Convenings

Past Learning Exchange Reports:
Chicago, November 16–18, 2001

Case Session: Arts Practice in Arts-Based Civic Dialogue: Cases in Theatre

The intents of this case session were to explore:

• the intersection of artistic practice in theater and civic dialogue,
• how artistic process and dialogue may be mutually supportive, as well as where there might be frictions, and
• how process and the final work can be effective for both creators and community people involved. 
   

Participants:

• Dell’ Arte, Michael Fields, artistic director, Julie Fulkerson, dialogue consultant/specialist, The Dentalium Project
• San Diego Repertory Theater, Sam Woodhouse, artistic director, director of Nuestro Pueblo; Dora Arreola, choreography, Nuestro Pueblo; Bernardo Solano, playwright, Nuestro Pueblo
• Flint Youth Theatre, Sue Wood, project director, . . My Soul to Take; Gillian Eaton, freelance theater director and educator, . . . My Soul to Take

The Dentalium Project, Dell'Arte
As Dell’ Arte begins its project, Michael Fields and Julie Fulkerson outlined artistic and dialogue concerns that lie ahead.

Artistic concerns:

• The project allows Dell’ Arte to advance the company’s practices in theater of place and physical theater.
• A key, ongong challenge in Dell’ Arte’s work incomedy is how to find the common vein in satire that makes everybody laugh. “You cannot pick and choose” who is the subject. The comedy has to both celebrate community and provoke.
• To decide whether to present the piece indoors or outdoors and as a straightforward theater piece or an event (e.g. with food, stick gambling). Indoors enables higher production values; outdoors will be “raw,” but encourages a larger and more diverse audience, i.e. those who are less comfortable stepping inside for a theater performance.
• How to most effectively involve Native Americans in the play and/or the larger project, recognizing that acting is not a part of Native American performance tradition on the West coast.
   

Dialogue concerns:

• How to focus the dialogue so that it encourages exploration of casino issues but also lays ground for broader, ongoing issues related to development, economics, reparations.
• How to encourage people to talk their personal stories recognizing that these stories may show up in a public theater piece.
• Given that company artists’ are both Dell’ Arte artists and Blue Lake citizens, when and how to include the company’s artists in the community storytelling circles and dialogue opportunities.
• Dell’ Arte is perceived as pro casino because of its past work with Native Americans. If it is perceived as leading this project, many people who are on the other side of the issue will not get involved. Knowing this, the company has made the project public in the early planning stages in order to let other perspectives emerge.
• Where to hold dialogue activities where everyone feels comfortable. 
   

Nuestro Pueblo, San Diego Repertory Theater
Sam Woodhouse introduced the project. San Diego is positioned along one of the most active border crossings in the Northern Hemisphere. Eight years ago, steel platforms discarded from the Gulf War, were used to build a fence along the U.S.-Mexican border extending into the ocean and 16 miles inland. The fence has dramatically changed the feeling in the region. “It separates people; it is a barrier that defines people.” San Diego Rep, in collaboration with Centro Cultural Tijuana, is creating a new play Nuestro Pueblo (Our Town), that explores the question, “Should we tear down the fence that separates San Diego and Tijuana, or should we build it higher?”  By creating “the most provocative play we can,” Sam Woodhouse expects that that will elicit substantial dialogue about border issues.

Arts-based civic dialogue process: Bernardo Solano and Dora Arreola described the artists’ research process.

SDR began the process by asking citizens and leaders in Mexicali, Tijuana, and San Diego the core question, whether “to tear down or build up the fence.” Based on responses to this and two additional questions:

• Will the fence come down in your lifetime? (most people said no)
• Will the fence come down in your children’s lifetime? (most people said yes)
  SDR chose to set the play 30 years in the future at a time when the fence has come down. 

A bi-national artist team, guided by the Rep’s partner, San Diego Dialogue, conducted bilingual interviews and round table discussions with citizens and civic leaders on both sides of the border. Questions such as the following were designed to elicit metaphoric responses as research for the play.

• Describe the region as if it were a person (its physical, psychological characteristics).
• If you could change something that people on the other side think of you, what would that be?
• When you think of the region, what do you see, touch, taste, hear, smell?
• If the fence itself could speak, what would it say?
• What do you think God has to say about all this?
• What need to be said about the border in the play?

