CITA Happening | Applied Theater | July 20-22, 2018

These are my notes from the three days at the Lambs Players Theater Company in Houston, TX

Instructors

Dale Savidge - Forum, Bibliodrama, Spiritual Formation & Discipleship

Rich Swingle - Sociodrama 

Phil Armour - Art Therapy

Applied Theater OVERVIEW 

Using forms of theatre to address real world issues.

Forum Theatre - Addresses an issue in the group that needs change. The solution comes from within the audiences shared wisdom and knowledge.
            

Playback Theater- Upstate New York, Jonathan Fox, Jo Salas. The name has now been ™’d so one must attend their schools to use the term.
            

Educational Theater/ Drama (Theater) in Education- what is normally teacher centric, learning becomes distributed among the students. ie. Role Playing, hot seating, teacher in role,
            

Drama Therapy & Psychodrama (for trauma, childhood exp, PTSD, violence, accidents, etc) People coming know that they are coming for therapy for a specific issue. Training/certification is needed to lead. Protocols needing certification. 100s of hours. Asgpp.org psychotherapy American Association of group PP. Psychodrama - in group therapy one person’s story is acted out.

Sociodramagetting the story from the group. Rich Swingle did his Masters Thesis working in a detention facility.

Bibliodrama (I didn't catch it - find out what is the name of the book teaching this)

Devised or Verbatim theater (“Cornerstone” in Los Angeles)
            

Theatre for Development (for economic insecurity)
            

Reminiscent Theater(with seniors)
            

Invisible Theater Chooses an issue to address/make people aware of, takes place in public and the audience doesn’t realize that it is actors.

POPULATIONS served with Applied Theatre
Mainstreamie. citizens, ESL Students, various career fields for training

Marginalized(Matt 25) at risk. ie. Homeless, foster children, detention facilities, group homes, disabilities, prisons (watch “Chicks Behind Bars”), autism (Greenville’s “Spectrum Theatre”), gender orientation, migrants, refugees, addiction recovery, disorders, bullying, economic insecurity, health education
Dale did a take on “A Doll’s House” called “Nora Unchained.” 3 scenes where Nora encounters confrontation. Kept Torvald’s original lines. Actor playing Nora had to find ways to be more empowered.

Warm ups

Get to know your group and the issues they care about.

Mapping
            “Line up in order of...” ie. Physical characteristics, preferences, personality types, 
            
Name Games
            Bippity bippity bop! 
            Person in Center points to someone says their name*  3 times.
            The person by that name has to say, + “Bippity bippity bop!”  and another’s name.
            if they can’t say a name, they now are in the center.
            *Can be made more difficult by having the person in the middle point to someone, but say the name of another person in the circle.

(Another circle warm up)
“The big wind blows for people who...”
One person in center of the circle says this and completes the sentence.
Anyone in the group who have the same “...” changes places with someone else in the circle. 
The person in the center tries to take an empty spot. Add competition by removing a chair.
FORUM THEATRE
Addresses an issue or situation in the group that needs change (not a Person).
Working toward social change. Change the negative atmosphere in a particular setting. It is not person specific (internal), but community (outside). If it is institutional, identify individuals and other layers.

“How do you respond to power systems?”
The solution comes from within the audiences shared wisdom and knowledge.
“Rehearsing for Reality.” THEATRE OF THE OPPRESSED is the umbrella of a lot of drama used for social change, FORUM being one of them.
Created by Augusto Boal.

Can be a public performance or in a small group workshop setting.

Ideal Size of groups is 15 people.
20+, not everyone gets involved. -10 and there’s too much pressure on the individuals.

Sessions should last 45 min to 1 hour:

Warm up 15 min
Enactment 30 min
Process 15 min

Examples of plays Dale and his students have created:

            “A Will to Survive”
            A homeless Ex-con, 93 days sober, encounters conflict at the job center and at home. What will he do when he bumps into his old drinking buddy?
Chick-fil-A sponsored free lunches for homeless who were willing to do a 30 minute interview. Nearly all of Will’s lines are taken from quotes of people interviewed.
            “Too Much Candy”
            A diabetic woman has trouble changing her eating habits.

            “Oh, Snap,!”
            Living on food stamps in South Carolina (“Snap” is the name of the stamp program)
            Another one with a police officer standing outside a fast food restaurant, and confronts a “suspicious” person holding a bag.

The cast in a Forum Theater piece

            Joker -Serves as a facilitator, host, conductor, disruptor. Explains who the characters are and what their realistic/real world situation is. You are not trying to get the group to figure out who the characters are and what the story is about (as in an ordinary play). You want your audience to identify with the protagonist and his/her problems.

