind of work they love to do. I noticed that this woman was slumped down in her seat, struggling to write a resume for a job she didn’t want. I knew she played a number of musical instruments, so I asked if she’d be interested in a job that combined her customer service and music skills—like demonstrating/selling instruments at a music store. I added that Kat had mentioned she’d seen a job ad for a job like that last week. She just lit up: “Really? My music skills count? I never thought there would be a job out there that I would like!” She set to work on her resume with renewed energy.

Will she be as excited to look for this sort of a job when she gets out of jail? I’ll probably never know. My hope is that our interaction shifted something inside about the value of her work as a musician. Or least that she’ll remember that someone listened and cared. Forming relationships—with the women, the staff, the supporters—inside and outside of the theatre workshops—this is “the work.”

-Michelle Dahlenburg

*From Thompson’s Applied Theatre: Bewilderment and Beyond, 2006, p. 46.

Branching out

Enough about theatre – doesn’t anything else happen at that jail besides theatre?  I am so glad you asked, because yes, so much else goes on there besides our wonderful class!  This past Friday, Michelle and I sat in on the Goodwill Job Readiness class, which happened directly after ours.  The PRIDE women worked on identifying jobs they’d like to have after release, and worked on resumes for those specific jobs.

In the two years I’ve been at the jail, there have been very few opportunities to sit and chat with the women.  We’re always up, we’re running around, we zapping, we’re writing, we’re acting, we’re moving moving moving!  How interesting then to sit in a room at long tables and have quiet conversations about jobs, about lives, about hopes and ambitions.

Michelle was especially drawn to one young woman who became more and more frustrated with the process.  She didn’t know what job she wanted; she’d had many jobs and didn’t really like any of them.  She knew what she wanted to do but it was hard to make money at it.  This whole narrative sounded pretty familiar to me (from my own life) so Michelle and I had a whispered conversation questioning whether she should step in and help.  With permission from the Goodwill instructor, she did, and spent the rest of the class discussing what her options might be and what skills she already had.  Michelle has worked in career services type programs before, so she was fairly vibrating with eagerness to jump in.

“This is what we need on the outside,” I said to her.  “A center with theatre and job readiness and life skills and trauma therapy and rehab and social workers.”

“Let’s do it!” she replied.

“Yes, let’s!”

It’s been my dream for a long time now – I might be gathering enough forward momentum to take some steps.  A new program is starting at the jail for women in maximum security, and I hope to teach a class there as well.  Historically, those incarcerated in maximum security receive less programming which is a shame because they need it just as much.  One of the women in our class for PRIDE seemed especially concerned about it the other day.  Maybe she has a friend there or maybe she fears she’ll end up there herself.

The class itself was a shortie.  We only saw them for 45 minutes, so we played a fun improv game the whole time.  This group loves to role play!  I asked if the game we played made anyone nervous and Ms. S said, “No, we expect this now.  We come to this class and do silly stuff.”  And I can tell!  The women who’ve been with us a while hop right up and since they show no fear, the new women usually follow with little or no hesitation.  If someone does hesitate, the rest of the class eggs her on until she gets up and then bursts into cheers and applause.

The one disappointment is that only one woman completed the writing assignment I gave them last week.  I heard the same excuses I always do: I didn’t have time, I had other things to do, I forgot.  Although I’d expected it, I still gave them a hard time.  As long as I keep my tone light and a smile on my face, I feel perfectly okay giving everyone a little bit of grief.  I used to be more reticent about this but this time around, I would like it take less than two years to get a collection of writing together.  And my lesson plan doesn’t work without the writing!

We brainstormed a few solutions and I left a reminder note on the whiteboard in the classroom, in hopes that they’ll see it throughout the week.  A couple of women did feel bad and promised to have theirs done this Friday.  We’ll see…

-Kat Craft

Going through the Wringer

Michelle’s right – I do get a little nervous bringing in activities that are expressly about changing behaviors or that feel too much like therapy.  I’ve yet to determine whether this is cowardice or good sense.  The Blagg is a new exercise for me; although I’ve read about it and participated in it during one of Katie Dawson’s Applied Theatre classes, I’d never seen it done in a jail or prison setting.  I also read an interesting critique of the Blagg by one of its practitioners, Jenny Hughs.  She took it into a women’s prison and realized that when they were constructing the character of Jo and discussing how she ended up in prison, Jo was acted upon as much as she acted for herself.  So Jo had been abused from a young age and he abusive boyfriend pimped her out; she was using drugs as a way to deal with her life.  While not all incarcerated women have had these experiences, many have experienced serious trauma from a young age.  How, exactly, do you fix behaviors that are reactions to trauma?  Will cognitive behavior therapy (which is what the Blagg is based on) work?  Or does it reinforce victim blaming?  Is it fair to call incarcerated women victims?  That’s a loaded word, and certainly dangerous to apply across the board to a large group of diverse women.  Honest questions here because I haven’t worked it out for myself.

I’ve now undergone extensive work for trauma and it’s not something that can be reasoned away.  The body and the nervous system carry physical memories and patterns that need to be understood, explored and soothed.  Neural pathways need to change.  The way one’s body handles emotions needs to be expanded.  So I’m curious – what, as theatre makers, what can we do to aid in this process?  Is it possible?

