What is Theatre?
What day do you remember best from your Elementary School years? Was it the day the theatre company came and performed at your school? Or was it the day you and your classmates performed the school play? Or was it when you presented your experiment at the science fair, or won the hula-hoop competition at field day, or got passed on to the next level of the spelling bee? All of these events are theatrical. Many of our strongest memories are formed at moments of high drama – at moments when we are engaged in theatre. I love these moments of theatre, and I believe they have the power to make us better people and help us build a better world.
Good theatre requires three things: a performance of a story; an audience; and a dynamic, responsive relationship between the performers and the audience. It’s the two-way connection that makes theatre different from a movie or video. A movie by definition is a one-way street; the audience can be affected by the performance, but the performance is unchanging. Without that connection a performance can happen, spectators can see it, but it doesn’t rise to the level of good theatre. It’s like the difference in sports between an unevenly-matched blowout and a double-overtime-nail-biter heartbreaker; one is forgettable and doesn’t change anything, while the other is recalled for years and can definitely cause change. (I work at a school where we’ve had 7 head football coaches in the past decade, so I’ve experienced first-hand how the theatre of sport can bring about change!)
Why Make Theatre?
My goal as a theatre artist is to create work that is meaning-filled and truth-full, that invites the audience to engage deeply and imaginatively, and that allows for the possibility that everyone involved will be changed by the experience.
We live in a time of heightened anxiety, fear, and depression. Empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of others, is on the decline. We are less and less likely to imaginatively place ourselves in someone else’s shoes as part of our daily lives. Civil discourse is disappearing and the ranting of ideologues dominates much of our media, social and otherwise. Intergroup social cohesion appears to be at an all-time low. And the entertainment fed to us through our electronic devises is designed to reinforce our preexisting paradigms.
Attending live theatre can be a step towards addressing all these issues. It asks audience members to shift their perspectives and employ their empathetic imaginations as they engage with the moment-to-moment experience of the actors on the stage. All of these actions (perspective-taking, empathy, and imagination) are essential to forming positive social relationships, and because theatre is also entertaining these important skills are practiced in a way that is engaging, pleasurable, and rewarding. Then, when the show is over, these practices can be carried out of the theatre and into the ‘real world,’ as those theatre-attending audience members move through our increasingly diverse communities.
And if attending the theatre can help develop our empathetic imaginations, just think what participating in it can do! Making theatre means spending an extended period of time deeply engaged in the process of seeing the world from someone else’s vantage point. That process impels those involved to become more empathetic, more tolerant, more thoughtful – in short, better global citizens.
How do I Make Theatre?
Theatre is often called the most collaborative art form, and it is through collaborating with my fellow theatre-makers that I develop and hone my own artistic voice. True collaboration arises from a distributed power structure that invites the artists working on a production to share their thoughts, interpretations, and impressions with everyone on the team. I believe deeply that the best productions emerge from aligning the perspectives of all the artists involved into a unified whole. The challenge of being a true collaborator lies in finding the balance between hearing the ideas and opinions of others while still valuing your own. It requires a delicate mix of diplomacy and obstinance to be a good collaborator, and that balance point changes depending upon whether I am the director, the choreographer, the movement coach, or the intimacy choreographer.
In addition to being a good collaborator, I strive to maintain my audience eye when I make theatre. As a member of the creative team watching the show develop, it is my job to stand in for the audience. As I watch rehearsal I try to not ask the question, “Is this how I envisioned this moment?” Future audience members will not have “envisioned” the production, and will not care if it is going according to my plan. Instead I ask the questions, “What is happening?” and “How does it affect me?” That helps me to see what the production is actually doing from moment to moment, rather than getting fixated on if it is going the way I originally planned. Remembering that I am standing in for future audiences helps me quiet my ego (that is invested in looking clever and being admired), and stay engaged in the process of creating experiences audiences will value.
When I am the Director:
When I am directing, my primary responsibility is to delve deeply into the intention and vision of the playwright and then bring the rest of the creative team into that world. My collaborative role is first to instigate and guide the conversations that will bring the play to life, and then listen and engage with the insight of others. It is my unique responsibility to balance all the aspects of the production in order to assure that we respect the script, tell the story, and create the best possible world for the play to inhabit. The entire creative team should be enthusiastically committed to a unified understanding of how the text will be brought to life. I need to be certain that the world we create is both generous enough and specific enough to hold the play as the playwright intended.
Once the team and I have envisioned this world, I guide the actors in their discovery of how to embody their characters and behave in this play-world. It is essential I empower those who are actually stepping onto the stage to do their best, most-connected, and most-expressive work. After all, they are the ones who are taking the greatest risks! I need to engage the actors in the adventure of living the truth that the play demands, and they need to feel personally committed to that venture if they are to succeed. I do this by making sure that every actor knows that I want to see their interpretation of the characters. It is not about trying to get them to act the role the way I would do it, were I performing. Supporting and empowering the creative impulses of the actors assures I will get a performance that is richer, more meaningful, and more dynamic than it would be if their characters were not their own creations. I commit my energy to creating a safe- yet-adventurous rehearsal room. I try to encourage, influence, guide, and mold – I never demean or dismiss. I must trust in the actors’ efforts and abilities, and believe in their desire to fulfill the production. Actors have to be willing to take risks for a production to succeed; in order for the audience to take the step of empathizing with the characters on the stage, the actors first have to take a step outside of their own safe understanding of the world and commit themselves to the daring act of embodying someone else.
