“If the art is good, it can hold a lot.”

The title of this post comes from something that Phil Kingston, Community and Education Manager at the Abbey Theatre, the national theatre of Ireland, said during his facilitation today. As part of an exploration of applied theatre practices in Ireland, Phil hosted a three-hour session with the students, and he invited five of his facilitators and staff to join him in the presentation.

The morning began with us meeting Phil at the front doors of the Abbey, where he proceeded to greet each of us by name with a handshake. Phil had checked out the pictures and bios of the students in advance on our online course site at LORE.com, and he had taken the time to “know” everyone before we arrived. Throughout his three hours of work with us, Phil repeatedly made specific references to past experiences that students had included in their bios. His greeting set a welcoming tone that continued throughout the entire session.

Phil’s facilitators demonstrated a number of challenging moments that they have encountered in the various community projects that they’ve been working on, and it was helpful for us to see that issues that arise in Irish culture are often similar to the kinds of challenges we face in US settings. Conversely, both settings have their own unique challenges as well. It just reminded me to reflect again about community. I encouraged everyone to consider the commonalities that a community of practitioners might share, while also thinking about how experiences might be vastly different based on geographic location, time period, etc.

Phil also provided the students with the opportunity to choose a show from the 2012 Dublin Fringe Festival program and begin to consider different education and outreach possibilities that could be created for each show. The exercise provided an excellent, somewhat related practice run for the final project in the course, a prospectus for an original applied theatre project. Students encountered various degrees of specificity and success with their brainstorming in this process, thus allowing for a very safe experiment in thinking about developing new artistic ideas.

The group also had a chance to hear about a project that Phil’s office is developing with women who work as sex workers or who have left the sex work industry. The project involves interviewing these women and learning more about their stories. These stories will eventually lead to a theatre piece with a tentative showing date in November. As this kind of work with interviews is of particular interest to me, I was excited to hear about this new development for the Abbey. Then to model this project’s process, students worked in groups of three to interview one member of their trio, and then the other two students created a short improvisational piece representing what the interviewee said. Six pairs showed work, and it was moving and respectful. Building artistic work from the stories, ideas, and beliefs of real people requires the artist-facilitator to have a heightened sense of empathy. The interviewees discussed amongst themselves how it felt to be interviewed, and I appreciated the empathy-building that occurred as a result.

I also asked the students to begin to think about what each of our facilitators is doing, and how it might be helpful for the participants (them) in these different inputs that we’ve had and will continue to have. I’ve asked the students to always stay fully engaged as artist-participants in the various processes they are experiencing, but then to reflect after the fact about how that particular process might have unfolded. This prompt of “what is happening and why is it helpful” is one way to focus observations of another’s teaching, facilitating, or directing practice.

At one point in the session Phil said, “If the art is good, it can hold a lot.” I’ve known this concept to be true, but it’s always taken me more words to say it. I appreciated the brevity of Phil’s words, and the power of their simplicity. Artists making work in communities have a responsibility to aesthetics, just like any other artist. Maybe more so. The art-making can’t primarily be about “fixing” injustices or people or societies. Or about therapy. All of these things may be byproducts of the work, but they can’t be the primary focus of the work.

“If the art is good, it can hold a lot.” Simple and to the point.

Thanks to Phil Kingston and his team for a fantastic and inspiring session today!

Settling into the academic work and a statement about community-engaged work by Declan Gorman

Very busy today with the applied theatre course. Morning session focused on continuing our discussion of community with Declan Gorman and Jenny Macdonald. Each facilitator provided a short session on how s/he might begin work with a new group of community participants. Declan also shared a statement that he wrote about reflecting on what applied and community-engaged theatre might be, and I’ve included his words below as part of this blog post.

The afternoon session with Joanna Parkes introduced the Educational Resource Packet model, which is a way of preparing a community to experience a play for the first time. The model comes out of work that Joanna helped to develop at the Abbey Theatre, and she uses this methodology as the template for our students to create packets for two plays by Enda Walsh, Chatroom and New Electric Ballroom. Students will work in groups over the next few days to develop these packets, and they will present on Saturday afternoon. Joanna delivered a four-hour session, which included the Abbey’s Archives Resource Box, an educational tool that helps communities throughout Ireland to explore and understand the history of the national theatre of Ireland.

The evening featured a performance of A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde at the Gate Theatre. We were lucky enough to score tickets to the opening, and even sat a couple rows in front of Gabriel Byrne, who was in attendance that evening. The production featured a gorgeous costume design and some very fine acting. The play itself raises some questions about Wilde was actually going for with this story, particularly in the second half. Seems like he didn’t quite know how to wrap it up, so he kept heading down a new road, then backtracking, then heading down another road. He finally found his way, and the play finishes up. But suffice it to say, it takes awhile to get there.

