Acting for Change: Integrating Social Justice, Somatic Awareness and Theatre
Linda Stever, Leticia Nieto, & Liz Goodwin
Posted
March 8, 2007
Acting for Change
is an
experimental improvisational theater company focused on
anti-oppression. Headquartered in Olympia, WA, the group formed in the
fall of 2004 under the direction of Leticia Nieto, PhD. It sprang from
her vision to integrate social justice education, transformative
conflict, somatic awareness, and theatre to address the realities of
oppression and create tools for liberation. Dr. Nieto, experienced in
playback theatre and psychodrama as well as teaching and psychotherapy,
provides the essential direction and training for the group. In its
first two years, 2004-2006, the format for the group was a series of
monthly classes totaling 36 hours and spread over nine months. The
classes were taught by Dr. Nieto to ground members in her
anti-oppression model and skills sets as well as the key theater forms.
The format for 2007 is two weekend intensive sessions, also totaling 36
hours, with the same content: anti-oppression theory and techniques,
playback theatre, theatre of the oppressed, authentic movement, and
performance art. Eighteen students are currently enrolled. Counselors,
teachers, healthcare-providers, and directors from all backgrounds join
Acting for Change to expand their toolbox of skills in conflict
resolution, healing, education, and leadership.
By the end of
the course, participants are familiar with Dr. Nieto’s pioneering
anti-oppression training model, Beyond Inclusion. In addition,
participants become fluent in a series of playback theater forms such
as chorus, tableau, fluids, pairs and self-presentations, as well as
theatre of the oppressed techniques. We also explore transformative
conflict and peacemaking. Each year the course closes with a
performance by the group.
At this year’s
first day of Acting for Change, Dr. Leticia Nieto described the course
as a place “to develop alternative channels and ways of consciousness.”
Instead of thinking, writing or dialoguing about social change, this
project dives into the automated, programmed places of our socialized,
physiological make-up to access our authentic self. Acting for Change
is about embodying the work we too often limit to discussion. Instead
of the oppressor or the oppressed, in Acting for Change we work with
the mover/actor and the witness, attempting to be present, open, and
available for movement and change. In Acting for Change theater is a
lab to liberate untapped resources and states of awareness to discover
pathways for re-humanization. Nieto believes that if you appeal only to
the literal layer of diversity work, you’re appealing to a far too
limited, thin layer of consciousness. “Let your body talk,” she says,
“and we’ll have a revolution on our hands.”
The program has
several core elements, including ritual space, anti-oppression theory
and practice, pure witness, playback theatre and theatre of the
oppressed, and performance art.
Ritual
Acting for Change follows a
ritualized sequence of activities, predicated on working with a clear
intention, both for individuals and the group, truly a case where the
whole is bigger than the sum of the parts. By using ritual in numerous
ways and in multiple layers, we create a facilitated space for
transformation, also called the “integrity of the field.” As in any
playback theater performance environment, the space must be permissive,
allow for confession, and support expression of the uglier sides of
ourselves. We begin each day with warm-up activities, connecting us
through encountering and embodying our present feeling states and what
is currently active for each of us. Guided relaxation and visualization
are used to support group members in entering a meditative state from
which they can call out the transpersonal voice, a voice that speaks in
images, metaphor, allegory, and narrative, much like the language of
dreams. We end each class with activities meant to touch on and
remember pieces of the day, connect with one another one last time, and
ritually close the space.
Circle activity: In this warm-up
activity, there is an inside circle and an outside circle. Everyone on
the inside of the circle starts with a scarf in hand and stands facing
a partner in the outside circle. Those in the outside circle are asked
the first in a series of self-revelatory questions. The partner in the
inside circle only listens. This is not a dialogue. When the person is
finished speaking and the bell rings, the partner plays back what they
heard. Their job is to really listen to the core feeling or theme and
become that. It could be freedom, pain, fear, love, or sleepiness.
After this exchange is completed, the circle rotates and each person on
the inside circle takes a turn to speak to a new partner. This cycle
goes on until each person ends where they started, with that same
original partner.
Anti-Oppression
Acting for Change is grounded in a
model of anti-oppression theory and practice developed by Dr. Nieto.
The model includes three layers of social analysis and interaction:
status, which is about style; rank, which is about social membership;
and power, which is about transpersonality. Examination of rank
memberships uses the classification of social roles developed by Pam
Hayes in her ADRESSING Model: age, disability, religion, ethnicity,
social class, sexual orientation, indigenous background, national
origin, and gender. Our intention is to create work actively with the
notion that the truth about people transcends their social memberships,
and simultaneously that the reality of social memberships results in
the marginalization of some and the unearned privilege of others. The
group learns Dr. Nieto’s skills development model for the agent, or
dominant parts of a person's social memberships, and her skills
development model for the target, the marginalized parts of a person's
social memberships. The three layers of social interaction and the
related skills sets anchor our work.