Every production has its own set of rules for the performers; ways of moving, behaving and interacting that align with its unique theatrical universe. My background in Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) gives me an enormously varied set of tools to help the actors find and embody their characters. I encourage the actors to live full, engaging, theatrical lives, both verbally and non-verbally – but I also require them to live within the rules that the production demands. Communicating this dichotomy – live bravely, want deeply, act decisively, but follow the rules that our world requires of us – allows me to create unified productions that are entertaining, engaging, moving for the audience to watch, and satisfying for the actors to perform.
I have directed 11 productions since receiving tenure, and two more will go into rehearsal during the 19-20 academic year. These shows have ranged from smaller contemporary plays, such as A Doll’s House, Part 2; Hir; or Mr. Burns, a post-electric play; to large family-oriented shows like Peter and the Starcatcher, A Christmas Carol, or A Wrinkle in Time.
When I am the Choreographer:
As a choreographer my collaborative role shifts from initiating the creative discussion to striving to understand the director’s ideas as deeply as I can and to support and expand their vision. I need to create dances and movement that fit seamlessly into the world that the director defines while advancing the story and developing the characters that the playwright created. I am in the rehearsal room because applying my extensive dance and movement experience to the show will bring greater life and energy to the production. My contribution extends and heightens the work of the director, and helps the actors to fully portray the world of the play.
At the same time that I am working to fulfill the director’s vision for the show, I need to attend to the capabilities of the performers. Difficult choreography only serves the play when the performers can do it well and still tell the story. I am interested in creating dances that will challenge and excite the performers while encouraging them to delve more deeply into the world and characters they are creating. Dance should feel like an organic extension of the rest of the play; a heightened physicality, a new expression, but not a foreign idea. Good choreography is exciting for the audience and brings new insight into the story, while still remaining true to the overall production.
I have choreographed 22 productions since receiving tenure, and will go into rehearsal on one more next academic year. I have also served as my own choreographer on two of the shows I directed in that time. Shows I have choreographed include musicals (Cabaret, South Pacific, 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee), almost-operas (Candide, Sweeney Todd), classical plays (Merry Wives of Windsor, Tartuffe) and contemporary plays (Around the World in 80 Days).
When I am the Movement Coach or Intimacy Choreographer:
As a movement coach, my job varies with the director and production. Sometimes I am asked to guide the actors in developing and elevating the physical life of their characters. Usually this process has less to do with developing set movement (as in choreography) and more to do with encouraging the actor to invest more creative attention and energy to how they are using their bodies. Again, my training in LMA provides a rich source for guiding actors into more fully physically-realized choices. Sometimes I am brought in to help the actors to embody the style and behavior of a particular time period for a show. In that case, I combine my LMA work with historical research to assure that the movement choices reflect the period, but don’t become so hidebound that a contemporary audience is confused or distracted.
Intimacy choreography is a relatively new field, and a new venture for me. Much like fight choreographers assure moments of violence on stage are safe and comfortable for the actors, intimacy choreographers assure safety and comfort in moments of sexual or physical intimacy. In several past productions, such as Metamorphoses or Trojan Women, the work I did as a movement coach would better be described as intimacy choreography, and I am excited that this position is becoming more common. My first formal experience as an intimacy choreographer was with the Clarence Brown production of Alias Grace, a new adaptation of the Margaret Atwood novel, written by Jennifer Blackmer. This production, which involved undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, and guest artists, included several moments of physical intimacy and power imbalance that required particular attention to assuring that everyone was entirely safe and respected throughout the process of creation and performance. A new production of this script will be directed by Artistic Director Blake Robison at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, and I am going to be a part of that production as well. The challenge will be different when working with a fully professional cast, and I look forward to digging more deeply into this story. Because this work is extremely important to the continued health and growth of both academic and professional theatre, I am currently pursuing further training and eventual accreditation in this burgeoning field.
What kind of theatre do I want to make?
I am happiest when the theatre I create has something positive to say about the world in which we live. There are already plenty of experiences that leave people feeling fearful or anxious; I think going to the theatre should give people reasons to believe in humanity’s power to make things better. That doesn’t mean that I think theatre should always end with a “happily ever after.” On the contrary, I think pretending there is nothing to worry about is just as destructive as saying there is nothing to be done to make things better. Artists should be brave about facing difficult and dark issues, and the work they create should inspire that bravery in others.
Exciting theatre has a quality of vulnerability, leaving a space for what the text doesn’t say. Exciting theatre makes me think in new ways. Exciting theatre engages my empathetic imagination and helps me to feel connected to the world around me. I am grateful that I get to spend my days engaged in this ever-changing, challenging, heart-filling, and exciting process.