From responses, Solano culled transcripts, video, and audiotapes for possible characters, quotes, scenes, stories, themes and issues. What emerged as commonly held or divisive beliefs became significant material for the play.

Challenges and findings from this process:

• Points of view about the same issue or question have been very different in the two countries. 
• Working bilingually proved a challenge in conducting research and developing the script, as well as for the cast in presenting readings in both countries. Neither Mexican nor U.S. cast members had worked in the other country before and some spoke only their native language. “Both casts are microcosms of what we face in the community.” After multiple scripts and community readings, both Mexican and U.S. artists were presenting bilingual scenes. There will be two distinct versions of the script, one for each country, using elements that both English and Spanish speakers will understand.
• Finding a sophisticated enough community process that provides rigorous feedback and supports the creation of a great work of art.

...My Soul to Take, Flint Youth Theatre
Gillian Eaton led participants in a Process Drama exercise, illustrating how Flint Youth Theatre engaged youth and adults in creative exploration of the issue of school violence while gathering material for FYT artistic director, Bill Ward’s script writing process. Process Drama is a British form of experiential improvisation and role-play that engages groups in active speculation and reflection on issues or situations suggested by a “pre-text” put forward by the leader. Eaton drew participants into the allegory of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, which was one of three pre-texts used in Flint. She invoked participants, “Residents of Hamelin, what are we going to do about the rat problem?” followed by an exercise to create living photos to accompany newspaper headlines about the rat problem, and then asking for reactions to a disturbing press release issued by the rats. 

Sue Wood and Eaton elaborated on the process drama technique:

• Process drama sessions were generally two hours long and each group participating in  more than one process drama session.
• Each of three pretexts was done numerous times with several groups in different middle and high schools, with a group of senior citizen crossing guards, and with FYT staff and board members.
• Using the Pied Piper and other situations and metaphors, participants considered what makes a safe place unsafe, what happens to a society that loses its children, what guns have come to mean in our society, and other questions related to violence in society and schools.
• Playwright, Bill Ward, observed process drama sessions, took notes, and debriefed with Eaton on the issues and characters that emerged through the process dramas.  
  The process drama sessions contributed substantially to Ward’s script.

Discussion
Following the three presentations, discussion probed further the relationship between civic dialogue and the artistic process:

Dichotomy of art and dialogue:  How does the intent for dialogue affect the artistic process and product? 

• Fields said, “I’m interested in how the dialogue translates into art. How does it influence, shape, respond, provoke the form, the art itself.”
• Always working toward a high level of artistic excellence, Woodhouse explained, “We’re trying to free ourselves from being burdened by dialogue with a capital “D,” and just make the best play we can make.  That involves imaginative leaps in communication with the people of our region. We have to imagine a work of art through someone’s words who hasn’t imagined it.”
• Solano has drawn substantially from community process and dialogue. “I’m happy to have the onslaught of material from the dialogue, as long as I’m allowed to pick and choose what goes into the play. I like that it does half my work for me. . . It’s all there. It’s then about inspiration and organization, putting it together, making relationships between the comments.” 
• Dialogue specialist Ann McBroom (working with the Understanding Neighbors project of Out North Contemporary Art House) believes dialogue specialists can learn from artists’ process. Speaking to San Diego Rep she said, “You posed amazing questions. I think you’re already doing dialogue in your work.”  Ensuing discussion pointed out the potential for reciprocal learning between artists and dialogue specialists as they work together on projects. Each has skills that may contribute at different points in the dialogue process or the project’s overall structure. 
• Woodhouse wants rigorous feedback that can advance the work’s integrity. San Diego Rep chose intensive community dialogue to support the script development process out of desire for authenticity and nuance around people’s feelings and perspectives related to the border issue. Yet, community engagement can be enormously labor intensive without necessarily advancing artistic interests. “I struggle to find a sophisticated enough community process that will enable us to make a great work of art, so that it doesn’t just make people feel good.”

How can post-performance discussions be more effective? 