“3-2-1...action.” To get the scene rolling, or starting back up at a particular point.
Says people’s names, repeating often, to validate them and help others learn their names too.
            Actors - initially play the scenes for the group. They do not offer or show any solutions to the problems. Every time they play the scene, they do it exactly the same until there has been a suggestion made (and acted out) by a member of the group.

            Spect-actors - Audience members who offer ideas and show what they mean by stepping into the role of the protagonist. When the play is shown a second time, they can call out “STOP!” if they have an idea for a solution for how the protagonist can behave differently to achieve a different outcome. The Joker then invites them into the scene to show the group exactly what they mean by taking on the role of the protagonist.

An example session of Forum Theater

A.Simple Exercise to introduce Forum- “I Need You to Shake My Hand”
Starting on opposite sides at the front of the room, the protagonist and antagonist walk toward each other. The antagonist intends to walk past, but protagonist needs that person to shake his hand. Let them try over and over to see what might work. Participants can call out “stop” and jump in the scene to give it a try and see if they are successful.

B. Find issues important to the group.

1. In groups of 3 finish this sentence, “People don’t talk enough about...”
2. The groups of 3 create a statue to represent that issue. “3-2-1 Action!”
3. Then the Joker helps to Dynamize it. 
4. Let the people speak and move one at a time with a sentence revealing more about how they are feeling about the issue.
5. “Voting with your bodies.” Ask the whole group to stand near the issue they care most about. 
6. Then find which groups are the largest and ask these in the smaller groups to pick one of the larger groups until you have a clear majority.
   
   
   

C. “The Great Game of Power”
Showing “power differential” by rearranging 5 chairs in a position that shows those with power and those without.

1. People take turns rearranging the chairs.
2. After 4-6 examples, identify space in the room for each of the groupings.
   ask the individuals in the group to stand by the grouping that most intrigued them.
   “Stand where you think the center of power is.”
3. Let various individuals explain what they see.
4. Dynamize it: “ What is this chair saying?” “Where do you fit in this setting?”
5. Touch the shoulder of individuals and ask them what they have on their mind.”
   “How could you change the arrangement of the chairs?”
   (There are multiple variations of this in Boal’s book. ie. Sculptures, tap each individual and let them speak. Go back in time 10 seconds and play it out.

Example of creating a play in a four day workshop with at risk youth:“The Jo Blag Project” 

Day 1 Creating Jo. Jo Blag is a juvenile offender who has committed a personal offense.

Day 2Who are others in Jo’s world affected by the crime?
Put their names on a board.
X in the room the spot where Jo committed the offense. Who are the people involved?
Jo
Victim
Have them stand somewhere a chosen distance from the offense. Shows the ripples of who is impacted by the offense.
Ask those characters “What do you have to say?”
Day 3 What led up to the moment of this offense?
Go back in time.
10 minutes.
1 hour.
A day.
Weeks.
6 months
At each time segment, the other characters has something to say to Jo to antagonize and lead Jo to the criminal act.

Day 4Same as above but each person gives Jo an escape from the trajectory their particular conflict might have in leading Jo to crime.

Read through the play.
Image of Will at the beginning and Will at the end
Practice stopping with SpectActors giving new solutions “off script.”
When rehearsing help the antagonist to really push, be antagonistic.
The Joker helps know when the protagonist is giving up and stops the action to offers suggestions how Jo can move forward. “Can someone help Jo?” “What’s a solution?”
            Vocabulary

1. Mimesis - Imitation of something for others who are watching
2. Mathexis - African Style of Group Sharing

More about Boal:
Police on street corners with guns. He was imprison ed and then moved to Scandanvia. There were no police with guns but the suicide rate was high. Realized there are other forms of oppression.
“The cops in your head”
Created Rainbow of Desire
Get at those internal cops
Back to Brazil he became a legislator
Did plays to legislation. Also created “Invisible theatre” (someone said it’s similar to Flash Mobs of today, but not really!)

SOCIODRAMA 
with Rich Swingle

Came from a therapist/theater buff Jacob Moreno, in the 1920’s working with prostitutes. the Father of Group Therapy. The drama that is created is representational od everyone’s story. Multiple stories combined to create one sociodrama.

