Category: ARTS & THEATER

Book Talk: Inside The Performance Workshop: A Sourcebook for Rasaboxes and Other Exercises

Richard Schechner and the co-authors of Inside The Performance Workshop: A Sourcebook for Rasaboxes and Other Exercises (Routledge 2023), Rachel Bowditch, Paula Murray Cole, and Michele Minnick (and other contributors TBA) will discuss the first full-length volume dedicated to the history, theory, practice, and application of a suite of performer training exercises devised by Richard Schechner and further developed by the editors and contributors of this book. This work began in the 1960s with The Performance Group and has continued to evolve. The book combines both practical “how-to” guidance and applications from diverse contexts including undergraduate and graduate actor training, television acting, K-12 education, devising, and drama therapy serving as an introduction to the work as well as an essential resource for experienced practitioners. The panel and dialogue will be moderated by Frank Hentschker.

A short reception will follow, with copies of Inside the Performance Workshop available for purchase.

Biographies:

Richard Schechner is Editor of TDR: The Journal of Performance Studies and University Professor Emeritus at NYU. He is the author of many books including Environmental Theater, Performance Theory, Between Theater and Anthropology, Performed Imaginaries, Performance Studies: An Introduction, and Schechner Plays (in press). His books and essays have been translated into more than 20 languages. Schechner has directed performances, led workshops, taught, and lectured on every continent except Antarctica. Among his many theatre productions are Dionysus in 69 (based on Euripides’ The Bacchae), Sam Shepard’s The Tooth of Crime, Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children, Jean Genet’s The Balcony, August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and the immersive-devised Imagining O. He has been awarded numerous fellowships, awards, and honors, including a Guggenheim and three honorary doctorates.

Rachel Bowditch, PhD (NYU Performance Studies), is a theatre director and Professor of Theatre in the School of Music, Dance, and Theatre in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University. She attended Ecole de Jacques Lecoq in Paris in 1998 and is a core teacher of TPW and Rasaboxes. Bowditch acted in Schechner’s productions of YokastaS (2005 and 2007) with East Coast Artists. She has taught and developed Rasaboxes and The Performance Workshop (TPW) since 2003. Her books include On the Edge of Utopia: Performance and Ritual at Burning Man (2010), Performing Utopia co-edited with Pegge Vissicaro (Seagull Books, 2018), and Physical Dramaturgy: Perspectives from the Field co-edited with Jeff Casazza and Annette Thornton (Routledge, 2018). She has presented her performance research nationally and internationally in London, Barcelona, Singapore, Mexico City, Bogota, Columbia, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Santiago, Chile, Berlin, and most recently, Haikou, China. For more about her artistic and scholarly work: https://rachelbowditch.com/ and https://vesselproject.org/.

Paula Murray Cole is Associate Professor in the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance at Ithaca College, a teacher of the Alexander Technique, and a licensed massage therapist. Cole acted in Schechner’s Three Sisters and Hamlet with East Coast Artists. Her professional work centers on the development and dissemination of Rasaboxes and The Performance Workshop (TPW). She has taught and/or presented this work at colleges, universities, conferences, and independent arts organizations nationally and internationally since 1999. In 2009, Cole produced the only documentary video recording of Schechner teaching the whole of TPW, Crossing the Line: Inside Richard Schechner’s Performance Workshop.

Michele Minnick, PhD, CMA, SMT/E is a performance maker and producer, somatic movement educator, independent scholar, and teaching artist. She has taught, presented, and developed TPW and Rasaboxes internationally since 1998 in professional and educational settings in the US and Brazil. Minnick was a member of East Coast Artists from 1994 to 2005, translating and performing in Schechner’s production of Three Sisters (1995–1997) and performing in Hamlet (1999). In Baltimore she has been a member of Iron Crow Theatre Company and a core creator with Submersive Productions. In 2021, she launched Vital Matters, an interdisciplinary, arts-based laboratory for change that integrates somatics with experimental performance approaches to address environmental and social injustice and climate change in partnership with artists, scholars, activists and organizations in Baltimore. Minnick has adapted Rasaboxes for her work as a teaching artist with Arts for Learning Maryland since 2018.

Nicole C. Limón: I remember one day sitting in rehearsal, and I was so grateful to myself, to my ancestors, to my grandmother, to my family, to my mom, for making sure that I always showed up as myself. Because here I am sitting in this rehearsal room, being who I am, and showing up 100 percent as Nicole—authentically Nicole. And that’s what I want for my other teatristas theatre workers community. In Matriarchy Theatre, you always get to show up as who you are and you will be cared for and you will be valued, and you’ll be seen, and you will be loved, and there’s a place for you. And we get to create what theatre is. Nobody’s going to tell us what it is. We get to say what it is.

Yura Sapi: You are listening to Building our Own Tables, a podcast produced for HowlRound Theatre Commons, a free and open platform for theatremakers worldwide. I’m your host, Yura Sapi, and I’m the founder of various organizations and projects, including a 501c3 nonprofit, a six hectare farm and food sovereignty project, and LGBTQ+ healing and art space, and I’ve helped numerous creatives, leaders, and other founders unleash their excellence into the world through my programs, workshops, and coaching services.