When confronted with questions like this, I tend to try and remind myself that I’m a theatre maker and an artist, first and foremost, and one thing I do know how to do is make theatre.  So when I’m feeling uncertain, I take things back to that framework – hence my approach to the Blagg.  Yes, let’s talk about these issues, let’s talk about our stories but let’s put it into this structure that allows for less finger pointing and recrimination.  The conversations and discussions should still happen – why is Jo in this situation and how did she get there?  Is there anything she can do in the future?  Who can help her? – but let’s put it in fictional terms so we can all examine it with a little bit of impartiality and detachment.

And it’s silly in the end, because usually whatever I’m nervous about works out fine.  I’m not working with delicate little teacups, but flesh and blood women who have already been through plenty.  My pushes and pulls probably won’t be that proverbial last straw, so though I always proceed with respect, a little less caution might lead this class down some interesting paths.

One of my least favorite things about applied drama is all the hand wringing, the oh-god-we-might-do-something-wrong approach that can keep whole classrooms of students arguing about theory for hours until they’re so afraid to do anything at all, and facilitation becomes a terror.  Reflection and introspection are excellent tools, but I also have a tendency to overthink it til it’s already failed five times in my head.  Blagg is a good test of trying to break free of this – we ended last class with writing assignments from Jo’s and other character’s points of view, and we’ll pick it up again with Jo’s background.  I hope to use those writings to start constructing a script this Friday, in order to launch into a new kind of performance for Conspire Theatre.  It’s all worth a little bit of nail biting in the end, yes?

-Kat Craft

 

 

 

 

 

The Blagg

Have you ever “blagged” anyone? According to applied theatre practitioner James Thompson, in incarcerated populations in the UK to “blag somebody means to deceive them, to pull the wool over their eyes.”* More seriously, “blag” can also refer to a crime. This week Kat and I led a workshop adapted from a program called “Blagg!” Blagg! is a drama-based offending behavior workshop developed by the Theatre in Prisons and Probation (TIPP) Centre in the UK.

The aim of Blagg! is to employ drama tools and techniques to engage participants in exploring criminal behavior. It can address a variety of topics, such as crime, violence, drug use, and peer pressure. Though we were curious about using the work, both Kat and I had concerns about it. Would it seem like a “bait and switch”—that suddenly we’d gone from doing fun theatre activities to forcing them to talk about why they were in jail? After Kat read some research about how Blagg did not always work as well for incarcerated women (because the reasons for the crime are sometimes more out of their control), she suggested we use the workshop less as a “therapeutic tool” and more as a tool for generating characters and stories for a performance piece.

The first step of the Blagg workshop is to ask questions to create a character named Jo Blagg who is just like the women in the workshop. Our Jo Blagg:

• Is 5 months pregnant
• Lives with her abusive boyfriend and her brother near Rundberg
• Has a 15-year-old sister who lives on the streets
• Has another boyfriend who is a “rescuer”
• Has a cat named Cassandra
• Is a dealer but doesn’t use
• Has a drinking problem
• Is embarrassed by her family back in Mexico
• Likes to fix cars
• Is in jail for getting caught selling dope
• Is scared to leave her boyfriend
• Wants a better life for her family
• Wants to “get out of the game” and become a pharmacist

When I asked “Why is Jo in jail?” most of the women agreed that she’d been caught dealing. But one woman called out “She murdered someone!” “She murdered someone?” “Yeah, she murdered her boyfriend!” “Remember that for this activity we’re creating a character who could be a member of this class. Could someone who was in jail for murder be in this class?”

“No, she’d be in Max! And Max isn’t allowed to take classes. But Max deserves programs, too!”

And she is correct that women in maximum custody at the jail have much less programming that minimum and medium custody. Kat explained that she was hoping to expand the Conspire programs to offer programs to the women in Max, and the woman seemed pleased by that, though still frustrated.

Next we had two women create a frozen image of Jo at the moment she’s committing the crime. The other women mirrored Jo’s frozen image, and then simultaneously said what Jo was thinking in that moment. Everyone seemed engaged up until that point. I decided to go around and have each women tell us what her Jo was thinking. BAM! Energy suck…ugh. I wrote each comment down and then turned around to see women slumped in their chairs, spacing out, heads on desks. Oh, crud… we lost them! After checking in (they were fine, just tired), in seconds we were back up on our feet. We put a woman playing Jo in the center and asked the other women to take on roles as people in her life. They placed themselves closer or farther away from her based on how her actions affected them. Then we interviewed or “hot-seated” a few of the characters. We left the women with an assignment to write a letter to Jo as their character. What would her brother, boyfriend, mother, or even her cat say to her if they knew she was committing this crime? I’m looking forward to working with these letters this week.

Lessons learned for me this time: Don’t be afraid to try something new, but know that you may hit some bumps along the way. Get over the idea that laughter = success/engagement. Make sure to frame the intent of work in a way that makes sense to the women. And above all, keep the energy moving!

-Michelle Dahlenburg

(*From Drama Workshops for Anger Management and Offending Behaviour, 1999, p. 43.)