What follows is the short text that Declan Gorman shared with us in his facilitation. I appreciated his statements immensely, and his transparency with us about needing to move through this writing process to relocate himself in his own practice. His words helped all of us to reflect on what it is we’re doing here and what we aim to do in the future.

From Declan:

"A group of people gathered in a room is not a community – not yet – even if common cause has brought them to the room and common social bonds unite them outside the room (such as race, shared geographical home, gender, disability or commitment to a given social justice principle)."

The term ‘Community’, when it is truly applied, when it is intended to describe an active, conscious social organism – and not used simply as a flaccid label to describe outwardly homogenous groupings in society (the Irish Community; the Gay Community etc.) – must be earned by cohesive, collaborative action.

That can be achieved in a room or a city square or an athletic club by shared commitment to arts practices, cohesive protest, sport, collective response to tragic events or other action. It reaches its highest plane however where conscious strategies are employed and embraced actively to celebrate commonality, recognise and respect difference and above all to MAKE something.

As artists, we automatically, instinctively and systematically make, and that is why our natural work if applied consciously (and not patronisingly) is proven to add value to community building.

Our responsibility as artists is seldom to create community. It is not for any individual to create a community, however charismatic or well-intentioned. That can only ever be a collective action. But we are sometimes called upon and can offer to enhance community by enabling the most beautiful and rigorous making that the forming community can achieve.

There are many ways and methods that artists can bring to this task – there is no single correct or best one. Different artists have different ‘tools’ that they share within good collective arts practice. But the endgame is always the same – whether we are working with disaffected youth in a border town somewhere or with a group of keen students on a study abroad program – to apply our artistic skills, intuitions and methods towards creating quality art in communal settings and thus enable the growth and consolidation of that community.

The course work begins

First day of course work on the applied theatre experience in Dublin. Some quick thoughts and observations:

1. “Applied theatre” is an academic term according to Helen Nicholson in her text Applied Drama. Theatre in communities has been happening for many years prior to the emergence of applied theatre as an academic discipline. Like so many things in the academy, people gain stature through the naming process. Terms come into existence so that phenomena can be named and categorized. I appreciate the term, but I don’t always find that it’s necessary to categorize the work that I make. The term “applied theatre” provides legibility and legitimacy for certain kinds of work in the academy. Seems a bit unnecessary on many levels. I may go to academic hell for writing that, but my ticket to hell has been stamped for so many other reasons at this point that I’m not sure it makes a difference. Main point: I worry that in our urgency to name something in the academy, we sometimes dilute that thing’s core principle. In this case, applied theatre needs to be theatre with a strong artistic aesthetic. Do we need anything beyond that, regardless of who we’re making it with? That’s the core question for me at the moment.

2. Orla Hasson facilitated an opening exercise with the students and asked them to consider what it means to be a community. The session concluded with a series of post-its on the wall documenting important characteristics of any community and hopes that students had for their newly developed community here in Ireland. After witnessing Orla’s facilitation, Joanna Parkes noted how an exercise in the hands of another facilitator can unfold in a completely different way and yield different outcomes. We know this as facilitators, but it was exciting for all of us to see Orla at work. I liked so much of the language that she used and how she transitioned from one section of the exercise to the next. And she consistently reminded the group about tempo. Slow. Yes. Like it. Note to self.

3. Seeing Declan Gorman in his one-man show introduced me to a lesser known work by James Joyce and made me want to read it. Through his nuanced portrayal of multiple characters of varying ages and experiences, I was reminded of the rich history of Dublin, as well as how theatre can actually capture the essence of a community through the enactment of the people and the time in which they live. Declan created a stellar adaptation of primary and secondary source material and left the audience wanting more of his storytelling. An exciting work that more people need to see. The Dubliners Dilemma: check it out!

See the images below from our morning facilitation with Orla Hasson in the Beckett Centre at Trinity College.

Official social kick off in Ireland

This evening marked the official social kick off of the Community-Engaged Theatre program in Ireland. We had a reception pulled together by the graduate assistant on the course, Simone Burns, and we were joined by some of the Irish/UK teaching staff and guests: Joanna Parkes, Jenny Macdonald, Orla Hasson, Declan Gorman, and Chrissie Poulter. It was a great evening, complete with a well-traveled story cloak, food, and fellowship.

As all days have been thus far, this Sunday was not a day of rest but rather packed with errands in the morning and a long planning meeting in the afternoon. In between I managed a catch up lunch with Joanna Parkes, a tutor on the course, and actually the longest standing member of the Irish teaching team. Joanna has been working on the course since 2003 when it was located in Cork, and she represents a consistency and institutional memory over all of these years. She successfully mentors students while also helping to keep the course grounded in current pedagogical practices and unrolling the first major group project. I also find her sense of humor and her calm way of managing every situation a huge asset as the director of the course.