• Wood concurred that FYT had difficulty with dialogue with a big D. “We feel that theater is dialogue with a small “d,” and it was troublesome to set up just talk-backs. So we set up these process dramas which we felt were dialogue. . . What we resisted was the captive audience nature (of conventional talk-backs).  People don’t have a choice about whether to participate. It helps to go into different spaces, giving people ways to respond verbally or nonverbally. We’re also always wrestling with the difference between art and entertainment.” Wood paraphrased noted artist/educator Eric Booth’s distinction:  Entertainment happens within what we already know and it is confirming. Art happens outside what we already know and it opens up new possibilities. For Wood, this distinction reinforces how dialogue is inherent in art.
• Peter Carpenter, lead artist for Out North’s Understanding Neighbors project, observed that Out North has cultivated audiences willing and interested in participating in post-show discussions by making them regular. Out North requires this of every artist and while artists have sometimes been resistant, in many cases, “it is a great experience for the artist, too.”

Is dialogue that is initiated by one side ever effective or satisfying? 

• Fields believes it is the role of art and theater organizations to provoke. “We have a point of view.”  Fulkerson added that the theater goes into the dialogue not knowing what will come out of it. “The theater provokes us through distance between theater and ourselves, and allows us to see ourselves differently.  We ask the questions others are afraid to ask.” But the public’s perception of the organization and its stance around an issue also comes into play. Sometimes the public makes assumptions.
• San Diego Rep is committed to Nuestro Pueblo because of U.S. citizens’ misperceptions about Mexico.  “There are so many people in my town who think that Mexico is a horrible place,” said Woodhouse. There is a personal motivation to be a provocateur.”  But, Arreola explained, “. . .In addition to provoking, our work is to describe artistically the reality of the environment in which we live. In this manner, the dialogue is both ways. It’s not about having a fixed position.  It’s about points of view, not one point of view.  Our job as artists is the description.”
• Flint Youth Theatre recognized the importance of having social service partners to which FYT could hand off the dialogue around the issue after its theater project concluded. “We’re not therapists or conflict mediators, and we didn’t want the ball to be dropped.
• Process Drama situations set up extreme situations that served to provoke participants to consider new dimensions of an issue. At the same time, taking the discussion into an imaginative realm distances participants from the harsh realities of the topic, enabling them to express “in role” feelings and ideas that arise from an intuitive rather than an intellectual place. 

Small Group Break-Outs
Self-defined small group discussions pursued three areas of interest that emerged in the case session:

1. What is the role of neutrality in the dialogue process and in the artistic endeavor?
2. What are the considerations, challenges regarding aesthetics and artistic excellence in arts-based civic dialogue work?
3. What are techniques to enhance post-show dialogue?

1. What is the role of neutrality in the dialogue process and in the artistic endeavor?  Is it possible?  Is it desirable?
   Neutrality in the dialogue process:
• Neutrality in the community process has been fundamental to instilling trust and evoking honest responses to border issues. Dora Arreola described San Diego Rep’s process. SDR started with conversations in each of the San Diego and Mexican communities. Local individuals rather than outsiders were enlisted to help facilitate interviews and round tables. It was important to speak in that community’s language. “If we started with a mixed/bilingual group, forget it, people wouldn’t have come.” It was important to explain why the artists and dialogue people were there and to go without an agenda around the issue. If people are unclear about your motivations, they get defensive. “We did not try to convince anyone about the issue. On the contrary, we wanted to provoke them to give us their honest issues.”
• E’nkul Kanakan (Center for Cultural Exchange’s Africans in Maine project) differed. As soon as you decide to consider an issue, you have a position already. “Neutrality is a very academic idea.  However, if we take a position, we may not even start the dialogue. In a way, it’s a hypocrisy because you have to deal diplomatically with people to get them to come. It’s important for me to acknowledge my own real position (in relation to the Africans in Maine project). I came knowing who the players were, and I knew it was important to get these people together. But from the position of the Center for Cultural Exchange, neutrality is important for the dialogue even to begin. There is a moment when you know very well that if you tell the truth to (a particular) person, the conversation will not continue.”

