beyondthesunsetsmcm

[beyondthesunsetsmcm]

Final Class Reflection

Kelsey

I think we connected with a good number of people in the SMCM community, and I think we did a fairly good job of letting the play “write itself”, so to speak. We didn’t try to force the play into a structure, and we used interview material as our first and foremost tool for creating devised sections or writing scenes.  I think we also tried to stay true to what the interviewees were saying, and we didn’t edit the verbatim text excerpts.  I think we did create something that acknowledged our interviewees’ concerns, and I think we also created a play that wrapped up the ends nicely.  The play ends on a hopeful note, although there are dark and heavy moments. 

The part of the process that stood out to me the most was the ELP and creating things from verbatim text.  I really enjoyed shaping Miranda’s verbatim text into a monologue, and I also enjoyed emulating others by imitating vocal tone and speech patterns.  I think the ELP really stretched me as an actor, because with ELP it’s very obvious what differences you have from the speaker, in regards to speech patterns or catchphrases, and you’ll never be able to do it one hundred percent correctly.  Often in acting we are taught to make the fictional character part of yourself, but I enjoyed trying to imitate real people. 

The one ethnodramatic principle from the acronym “CRAFT” that we have really incorporated into our play is the “community” one.  The play has lots of verbatim excerpts, and all the action takes place on campus, in the geographic location of the SMCM campus. Performing this play for anyone but the SMCM community wouldn’t make much sense - it’s very St. Mary’s specific. I think the one thing we are missing is devised work in our play.  We didn’t necessarily have enough people to do much devising, but we wrote a lot instead.  

I’d love to work with women in science - my sister majors in aeronautical engineering and computational mathematics at an 80% male school, and she is always telling me about the sexism she faces everyday.  I’d love to create a play about gender bias in the sciences towards women, and my audience would hopefully be scientists of all genders so that the men in science can take a step back and realize what they can do to be better advocates for women and gender nonconforming people in science.  I would use the sticky note strategy to organize our chapters and big ideas, and I’d definitely use the ELP with my performers, I think it’s a great learning experience in empathy.  To set this project in motion, I could ask to interview some of my sister’s friends at her college and interview women in science here at SMCM.

[beyondthesunsetsmcm]

Reading Response

“Weaving Individual Performance Pieces into a show in Strategies for Playbuilding

When weaving pieces (or interviews in this case) our text explains that we can invent a story or we can make an episodic type show but an example that we are doing that the book doesn’t talk about is an adaptation. We are adapting from a well-known story and added a St. Mary’s twist to it. Our structure follows this book to a T. We have the beginning, middle, and end and recently we finally added obstacles or a sense of urgency for our characters. Beginnings or openings, have to establish, who, what, when, where, how. This is what the audience first sees. It like reading a book if the first paragraph doesn’t catch your eye then you might tune it out or put it back on the shelf. The middle or Weigler calls it first acts endings, this is where a problem is presented and questions and issues arise. If our show adds an intermission this would be crucial, cliffhangers (in my opinion) are the best thing ever. I love when a show leaves me on the edge of my seat after the first half is done but we aren’t having an intermission so hopefully we will be able to do without it. Lastly, endings, endings are the resolution we see the problem is fixed. That textbook states “A finale can work as a coda, returning to something from earlier in the show but with a new emphasis. There is a fine old tradition in both theatre and literature of concluding by returning full circle to some element introduced in the beginning, now seen in a different light”. That is what we did in our script, we created something amazing and I can’t wait for everyone to see it.

- 

Kyndall

[beyondthesunsetsmcm]

Final Written Work for Creating a Community Based Theatre

.The semester we achieved so much with the SMCM community. We allowed the students to let their voices be heard. It is the one thing that students at SMCM talk about: either administration isn’t listening, or if they are they do not do anything to listen to the students. Many of the students have concerns about our school and really needed some form of outlet to let out their frustrations, and we gave them the opportunity and we are putting it on stage, so we are doing something about the students’ concerns instead of keeping the information to ourselves.

The process to get this information was a long haul, but it was fun, informational, and therapeutic. What stood out to me the most about this process was writing the script. Writing the script was most of this battle for justice. It was where everyone in this process came together. All of our ideas were flowing together, to create this one script, a story for everyone to hear, listen, and watch.