What we all have in common, even the at risk communities, is PAIN.
Don’t idolize pain or the relief of pain. How do we deal with pain in a healthy way?
Define the group by having them vote with their feet (Using this Spectogram, as in examples above). Sociodrama uses lots of human connection/touch.
1.
2. In triads talk about your own pain.
3. Show in 2-3 scenes or statues the beginning - middle - end (or no end). How you depict this pain is your choice. ie. Sorrow, suicide, addiction, not having your gifts affirmed/others want you to be something you are not suited to be, a culture that worships marriage and you remain single, betrayal, rejection, unforgiveness.
4. Through sociomentry explained above, choose which of these stories or subject examples the group most wants to work on.
5. Decide on the characters in the chosen painful scenario. Give them a name (fictional so that you can “de-role” when you are done)

Once you’ve chosen your characters...
1. INTERVIEW: how old, how old when..., how long since, more details about the character.
2. Start the ENACTMENT.
3. Facilitator says, “Stop,” and puts hand on person to have someone else replace them by:
            

• DOUBLING giving words aloud the thoughts that are in their head.  
• IMAGINARY WALL. The facilitator explains that the characters can’t hear the other person.
  (This way they can say what they REALLY want to say!)
• WALK AND TALK. The facilitator takes one of the characters aside to walk with them and ask them, “What’s going on for you right now?            
• EMPTY CHAIR. Who’s not there in this current scene who has a part in this problem? They can talk to that chair as if the person is there. Then, have them sit in the chair and become that person to answer.           
• SWAP bringing in new actors to play the parts (in Forum, only the protagonist gets substituted. The antagonists stay the original actors).
• MIRROR. The characters cans have a conversation with themselves as if talking to a mirror.      
• SOLILOQUY.  Talk with the audience about the problem, explaining how you feel.
• TABLEAUX.  A conceptualization statue/picture of what’s going on is made by others. The characters are asked, “What are you feeling about this image?” “Is it correct.” Make a change if needed. “What would it look like to fix/resolve this issue?”      
• ROLE REVERSAL.
  
  
  

Then after taking these kinds of info gathering exercises, you can go back to the scene multiple times with that new information to see how it plays out.

• (another exercise) FUTURE PROJECTION. An alternative way the situation could change if different choices were made.

4. CLOSING STATEMENTS.
5. DE ROLE. Shake it off, peel it off, walk off the stage and leave that character behind.
6. INTERVIEWED as SELF. “How I feel about what I learned....” Remembering that resolution is a process. You’ve moved toward it with this Sociodrama.

BIBLIODRAMA
with Dale Savidge

• Finds a shared central concern that comes from a Bible story. 
• The teacher/leader can bring the story to be worked on, or it can come from the group.
• Gain psychological & cultural insights to the chosen story by imagining and creating the extra-biblical content.
• Can be open ended, planned, or improvised.
• (Have someone following the text to make sure that the actors are faithful to the details which ARE in the text.)
• In addition to the humans in the scene, feelings, objects and other roles can be played.

Dale told a story from his experience: When enacting the woman caught in adultery with homeless people, the woman who played “the woman” was asked, “What was Jesus writing in the dirt?” “It doesn’t matter,” she said, “He was doing it to keep the attention off of me.”

Sample Session using BIBLIODRAMA:

1. Choose the passage using sociometry - “What Bible story has meant a lot to you lately.”
2. Read passage aloud.
3. Who are the characters in this story?
4. Get to know the characters. Dig deeper about all that is going on in the story. Slows the story down to see the bigger picture. The facilitator acts as if he/she is unknowledgeable to draw the information out of the group. uses devices like...
            A. Group characterization. Asking questions of the group (as if they are the character) what it’s like to be that person. Uses the combined wisdom of the group.
            B. Empty chair. Put a person, or an object or cloth on a chair and talk about her backstory. Interview that character to find out about her. Others can ask to join in to add their observations or speak for that person.
5. Read through and enact the story. Stopping along the way to ask the characters questions. Invite others in to step into various roles, echoing, doubling, 1st person role playing. Ask, “What do you want here?” “What were you thinking at this point?”
6. De-role
7. Debrief in a circle what has happened.

APPLIED THEATRE
& SPIRITUAL FORMATION/DISCIPLESHIP

The Experiential Lord’s Prayer

1.    Leader reads aloud while participants walk the room listening and feeling.

2.    Invite participants to make a circle facing outward. Imagine that this is a “private place” in the room for prayer.

3.    Set a chair in the middle of the room where participants can go and sit. No one is watching them. Let them take turns sitting in the middle.

How do we differ in the ways we enjoy worship and experience God?

On this spectrum, where are you?

Hands up         < --------------------------          > Heads down

Organ              < --------------------------          > Guitar

Hands  < --------------------------          > Head < --------------------------          > Heart

Our Biblical Heroes

In trios, choose a Biblical character you all like.