Neutrality regarding the organization’s position on the issue: Can dialogue that is initiated by an organization known to have a stance on the issue be effective? Is neutrality necessary to ensure that multiple perspectives can be considered?
• Mary Grisco, a Community Coordinating Committee member for Out North’s project, Understanding Neighbors, about the role of same sex couples in society, believes an organization can hold a position on an issue but still be fair in facilitating open dialogue. Out North Contemporary Art House is known in Anchorage for the pro- gay rights position of its leaders and recognize this as a potential obstacle to participation for people whose perspectives are different.  Grisco believes the issue is “not about being neutral, but about not being in charge. A coordinating committee representing three partner organizations was established and is actively and seriously seeking the most diverse perspectives on the issue. Pulling in community partners and investing the Committee whose members hold a range of views on the issue, “got us to be seen as fair, but not as neutral. . . We’re not looking for neutrality but for a level playing field.” Additionally, Out North recognizes that, the committee “needs to do a dialogue process internally,” to understand its own ideas.  “How can we expect a community to come into a dialogue if we’re not willing to do it ourselves?  Leaders think they are above it. . . but we have to model it and learn from it.”
• Cultural organizations may have a dilemma when core audiences, patrons, and/or sponsors hold positions on issues. The partnership for Snug Harbor Cultural Center’s Abundance project includes the Working Theater that produces plays for and about working class people. Abundance explores questions around the distribution of wealth in our society and will have major performances at the Cultural Center in Snug Harbor, New York City’s only Republican stronghold, and supported by wealthy residents.

Neutrality in the artistic endeavor:
• Dora Arreola sees that fiction creates a kind of neutral space where characters holding different views express their positions and resolve their conflicts. In terms of creating dramatic tension in the piece, “if we take the position that the wall should be down, we won’t reach the interesting point.” The distancing device of the play further allows audiences to consider different perspectives.
• Bart Mills (Arts Council of Greater Lima, Ohio) and E’nkul Kanakan disagreed that artistic choices in the fictional work can ever be truly neutral. Kanakan believes that “the play tells a story and people want to draw a moral from the story. From an artistic point of view, you want the message to be clear—the writer’s voice is clear.” Therefore, some message is always being communicated.
• Artists may develop their work to be deliberately provocative around the issue. Mary Grisco, from Out North begged the question, “Do we tell the artists what to do because we’re afraid of political fall out?  Do we try to get the artists to be neutral? This is censorship.” Bart Mill raised the real concern that the cultural organization’s and/or partners’ credibility may come into question if artists put forward a strong perspective through the work that many community members will find difficult, offensive, or are unprepared for. Rather than removing that perspective, which could be construed as censorship, can artists be asked to add perspectives that provide additional dimension? Implicit in the exchange is the delicate balance between honoring where community members’ are in their connection with an issue and respecting artistic exploration that may be provocative.
• Speaking from both her perspective as an artist, and as a trained facilitator, Andrea Assaf suggested that, when artists are acting as artists, the work is about the artist’s voice. But when they are acting as facilitators, the work is about everybody else’s voice. “The question is not about neutrality or objectivity . . . but akin to the (idea) of fairness, the question, I think, is whose voice? And how do you facilitate multiple voices being heard?”
2. Artistic excellence and access
   Several questions were posed at the outset of this break out discussion: How you define artistic success in the global sense? How does civically engaged art stand up to the rest of your work? How does being involved in a dialogue process influence the work? When you make art in a democratic process there are parameters. A community is being created around the creation of the work. How is that mediated?
• In observing how carefully dialogue and facilitation has to be done in order to bring people along and help them feel safe, Steve Day asked, “Is that carefully created safety at odds with an artist’s goal and right to provoke? The artist wants to be allowed to provoke and at the same time has to create safety to get diverse opinion.”
• Sam Woodhouse questioned how to build multiple points of view into a story without diminishing the work’s ultimate point of view. Shakespeare was able to switch hats and have the same character speak from different points of view. “Can we walk a mile in different shoes as artists? (Even) if we are able to do that we still have to write a story with a point of view. We will have to make a choice. Will we be able to present a dramatic story that has enough diversity where everyone gets their minute? Is this forced diversity?” Sandy Augustin (Intermedia Arts, Minneapolis) and Diane Aldis (Perpich Center for Arts Education) agreed that Liz Lerman’s work exemplifies community based work that engages community people in the work’s creative development and execution, while never losing the artist’s voice.
• In Intermedia Arts’ project in Minneapolis, organizer Sandy Augustin described the work of five artists, each working in different communities to engage disenfranchised citizens around the issue of gentrification of their neighborhoods.  “Process not product—is what we are trying to get across to artists. We are talking about the process of artistic excellence. . . I think a lot of artists (only see product) If artistic excellence is in the process, it is about making the dialogue more accessible.
• Michael Fields values the time “to stay in process and not jump to product,” afforded by the Animating Democracy Lab, allowing for multiple re-writes, which he hopes will lead to excellence in the final piece. Sam Woodhouse agreed that, while support for process time is valuable, “the hard part is thinking about the same thing for four years.”
• Sometimes the timeline for arts-based civic dialogue is dictated by a window of time when the issue demands public dialogue, such as the building of a casino. Abel Lopez pointed out, however, there are typically dimensions of the issue that will not go away, for example, for Blue Lake, California, the sovereignty issue will not go away. There are times when a cultural organization will choose to engage in dialogue and times it will choose not to. There may be procedural timelines but there is no timeline on dialogues.
• The art world continues, in general, to view community-based work as inferior to mainstage productions. This perception is also sometimes held even within local communities whose members place higher value on work from the outside or that has the imprimatur of an outside entity.  Who gets to define the standards and criteria for excellence is a huge question. Sandy Augustin suggested that the field needs to decenter the authority on artistic excellence and begin to ask audience members and community partners their perspectives on artistic excellence.
• If the work is not excellent, it will diminish the quality of the dialogue, so one does not preclude the other.
3. How can post-show dialogue opportunities be more effective?
   What are the goals for post-show dialogue?
• Objectives and expectations for post-show dialogues are often unclear. What is the desired content focus in terms of art and civic issue?
• Is personal catharsis civic dialogue? Civic dialogue may have therapeutic or cathartic effects, enabling people to grapple with social issues such as AIDS, domestic violence, etc. But is dialogue civic if its singular intent is therapeutic?