In this podcast, I’m showcasing the high vibration solutions for you, as a visionary leader, to implement into your own practice and thrive. Stay tuned this season to hear from other founders who have built their own tables for their communities and for the world in this evolutionary time on earth. You are here for a reason and I am so honored and grateful to support you on your journey. So stay tuned and enjoy.

Community unlocks abundance. We have gone through this in the podcast before. Bonus points if you can identify which episode. In today’s episode, I got to interview Nicole Limón, and we discussed all kinds of leadership tips and strategies as usual, really centering around the opportunity that comes from what it means to build your community, what it means to support community, to give and to receive from community, and to operate from this community centered way of leadership. Nicole is such an amazing example and role model in this way with her new theatre company, Matriarchy Theatre. Go ahead and enjoy this episode. We discussed fundraising strategies and tips, the power of mantra meditation for you, as a leader and founder, and the journey of finding your name for the project or organization you are creating and the journey, overall, of what it’s like to really go from an idea to a manifestation of your idea into this 3D earthly realm. So I hope you enjoy this amazing episode.

Before we get into this episode, go ahead and hit subscribe on this podcast. This is the best way to stay updated on new episodes and it helps build a thriving planet where all beings experience joy and harmony with each other and Mother Earth. So go ahead and hit subscribe and keep this good energy flowing.

Welcome to the podcast, Nicole. Thank you so much for being here.

Nicole: Thank you for inviting me. I’m really excited to talk to you.

Yura: Yes, me too. So my first question is, tell us about your superhero origin story. So what is the pivotal moment that led you to forge your own path and build your own table?

Nicole: Yeah, that’s a great question. I think it was probably both a long and immediate process because I was raised with such unconditional love in my family. I knew my value, I knew I was loved, I knew I was cared for. As a young person, I felt like I was smart. I think when I got to college, there was this instant invisibilization of people who looked like me and walked through the world looking like me, and to me, that was a very kind of shock. I wasn’t used to that sort of an experience, and that was in the theatre department and not getting cast, not getting called back, just to do what I love, which is telling stories.

And very quickly after that, I met a friend and we started our own little company and it was called Movimiento Molcajete, and it was a duo—two performers, and we started writing our own work and touring our own work, and we realized immediately that there was an audience for our stories. There was an audience for people who look like us, that there was no lack of embracing of our stories. And I was probably in my early twenties at the time, and we did that for several years. We were able to make a living just going to small communities, to community colleges, to tribal communities, to festivals and to art galleries, et cetera, being invited to share our work. We knew there was value and that it was directly for our community, and I think that was really important.

Fast forward many years, I wanted to create a larger theatre company to give that sort of an experience to other theatremakers and other people who are just curious about the theatre world or performing or storytelling. And so Matriarchy Theatre was a kernel for many years before it became matriarchy in what, 2020, 2021. It was really just having other people be seen, too. So I feel like that’s the superpower is like, I see you and I want you to see yourself. That’s the gift.

Yura: I love that. I’m curious about having started in 2020, 2021, at this transformative moment for the planet and for humanity. Also marking a future that’s here and coming in terms of a lot of the shifts that we have seen and are going to see for the planet, for humans on it, and theatre as a specific community of that, really representing the human experience. So I’m curious about this time that you decided to come out and now, how has that been and what are you reflecting on since that beginning?

Nicole: So like I said, it had been a kernel for a long time. And actually in 2016, I left my full-time gig, my day job where I was making a living and taking care of my family and my children, but really just not, my soul was not happy. I had been there for almost ten years and I left because I wanted to just focus on my art and my teaching. I was also teaching part-time at Sac State at the time, so working full-time job, teaching part-time, doing my theatre. And I just wanted to focus on building my art world and really reconnecting to that. And so my intention was to start Matriarchy back then. I didn’t have the name, yet. I still just knew it was a theatre ensemble or a collective or a company. I didn’t know what it was going to be, just something.

And at that time, my dear friend and mentor and former professor, Manuel Pickett, asked me to help him save and sustain his company, Teatro Espejo, which is celebrating fifty years next year. And he’s just like, I need help. And I thought that was a really beautiful thing to reach out to ask for help. And he asked me to direct the next main stage show. He’s like, I’m tired. As leaders, we’re often doing this by ourselves, even though we have a lot of people come to the table to collaborate on a show, behind the scenes, it’s often just us running it.

So after conversations with him and other folks, I decided to really commit some time to that. So I said, internally, I was like, okay, I’m going to give this maybe five years to just help save this company. It had been a company that was a part of Sacramento State University on campus until 2012 when he retired. He then moved it out into the community, and so I helped to create a 501c3, we founded a board, I was the first board president, recruiting people, outreaching, bridging the gap of generations between him and the people under me, and just coming, or under the generation and really working to sustain that and grow that while still wanting to start my company. I knew that there’s so much value in Teatro Espejo, and it was where I was born and raised, as a teatrista, and where I really learned about theatre for social change and community care. And so it was just such a joy and such a passion to do that.