Create a gallery of statues of the characters the trios have chosen.

Take some time to let the group look at different statues.

Let the group guess what each of the statues are.

Tap each of the people in the statue to let them say what that character might say.

My Sheep Hear My Voice

In pairs, one person is blindfolded (or keeps eyes closed) and follows the voice of the other one around the room. All pairs do this at the same time. This is similar to a Boal exercise called “Colombian Hypnosis” where one part of a person’s body leads another person’s part around the room (Games for Actors, Boal).

1.    The first time trying this, say the person’s name who is trying to follow.

2.    The second time, choose a sound they are listening for to follow.

3.    Debrief as a group in a circle what the faith lessons are in this exercise.

Intercessory Prayer

Sample scriptures: Lamentations 5, Isaiah 40:1-11

1.    Read once through in entirety.

2.    Participants walk the room repeating the leader reading individual lines of the prayer.

3.    Form a circle with a chair in the center. Imagining Jesus in the center (as our shepherd) approach him as a sheep.

4.    Allow time for individuals in the group to approach “Jesus” and pray.

ART THERAPY session with Phil Armour

We were kept so busy doing wonderful things, I didn’t take any notes! 

Phil, can you put in the outline of your session?

Notes from Bibliodrama at the ARC

1.    Warm up. Repeat: (Leader says) “Red” > (Group says) “Green,” Try “Red, Red” > “Green, Green,” then “Green, Red” > “Red, Green,” and so on. The same can be done with STOMP > CLAP 

2.    Introduce what you will be doing. 

3.    Read the passage.

4.    Invite someone from audience to a microphone to keep track of the passage.

5.    Ask the group who the characters are in this story.

6.    Invite volunteers from the audience to play each character as they are named.

7.    As volunteers are cast in roles, give them costume or prop pieces to identify them.

8.    Asking the audience, “What do we know about this person [or thing]?”

9.    Read through the story stopping at various stages and letting the characters speak. Asking questions of all of them along the way.

Taking if further…

10.  After performing the story. Ask everyone, to sit in 3’s and talk about which character/story they most identified with.

11.  Using sociometry, find out which one of these character/stories is the most popular.

12.  In new 3’s ask, “What are those qualities about this person you identify with?”

13.  Each group comes up with another storyline where there’s a similar issue with a character like that/with that problem (give them 5 min to do this). Decide which roles each of you will play and the name of the group.

14.  Going through the room, the leader asks each character of each group to say one line and what the name is of their group.

15.  Voting with your body, and the process of elimination, decide which story the group likes the best.

16.  Have the winning group stand in front, or on stage, and ask each person about the character they are playing. What are they like and what are their circumstances.

17.  Ask them with action and words to show the problem and how they feel about it.

18.  Invite individual characters, “How does it feel to ____?” Let them have a soliloquy, or a walk and talk, allowing them to share how they deal with the problem. If you have asked the trio to make a sculpture, ask individuals in the sculpture to share how they feel. 

19.  Ask the protagonist, “What needs to change?” Invite them to change the statue -molding the people differently, or change the scene. “What needs changing?” Change it. “How does that make you feel?”

20.  Add the Trinity into the scene. A person to represent the godhead.

21.  You can use an invisible wall where other characters cannot hear another.Ask that person, “What would you LIKE to say?” Invite them to try it, then after they have, ask them, “How does that feel?”

22.  Allow each character to have one last line. Even asking the Father/Son/Holy Spirit to speak too.

23.  Derole.

24.  Debrief. Ask the players to tell what they discovered.

Other information that came up in our sessions:

Dale showed us books with examples of client work.

(This might help you when raising money for your projects):
“Jail Talk”Dale’s work with youth in a Juvenile Detention Center, Greenville, SC
“Beautiful Recovery,”written by women in “Serenity Place”

RECOMMENDED BOOKS & MOVIES

by Dale:
Games for Actors and Non-Actors, Augusto Boal
Theatre for Change, Robert Landry, NYU
Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Fevrer (a friend of Boal who has study centers all over the world)

By Rich:
Barrier Free Theater, Sally Bailey
White Fire, Peter Princle

“Bonhoffer” on Netflix
What do YOU recommend on the subjects?

Enacted Prayer - with permission, I put on my blog the notes from the group devising this style of applied theatre. https://spicetolife2.blogspot.com/search?q=enacted+prayer

“Playback How tos,” condensed from training in Singapore andImprovising Real Life,Jo Salas http://spicetolife2.blogspot.com/2005/11/playback-how-tos.html