Before we started to write we had to learn and read about writing a story that’s coming from people's lives, from the community’s lives. Weaving pieces of people into a story was magnificent. It was a wonderful process. Each person that we interviewed is a part of each character in our story and I think that is amazing. Writing the script was were I felt high energy, even on low energy days where we would just want to sleep. I think the writing and learning how we weave together stories is what we took most from the different readings that we had this semester. Something that we didn’t do with this script is we didn’t just spit out information over and over. Our Strategies for Playbuilding textbook said,

“So often out plays about social issues are terribly solemn. We hammer our points, thud, thud, thud, onto the heads of the audience. People don’t come to the theatre to be bludgeoned! There is tremendous potential in this work to create a thrilling experience for the audience. Try to make your theatre with the aim of encouraging the audience members to watch the course of the action with all the enthusiasm that they might watch a sporting event, full of glee one moment and outrage the next”.

With the completion of the script, we didn’t do just “bludgeon our audience with information, we instead just took a story and adapted to our community stories. One the artist we look at before the writing process and interview process was Rhodessa Jones. She is truly one of my favorite people especially since I was able to meet one of her friends Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe. She is an activist and is wonderful in my eyes. We didn’t really follow her work for ours but she influenced just a bit of our work.

This whole project reminds me of my SMP project, where I am telling a story of the trans community. Black Trans rights are not talked about that much, and I am telling a story that put things into perspective for audience members who are prejudiced against trans folks, and who don’t realize that they are hurting them. I do realize that I am non-binary and not trans so I asked myself how I could tell this story if it isn’t from my perspective, and what I did was I interviewed people who are trans and those who are in the LGBTQ+ community.  In the future, I’d like to continue to do the same things creating interviews, creating stories, and putting them and doing the whole theatre process from interviewer to director, it's a long process but I really like the process.

- Kyndall 

[beyondthesunsetsmcm]

Last Journal Response to Envisioning Ethnotheatre

This chapter “Envisioning Ethnothreatricality” was really useful. The chapter gives readers so much information from visual elements in theatre, to how actors should be part of the process, and how directors should be a part of the process.  I like the quote that the “character/participants are the soul of ethnodrama”. This is true because it is the actors that drive a performance home. The spectacle created by the director and scenic designer may be eye dropping but if the actors deliver a bad performance; then the meaning of the story through the actors gets lost or misconstrued through the bad performance.  I also feel like sometimes especially if the director of the production has a well-known name, all the credit or praise goes to the director and not the actors.  I also really enjoy the fact that the author offers suggestions on how to become better playwrights, directors, etc.  I appreciate that the author is not just telling readers what to do but how to do it. So if I want to become a better playwright, I need to read a variety of plays and to become a better director, I need to see a variety of productions. The author didn’t mention anything about talent which one should have but I don’t think that’s the point.  I think the point is that one can learn how to be a better playwright or director simply by watching other people do it and then you can learn from one’s choices and mistakes.  The author of this chapter offer s a wide array of information and insight on how to bring your ethnodrama work to life onstage (whether it’s a theatrical stage or other venue) but also how to be a part of the theater making process for a community big or small in general.

Lakeshia Ferebee

[beyondthesunsetsmcm]

Journal Response to Ethnotheatre Intro

Coming to college and being made aware of what ethnotheatre is-  it employs the traditional craft and artistic techniques of theatre or media production to mount for an audience a live or mediated performance event of research participants’ experiences and/or the researcher’s interpretations of data really stuck to me. It stuck to me because although I really enjoy plays that entertain me, I think it’s important that plays teach something or bring awareness about something to their audience. I had no idea that I was already involved with an ethnotheatre production before coming to college. My senior year of high school, I was involved in a production of The Laramie Project.  The Laramie Project is used in the book as an example of ethnotheatre. I knew that the script of the play included materials from interviews conducted by company members, but I did not know that this particular play was an example of ethnotheatre. The Laramie Project was created to bring awareness to social justice issues. The play shed light on the murder of Matthew Shepard, a college student who was murdered because of his sexuality. Performing this play was important for me because I was a part of a production that educated people on “isms” - such as homophobia and the play also commemorated Matthew Shepard.  This type of theatre not only aims at entertaining, but the greater purpose is to educate and bring awareness to an issue prevalent in today’s society. I’ve also had other experience with the fourth variant of ethnodrama work, which is called devising. I was a part of the devised production called Crossroads at SMCM which ensemble members composed new material of monologues and improvisational dialogue written by ourselves. We also had a previous script to rely on, but most of the old written material was updated and newly scripted.  This book talks about so many different types of ethnotheatre and I am glad that this book brought awareness to me and made me realize that I have done this kind of theatre before.