Skills simulation: In this
exercise, 5-10 participants volunteer to participate. Others witness
them as they embody the developmental skills of the agent, from
indifference about target group members into distancing, inclusion,
awareness and finally allyship. These are the five agent skills sets.
Participants are guided through each skills set through narrative. They
start out hearing – “Walk like you do each day – maybe you’re busy,
you’ve got things to do and places to go.” As participants walk around
the room, they are reminded – “You deserve to be happy,” “Everything
will work out for you,” or “You are smart, capable, and important.” As
the exercise continues and participants embody each of the five skills
sets, they gradually experience the reality that the floor they’re
walking on consists of the heads of people and that every step they
take is very, very painful to others. They must be careful and yet even
when they are careful, being aware of their social rank requires
holding a certain level of both tension and thoughtfulness.
Witness
Witness
work is at the heart of Acting for Change. Personal, interpersonal and
social transformation evolves more fully from the experience of being
an authentic witness rather than from verbal processing or dialogue. So
often in conversations about difference, the amount of interference,
conditioning, translation, and context is so extreme that even if the
experience is positive and people think they have communicated, they
actually have not. With access to layers of consciousness beyond our
conditioned, patterned ways of operating and thinking, we are more
available to witness, listen, and be moved. As a witness, you are not
claiming to understand but simply to receive or be moved.
Authentic movement technique: A
group of participants volunteers to go first. There may be 5, 8 or 10
people who do the movement. The rest of the group acts as a witnesses
to the movers. Before the exercise begins, everyone learns the witness
stance, arms outstretched. Elbows are even with shoulders and hands are
open instead of closed in, conveying receptivity. Each mover chooses a
witness and makes eye contact with that person. The witness meets that
eye contact and agrees to be partnered as a witness. The movers are
then guided to the center of the room to close their eyes and begin
moving freely. If they touch or bump into another mover, they are asked
to gently say hello and good-bye with their movements instead of
abruptly touching and/or pulling away. The role of the witness is
two-fold: to listen with their eyes and whole body to the mover and to
listen to their own internal experiences unfolding. Ideally, witnesses
are moved by the movers. After a few minutes of movement, movers open
their eyes, connect with their witness, and come back to the larger
group. They sit in a circle at the center of the room and share
whatever they would like about their experience. The group switches
roles and now the movers are the witnesses and vice versa.
Playback Theater / Theatre of the Oppressed
Our
theater practice is a model for working with people in a variety of
venues. The experience of improvisation and spontaneity prepares one
for the role of mediator and translator. When we are actors in someone
else's story, we are mediating between one part of the teller and
another part of the teller. The person that watches the story being
played and receives the story being played is not the same person who
told the story. It is as if we are practicing mediation skills with
just that one person and at the same time mediating between, for
example, a target teller and all the agents in the audience, a task
that would be impossible in another setting. As a result, the teller is
affirmed, confirmed, and most important, freed from the drama. In that
way, the experience is very healing. Further, audience members who have
no direct, personal experience with the type of marginalization
represented in the story are less likely to fall into the trap of
thinking they know what it's all about or minimizing what they have
just heard in order to take care of themselves. Since the experience in
our company allows us the luxury of being teller, actor and audience,
those of us who work as counselors, mediators, and in other
professional roles have the unique opportunity to transfer our learning
to that work.
In our playback
pieces, we work with training ourselves to be neutral witnesses to each
other's stories, to be mediators between the teller and the story, as
well as between the teller and the audience. We rotate through the
roles of conductor, actor, artist and musician. We are also actively
building community, not through dialogue about oppression, but through
giving each other as teller the utmost trust and respect to be the
expert about our own story and experience. We find that when we bear
witness in this way, from a consciousness that is deeper and more
resourced, a consciousness that we've awakened through interactive and
authentic movement exercises, we are able to move beyond interpretation
of the teller's story. This intensifies and deepens it for the teller.
The fact that we have five actors simultaneously participating in the
performance, as well as the conductor, musician and artist, means that
each of us on stage brings the most raw and fresh version of whatever
rises in us, and that we are midwifing a story that is multi-faceted,
multi-layered, and complete for the teller. As audience members for
each other, we are able to be moved and changed, completely and
radically, not by what we understand, which would naturally be fraught
with our conditioning and our filters, but by what we witness, a
phenomenon we hope to bring to audiences in future public performances.
We find that the stories told in our sessions are not old news, but are
current, available, alive, unresolved stories that give all of us the
invitation to be transformed by their immediacy.