What is the bridge between question and answer format to dialogue?
• At Cornerstone Theater plays, sometimes the audience is asked to respond to the theme or issue during the play. A dramatic device is used to mark those moments out during the play.
• Consider changing the spatial relationship when one goes into dialogue, e.g. go into a circle, to distinguish dialogue from Q & A or other discussion formats.
• Asking people to write down personal reflections before engaging in dialogue can enhance the quality of dialogue.

What are techniques to bring people into dialogue about the issue?
• To bring closure to post-show dialogues, Northern Lakes Center for the Arts invited people people into a circle and asked them to say something about what you take away from this dialogue. A ball of yarn is tossed from one person to another as they speak, creating in the middle, a web that connects all participants (participants can pass in this process). The process and the web promotes a sense of community and everyone is automatically involved. 
• Recognize the limitations of dialogue after a single performance and consider building in dialogue opportunities throughout the entire run.
• Alternating different facilitators may bring out different dimensions of the issue based on their own experience base.
• Factors to consider in designing dialogue experiences include: setting, time of day, how much time for dialogue, informing the audience of the questions before the performance (i.e. setting the tone; having them in people’s minds during the performance), how to democratize the dialogue; getting the list of issues out and in some type of order for further dialogue, using metaphors and moving into art space
• Cornerstone Theater, working with the National Conference for Community and Justice, has used a “forced choice” technique. In one performance of its Faith-Based Theater Festival, audience members were asked to enter the theater through one of two doors marked “I believe in God,” and “I do not believe in God.”
• Northern Lakes Center for the Arts uses an exercise called “Take a Stand,” in which statements related to the civic issue are made and people are asked to physically move across a continuum in a room from strongly agree to strongly disagree.  The facilitator asks people who wish to, to state why they are in the location they are.  The exercise puts individuals in touch with their own feelings and beliefs about an issue (or lack of) and to see other group members’ relationship to the issue.

How do you empower people to speak? Who should facilitate post-show dialogues on civic issues?
• Individuals and communities go through phases and rhythms in civic life. You need to understand where people are in a community in relation to an issue, and you can’t violate that.  If you do, people will shut down.
• Actors and theater professionals are often expected to participate in and/or lead post-show discussions. They are not often experts on the issue and may not want the responsibility to lead dialogue. 
• Experts may provide a solid connection to dimensions of the issue but may intimidate more shy audience members from speaking. Non-experts may encourage greater participation.

How can dialogue be encouraged and supported after the in-house experience?
• Flint Youth Theatre set up a mini-grant program with support from the Mott Foundation.  Schools, social service organizations, artists, and others could apply for small grants to support further work that encouraged public dialogue or actions around the issue of youth/school violence.
• Presenters, working with Guillermo Gomez-Pena, have sometimes set up video stations where audience members can “confess” their feelings about the piece and the issue. Gomez-Pena then recycles these responses into the work.
• How can writers and critics encourage further dialogue?