Lakeshia Ferebee

[beyondthesunsetsmcm]

Journal Entry about Cornerstone Theater Company

Cornerstone Theater Company

I like that this chapter from the Cornerstone Theater company because it emphasizes how community theater is really for the community and if you are a part of that process in devising but as an outsider looking in, then you have to do more than just interview people but actually take part in community activities. The quote that explains this is, “Although group gatherings (especially Story Circles) are essential, research also includes direct experience of the community’s daily life. Relationships are discovered by talking, visiting, eating, walking and listening in the community’s streets, restaurants, places of worship, and homes”.  To get a more detailed perspective you actually have to experience the community from your point of view rather than just getting the stories from the people in the community.  However, I think it is important to do both when trying to devise a community based performance because you want to make sure you portray that community honestly.  The quote that suggests that you try to get as much information as possible from the community without overstepping the boundaries are, “There are so many opportunities in exploring a community. You just have to gauge how much culture you can absorb and how you can do it in such a way that it serves both the community and the story you will tell”.  I think this quote is important because even if everyone who is a part of this project within the community you still want to make sure you do not create art that generalizes a whole group of people. Because there may be other people who identify as that particular group of people who are just not living in that community and you do not want the audience to take away the perspective that all groups of people are like this, act a certain way, believe certain ideals, etc.  Cultural appropriation wouldn’t be an issue here but perpetuating stereotypes would be if the people who are devising the piece gather up too much information and use it in a way that degrades the community or tells it a certain way where it doesn’t do it justice.

Lakeshia Ferebee

[beyondthesunsetsmcm]

“Envisioning Ethnotheatricality” in Ethnotheatre Journal Entry

Kelsey

This chapter speaks on the tendency of ethnodramas to be staged in a nontraditional way, in different settings and audience arrangements.  I think we should stick with the theatre as our setting, but I really like the idea of switching up audience arrangements.  The one particular audience arrangement for a devised piece that has stuck with me is the quadrants used in Crossroads.  There were four sections of audience arranged with four voms between them, opening up to a square/diamond-shaped playing space.  I really liked this, because you were able to watch other people watch the play and see their reactions to the material being presented onstage.  I hope for our play we can use a theatre in the round or thrust stage arrangement, I definitely do not want a proscenium stage.

Also mentioned in this chapter is the strategically chosen artifacts to convey the world of the play.  I’d love to have characters in St. Mary’s clothing, maybe corresponding to the level of disillusionment with the school, like having Judy in all SMCM gear but maybe Diana in just a shirt or sweatshirt.  We could even have clothing pieces that convey the identity of different characters and blatantly remind the audience that we are all different and have differing identities, but that doesn’t mean that some of us don’t belong in this community.

I think the media technology we would be most likely to use is a sort of soundscape or projection of the St. Mary’s way, or the projection of the police brutality song lyrics so that the audience could sing along.  

I really like the part about ethnographic sound - I think we should record the sound of the St. Mary’s river, the sound of the bell tolling, and maybe the sound of students talking in a classroom.  I think people would really identify with that, since most SMCM students would be familiar with these sounds, and would help to place our dramatic action in the world of St. Mary’s.

[beyondthesunsetsmcm]

Ethnotheatre, Introduction; Ethnodramatics - Studio Exercises Journal Entry

Kelsey

Ethnodrama reminds me of documentary-style film, which is realistic and about the nonfiction stories of real people.  However, I think it’s interesting to compare the two, since ethnodrama does not have to be simply a collection of interviews and a research presentation, but can include artistic interpretations of reality. It is my hope that we use a combination of verbatim excerpts, composite characters, original composition, and that we can make our play an adaptation.