Teams of three: Get into teams of
three. Two people stand facing one person. Then one person will tell
their story. The two listeners will play back the story by
essentializing the feelings. This means that you become that feeling
rather than being a person with the feeling.
Tune in a question: Walk around the
room. Do not walk in a circle. Just walk in whatever way your body
tells you to walk. Now tune in a question. Walk like your question.
Embody it. Gather around into a circle. Two people at time will walk
out into the circle and be their questions with each other, in
dialogue. Communicate your questions interactively. You can use sound.
Enter into the center of the circle, share your question dialogue, and
go back to the larger circle.
Theatre of the oppressed: Get into
groups of four. Each person freeze the rest of your group into a scene
from your life related to oppression. Each person in the story has a
motion and a statement. Tell them what that is. Have the group activate
the scene just as you asked. After they have done three rounds of the
scene, freeze them. Say the title of the scene. Now go to the next
person and do the same thing for each person in your group.
Performance Art
The final
goal for Acting for Change has been to do a yearly performance that
includes a performance art installation, a gallery of actors working
with agent and target memberships and archetypes, open to audience
interaction. The performance space also includes an arena where actors
perform agent/target conflicts and where those conflicts are replayed
using different skills sets or are mediated. We also include a playback
theater stage, where audience members have the space to tell stories
that have been activated by what they've seen and experience all the
dimensions of witnessing those stories being played back. This
once-a-year event is the culmination of our company's work, an event
where all of us come together to take our collective experience,
consciousness, and ongoing practice into direct action.
In 2005, AFC
members finished the course with an interactive installation of
animal-like characters in a zoo-like setting. The gallery of actors
worked with one of their agent memberships (gender, class, race, etc.)
and one of their target memberships (gender, class, race, etc.). One
performer flowed between her agent role as White/Caucasian and her
target role as Jewish. In her target role, for example, she would
engage with audience members, as she would ask them, “What is a Jew?”
then write down and frantically organize responses from audience
members into piles on the ground. She would become suddenly upset,
begin to cry, then frantically ask again, “What is a Jew?” “Are you
Jewish enough?” After audience members circulated from one piece to the
next and had time to interact with all of the performers, the troupe
reworked the space into an audience/stage set-up. The group then
performed playback, using stories told by people in the audience.
In 2006, AFC
members finished the course with an interactive performance featuring a
medical motif. Audience members entered the space by completing a
medical examination involving a survey of their agent and target
memberships in medical jargon. Instead of asking audience members if
they are a target or agent of racism, the form might ask if they have a
certain symptom or not. If they ended up with lots of symptoms, they
were deemed in need of serious medical treatment. Performers greeted
audience members at the door in funky doctor/nurse uniforms, pink wigs,
netted tights, and high heels. Inside the space, audience members
watched a series of performances by AFC members – all with
psychological/medical themes and depicting agent and target memberships
in a self-revelatory way. After these short pieces, the group invited
and played back stories from the audience in a full playback theater
performance.
Three Branches
Graduates
of Acting for Change can take their learning in many directions. The
first branch is a group of educators who are interested in conducting
anti-oppression training in ways that reflect our work. The second
branch are those who will incorporate their experiences in our group
into their professional lives as counselors, mediators, and others
kinds of agents of change. This can include organizational consultation
with Dr. Nieto and/or incident response/conflict resolution work as
well. The third branch is to become part of a group interested in
service-oriented performance. This troupe will do performances with
legislators, non-profits, state agencies and teachers/educators.
If you would
like more information, please contact Dr. Nieto at CUETZPALIN@AOL.COM.
References
www.authenticmovement-usa.com
www.movetolearn.com
Boal, Augusto. Theatre of the Oppressed. New York:
Theatre Communications Group, 1979.
Boal, Augusto
and Jackson, Adrian. The Rainbow of
Desire: The Boal Method of Theatre and Therapy. London:
Routledge, 1995.
Boal, Augusto
and Jackson, Adrian. Legislative
Theatre: Using Performance to Make Politics. London: Routledge,
1998.
Boal, Augusto.
Games for Actors and Non-Actors. New York: Routledge, Taylor &
Francis Group, 2002.
Hays, Pamela A.
“Addressing the Complexities of Culture and Gender in Counseling,” Journal of Counseling and Development,
March/April 1996, Vol. 74.
Nieto, L.,
Boyer, M., and Johnson, G. Beyond Inclusion: A Developmental Strategy
to Liberate Everyone. Unpublished manuscript draft, June 2006.
Salas, Jo. Improvising Real Life: Personal Story in
Playback Theatre. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company,
1996.