At the planning meeting I had the chance to meet our newest tutor, Orla Hasson. Orla comes on board highly recommended by the rest of the teaching staff, and her work in community-engaged theatre throughout the world continues to add layers of additional expertise to the experience for all of us. I’m always so humbled by the work of my Irish colleagues, and I can’t wait for more conversations with Orla about applied theatre and her community experiences.

Declan Gorman is another long-standing veteran of the course, and he arrived to the meeting today with his usual thoughtful questions and comments. As we planned the first two days of work, Declan and Jenny both reminded us about the notion of community and how we need to think about the NYU student group as a developing community within this particular context. Declan’s thoughts about how to move forward over the next two days helped us to hammer out a plan that really takes this notion of community into account, and I’m excited that it will be at the forefront of our course work throughout these three weeks. Orla will start us off on Monday morning with an exploration of what that word “community” even means, and the conversation will go from there. I’m also thrilled that we will see Declan’s newest artistic work, The Dubliners Dilemma, a one-man show that adapts James Joyce’s novel for the stage. Declan returns to acting after a 20-year hiatus, and that in and of itself is inspiring to me. I can’t wait to see his show!

This notion of community needs to remain at the forefront of the course work, as community-engaged theatre requires us to understand ourselves in relationship to the communities in which we work. How are we the insider or the outside, and how does that inform the way that we facilitate? How does membership in a community actually evolve? Is membership ascribed to an individual? Is an individual born into a community? How does an individual somehow place herself or himself into a community? Does that constitute membership? Is membership in a community about physical location? Psychic location? Both? How do philosophies of essentialist and constructivist identity development contribute to this dialogue? The quest for answers begins on Monday morning and lasts for three weeks. We’ll see what we can discover.

Below see some pictures from this evening’s reception, as my students met in their smaller tutor groups for the first time.

Long live Eddie and Peanut Butter...

Getting my bearings in Ireland

So the picture above is of Houth, one of the many beautiful places in and around Dublin and the Irish Sea. Houth is the land off in the distance. My colleague Anne Marie took me there today for coffee and scones as we discussed all of the logistics that she planned for the upcoming three weeks. Anne Marie has been working with us in Dublin since the first year of the course in 2004, and it’s always a joy to return to her.

After meeting with Anne Marie, I met a new colleague on the course this year. Her name is Louise Lowe, and she’s making site-specific work in communities in Dublin and Belfast. After missing each other for about 25 minutes, we finally connected and proceeded to spend over two hours discussing her work and her philosophies about creating work in communities. Our conversations around a rigorous aesthetic were particularly resonant for me, as I often find that community-engaged performances can suffer aesthetically because people believe in the “reason” for making the work more than they believe in making an exemplary piece of art. Sometimes process is valued over the final product, and one place where Louise and I shared common ground came around the idea that a strong process will most often yield a strong product. I found our conversation thought-provoking and affirming on so many levels. Louise also took me to the site where she will work with my students on Friday, a somewhat forgotten city block just off of the bustling O’Connell Street. I’ll be able to be more specific about the location after her work on Friday, but suffice it to say, I’ve been to Dublin a dozen times over the last eight years, and I’d not seen this block even though I’ve walked around it many times before. Louise has a powerful personality and presentation, and she’s not messing around. She’s serious and rigorous, and I’m excited to see what comes of her work on Friday.

After Louise, I met with Chrissie Poulter, a faculty member at Trinity College, specializing in community-engaged theatre. Chrissie has worked on the NYU program since 2004, and after a three-year career break at a college in Leeds, UK, Chrissie is back at Trinity. I’ve had the privilege of witnessing Chrissie facilitate any number of workshops with students over the years, and I’ve met no other practitioner able to step into a room of people and take the group’s temperature the way Chrissie can. She’s worked in settings throughout the world, most notably at the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. When a facilitator works in that kind of conflicted area, she has to understand the temperature of the given encounter very early on in the work, and Chrissie has honed that sixth sense in a way that I hope to have some day. I’ve got a ways to go. I’m hoping to find room in our packed schedule to have Chrissie join us for a session, as her voice adds a depth and history to the work that offers a profound sense of the scope and development of the practice of applied theatre.

My final meeting of the day came over dinner with Sara Simons, a doctoral student at NYU visiting Dublin after attending the IDIERI conference in Limerick. Sara is doing some great work around using drama to train pre-service teachers in diversity and social justice education practices. She’s got a lot of passion about what she does, so it was great to share a meal and hear her takes on the international gathering of drama practitioners.

My students begin arriving in the morning, and we kick off Sunday evening at 7:00pm. We’ll see if I’m able to keep up with this blogging. Somewhere along the way I’ve got to be able to write a play here and there. And get in some exercise. And prep for all of these experiences with the students. It’s overwhelming…