Anna Deavere Smith is a huge inspiration to me, and I would love to be able to do what she does.  Her performances are compelling and moving, and I hope we could include some verbatim performance excerpts.  For my next two everyday life performances, I am going to use her techniques where she divides the interview text - I think that is a strategy that will help make ELP easier.  

I am hoping to write an autoethnodramatic monologue for the show about how my life fits in with the recurring theme of covering things up, or things that are unsaid.  This got me thinking about how some music I listen to could be classified as autoethnodramatic - various songs by Childish Gambino and Logic are based on their own childhood experiences that they have dramatized into song lyrics.

I like how Jo Carson acknowledges the fact that memory is not truth.  We are constantly rewriting our own memories, every time we remember something we likely change a small detail of it.  However, this shouldn’t change the validity of interviewees’ stories, it just means they are human and that their brain is working.

I’d like to try conversational dramatism exercises for a variety of situations, I like the pre-class between students one, but I’d also like to try one where maybe friends pass each other on the path, or when you pass someone while walking through an academic building.  

Interestingly enough, the “writing in role” exercise is used in one of the psychological papers I’ve read for my SMP as a perspective-taking paradigm. Participants were asked to write an essay about the day in the life of an outgroup member, and the results found that this was highly effective in prejudice reduction.

[beyondthesunsetsmcm]

Beginner’s Guide to Community-Based Arts Journal Entry

Kelsey

The best thing about this book is the confidence and hope that it gave me.  Reading all of these inspirational stories shut down my worries of if we would actually be able to make a difference in our community through theatre.  So many different groups from all over the country have used various tactics to facilitate real change in their community, and given the current political climate, I hope that through our project, we may be able to do so as well.  

I also enjoyed the fact that this was a graphic novel.  I think it would be entirely possible to do this kind of community-based work with young kids and people of any age or education level - it’s a versatile skill set.  If I were a theatre teacher, I would definitely want to incorporate community-based work into my curriculum.  I used to work at a summer day camp, and two weeks out of the summer we would have theatre camp where the focus was to stage a one-act in that time period.  If I still worked there, I would want to work with the kids to see if we could create a show in two weeks prior to the theatre camp about an issue important to them with the techniques described in the book.  I believe that would be highly empowering to kids, who often feel like they aren’t listened to or understood by adults sometimes. In the same way, I can understand how being the focus of a community-based art piece would be empowering to minority groups, who often don’t see themselves and the problems they face represented accurately (if at all) in the mass media.

I really enjoyed reading about the photography project in Curtis Park.  I would love to somehow incorporate pictures taken by the community into our production, because I think it would really give legitimacy to the problem we’re trying to address - we didn’t take those pictures, the community did it themselves.

[beyondthesunsetsmcm]

Interview Presentation From Roommate Story Circle

There were so many good parts in the story circle I did with my roommates, I knew my first in-class presentation had to be from that interview. It was a hard choice, as many of the best parts were a little too long to perform. However the lines I picked, which came near the end, were short and stood out to me when I listened to the interview again. The lines were:

“The St. Mary's Way, and how it doesn't apply to all. And how if you're sold on the St. Mary's Way when you apply, and then when you get here and see it in practice, you're like...really? What is it? Cause I haven't seen it since I've been here”  

I liked this section because my opinion is that many of the issues St. Mary’s has come from a misunderstanding of the St. Mary’s Way. It is portrayed as an important cornerstone in our community, yet people usually only think about it in an abstract sense. Certain parts of it are hard to police on campus, because you can’t simply tell anyone who has a different opinion from yours to leave the school. You can try and get the message out to people that this isn’t a place where offensive or incorrect thinking is accepted, but if bigotry and hatred manifest in such extreme ways on campus then maybe we’re not sending a strong enough message.    

[beyondthesunsetsmcm]

Thoughts on First Story Circle and Adapting Texts

Even though we didn’t have a very big turnout at our first story circle, I felt like it was a success. The two girls we talked to were very good story tellers, and the stories we heard were emotional and genuine. I felt we were opening up to each other in a way I’ve never seen before on this campus, and I think a large part of that was because we were all women. We talked about our families, our relationships, and stigmas associated with different groups we identified as (particularly American Americans, people with anxiety, and women). I know I personally talked about something that is very hard for me, my sister. Talking about my sister always makes me sad, no matter the context, but I was happy to hear that one of the girls who came to the story circle enjoyed being a part of the St.Mary’s improv group (which I’m on the exec board of). I looking forward to getting to know her better in the club.

After the story circle, and spent some time thinking about different texts we could adapt to make related to St. Mary’s. Harry Potter immediately came to mind, because it’s one of my favorite stories, but as I thought about it more I came up with several similarities St. Mary’s has with Hogwarts. We associate different kinds of people with the different dorms, Dorch with gross boys, QA with freshman girls, the Greens with partiers, like the different houses. Hogwarts is largely white (at least what we see of it in the movies), like St. Mary’s. We have a “Great Hall”, parts of the campus are haunted, and we have a complicated past that we sometimes hide or build over (I don’t think we’d want to compare the newly discovered slave quarters to the chamber of secrets, but the Hogwarts founders did seal it and try to hide it). I also feel like we could do some sort of adaptation of the Hunger Games, which might be even more similar to St. Mary’s. In the Hunger Games, parts of the stories world are very modern and prosperous while other communities work with out of date technology and little support from the government. I see this as similar to St.Mary’s because it seems like the different departments are always fighting for resources, and some parts of the school seem in better shape than others. For example, while the campus itself is very beautiful, teachers in some departments have to teach out of date textbooks. The theater department mainly performs rights-free shows because we don’t have the money to put on well known pieces. I think we could make interesting adaptation of these works that students watching would be very familiar with.   

[beyondthesunsetsmcm]

Ethnodramatic Studio Exercises

When adapting interviews and real life discussions into a theatrical piece, it’s sometimes hard to know where to start. Personally I sometimes feel awkward taking a conversation I had with a friend or a story a friend told me and putting it into a piece. When doing my interviews, even though I knew we were talking for the purpose of getting stories to use in the production, it still felt strange later watching the conversation we had become part of a scene. Even though the interviewees all signed consent forms and knew their words could potentially be used in the show, I sometimes felt guilty sharing their personal stories and emotions they had in turn shared with me. I felt a little awkward trying to copy my interviewees voices and mannerisms in class, because from past experiences I sometimes associate mimicking other people with bullying. The idea of combining different parts from different interviews (whether they are or are not thematically related) to create a scene or dialogue feels weird to me, because I feel like that doesn’t go along with the ethernotheater idea of verbatim scripts. Their words are being put into a new context, one that might not line up with that person's beliefs and change the meaning of their words. We’ll see what happens when we start to do the exercises in class, and hopefully we’ll be able to take apart and put the interviews back together in a way that is respectful to our interviewees.    

[beyondthesunsetsmcm]

Yet another Reading Response

A quote from the reading that is quite interesting is “You needn’t mindset yourself with the idea that you’re performing. What you’re doing instead is staging reality--- and reality is something you’re already quite expert at”. It goes well with the exercises that are in this chapter as well. As I have been told many times from working in multiple productions and classes: Theatre is just a reflection of reality or the times that people are in now. This quote says exactly that, staging reality is not hard when you are already living in it. The different exercises that are talked about in this chapter are Conversational Dramatism, Stage to Stage/page to page, and the presentation of self and other. Conversational Dramatism: this exercise seems like a replication exercise. It is to help actors and playwrights understand everyday life for someone so it is not just made up. I can see how this exercise could help a playwright because right now I am in the process of writing my own play and I think that when talking or interviewing people I could listen and watch the person movements, moods, and even their gestures. The presentation of self and others exercise can be summed up to putting yourself in other's shoes. Stage to page is kind taking the information that we just gathered and putting it on stage. All of these exercises are connected in some way it seems like the first one is to help get your feet wet and thinking about the actions and gestures and how people talk, the second is connecting yourself and this person and then the third is putting it on. 

--

Kyndall 

[beyondthesunsetsmcm]

Another Response to Reading Assignment

Now comes a time in the semester where we are still conducting interviews but we are also starting to develop the script.  When developing a script, you come up with dialogues between characters. Something that we started doing in our class was actual choreography. We take a topic that pertains to the subject of the project and we start coming up with movements. When we do this I believe that we are bringing to life the stories that we have collected from the community and when we do this, I feel like I can’t stress enough, that we have to portray the community correctly. One piece of advice that I have gotten from the books we are reading is “So often out plays about social issues are terribly solemn. We hammer our points, thud, thud, thud, onto the heads of the audience. People don’t come to the theatre to be bludgeoned! There is tremendous potential in this work to create a thrilling experience for the audience. Try to make your theatre with the aim of encouraging the audience members to watch the course of the action with all the enthusiasm that they might watch a sporting event, full of glee one moment and outrage the next”(Strategies for Play Building textbook). This piece of advice that speaks to me a lot because when you're dealing with social justice issues, you, well personally me, I want people to listen and I want people to think and question and we have to do that without beating them on the head with information.

--

Kyndall 

[beyondthesunsetsmcm]

Response to Reading Assignment

Strategies for play building: This also seems like a great outline for how to facilitate first encounters with everyone. All I could think about while reading this was how helpful this beginning section was going to be for my first rehearsal for my SMP. The topic of my SMP involves Black Trans Lives and the violence and discrimination that they face every single day and if the rehearsal space is not a safe space then no one would feel comfortable being able to help me produce this play. For example, this text states, “to be a developing ground for the reflexive practitioner: an artist and facilitator who is grounded in thoughtful and ethical practice, aware of the direction of current debates in community performance issues, and able to be flexible, engaged and empowering”. I feel like this section is really important for each person who is looking into being a director or an established director when you have a group of unknown people starting to work together. 

Community Performance: This article feels like a continuation of Beginner’s Guide to Community Based Arts and explaining how this book community performance brings together groups of people who want to be apart of a political change. The beginning really seems to stress the fact that community performance is an act of togetherness. There is no hierarchy when creating these pieces because everyone is seen as the same. One constant theme that I am also getting from this article is that a community is people made off of different backgrounds and when you have a community like that you want to be inclusive and you want to listen when it is your turn to listen because if you don’t then you are “suppressing the differences” between people and not allowing people to show their identity or for people to empathize (which is very important).

-- 

Kyndall 

[beyondthesunsetsmcm]

Response to First Community Theater Reading

First off, I love the idea presented in the introduction to Beginner’s Guide to Community-Based Theater that “it takes a village to do just about anything”. It’s simple, but it’s also a play on a classic saying that many people are familiar with. I think it would be interesting to work it into the title of our show somehow, since “village” and “community” are sort of synonymous. I also like the point made that “in many languages, the word for community is the same as the word for us” (page xxii). It would be interesting to discuss the idea of villages, and how historical villages usually lead to closer bonds and stronger communities. Our first section, “Contact” is one of the most important aspects of forming a village. We have to contact and begin to form relationships with people in order to begin forming any kind of community. You sit around and you discuss your pasts, what your goals and beliefs are, and even if they don’t exactly line up, a good village will figure out ways to work around those issues. Think of the opening of any Disney movie taking place in a village (I like to think of Moana or Beauty and the Beast, because their my favorites), every character may be different, but they all work seamlessly as a unit. As unrealistic as the communities may seem, all happy and blending, they are both based off existing cultures that have managed to thrive for hundreds of years.

We also see a successful community in the Zuni Pueblo people, who managed to thrive in the harsh desert.They saw that their community had a problem, and worked together to fix it. They tapped into their cultural traditions, got young people interested (which can be hard but ultimately rewarding), which in turn inspired older generations to change the way they lived (which is many communities can be nearly impossible). Moving toward the significantly larger community of San Francisco, social & health issues can seem harder to address and fix. Some people are hesitant or afraid to go into and engage with the parts of their community that are the most affected, but sometimes that is the best place to start (such as the Medea Project is doing in San Francisco). I feel like we have to stop the cycle of being afraid of each other, not talking to each other, or handling each other at arms-length. If we’re frustrated with each other or don’t like being forced into talking circles or diversity discussions, we have to have a good long discussion about why that is and what ways and resources we can use to better communicate. 

-Caroline              

[beyondthesunsetsmcm]

Tumblr Talk Question #4:  How do you fit in to the story of St. Mary’s College of Maryland? (Or, if it’s easier to think of it this way, WHERE do you fit in at SMCM?)