And then at some point around 2020, ’21, when theatre started going into these little podcasts in cubicles, in Zoom rooms, and I think I directed about three or four Zoom plays, I think I just finally had some time to settle because Teatro Espejo had taken a break from being in a theatre. We were still doing Zoom theatre, but I had some time, and I think it was that time that at some point the name came to me. I never really knew what I wanted to name the theatre company, and one day I just was like Matriarchy Theatre. And so I remember immediately just doing a search, checking it, googling it, seeing is there already a Matriarchy Theatre? Is there the dot com available, because I didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes and I would want to uplift their work. And I was surprised that I was like, wow, there isn’t one, yet. Of course there’s lots of matriarchy projects and everything, which is like to me, it’s community.

So I immediately went and got the domains, and I remember the next day, during the pandemic, there were, we had the racial uprising and I was supporting a lot of my students of color who were going through it and themselves becoming leaders and activists and creating organizations around social change and racial injustices and calibrating those injustices. Because of that, I had formed a beautiful collective formed under my friend, Nicole Manker, called The Communities of Color Collective. And it was primarily adjunct faculty from the university, and we would meet every week on Zoom, every week for almost two years. And so the next day that I came up with the name, I remember meeting with them and I said, I have a name for my theatre company.

And they were like, what is it? And I told them, and I just remember, I still get a visceral feeling of their reaction to the name landing with such resonance and such power and the celebration emojis in the zoom window. And I knew I had found the right thing because it wasn’t just a name, but it was such an intention, such a big intention. And so that really, I felt like it took that time of the kernel and then those years dedicated to Teatro Espejo, for I think the universe and ancestors to give me the gift of Matriarchy Theatre, and then I can go forward with what my mission is. Yeah.

Yura: That’s so beautiful, yes, and I love everything I’m hearing bridging this ancestral wisdom, really, of the power of a name, the power of receiving a divine information coming through that just is a knowing of when it’s the right time.

Nicole: Yeah.

Yura: When that information comes through, for anybody who’s listening, who maybe is thinking about starting a project and you don’t have the name, yet, being able to flow with that, with that journey of getting the name and knowing what it is that you’re doing and also meant to be doing. And then when it comes through, really going ahead and taking the steps to follow this vision. And I love, too, the offering of community as a part of it, this community group that you had been a part of in providing a space for others to share and a space for you to share and be heard.

So I feel like that’s also really important thing to note for others who might be in this process, to really have that community, have that space of people that you can go to, and share, and celebrate wins, and also have that space to be supported. And then also, the tips I’m hearing around, too, going forth and getting those domains and searching to see if it’s something that legally, in this way that we operate, other people have already been doing both for yes, the whole trademark and legal side of it, but also the community side of it is that wanting to uplift what others have already been working on. So I just wanted to reflect back all this amazing wisdom, suggestions, and experience that you’ve gone through to share with listeners.

Nicole: Yeah, thank you. It’s nice to have that because sometimes we don’t see it ourselves. We’re just in the doing. So in the receiving that, I appreciate that.

Yura: Yeah, and definitely there’s a lot of questions that come through, and I’m sure you still have questions. I still have questions about things that we are doing, so it’s always good to be able to find those spaces to ask.

Because you’re listening to this podcast, I’m going to assume that you care about the future of our planet and all beings who live here. You are a visionary leader who sees possibilities for our future that are beyond what others around you may be thinking and taking as the status quo. You have the ability to see another option and see a different way to do things than before. You’re bridging ancestral practices with the modern, and you know there’s a reason you’re here on this planet, in this body, with this voice, in this moment. So I want to invite you to join our free network of visionaries, an online platform and community forum cultivated by me, Yura Sapi, to support other visionaries who are building their own tables.

Join us and gain access to weekly self-care tips guided by the astrological occurrences that reflect in our sociopolitical day-to-day, as well as resources to grant opportunities, business tools curated for you to thrive as a new earth leader. Get access to my special meditations, teaching videos, and giveaways for one-on-one coaching sessions, courses, and more. So what are you waiting for? Join us on the network of visionaries and let’s manifest our thriving planet. The link to join will be pasted in the show notes, and I can’t wait to meet you.

So my next question; imagine if you are giving a pep talk to this younger version of yourself. What are the words of encouragement and wisdom that you would share?

Nicole: That’s such an interesting question because I feel like part of me does that with my students. In retrospect where we’re able to see we could have done X, Y, Z and been just okay, it wasn’t as scary as I had thought it was. And so I really try to empower my students with those things.

So for me, I think I would’ve told my younger self, particularly maybe my college age self, is to speak up more. I think it was a process I had to have for my life because in my real life, when I’m not in my theatre or my teaching, I’m pretty introverted. I’m very much just sitting back and observing. I can feel much more comfortable speaking, maybe, in front of ten thousand people than on a one-to-one. I’ve gotten much better with it, but I think that’s what I would tell my younger self is to speak up more. Right now, for example, I tell my students, go talk to your professors. They’re just people and they want to help you. They want to connect with you. I tell my son that, too. Go talk to your teachers. Go make a connection. He sees how much of a difference it makes, even though it’s scary for him to make the connection.

So for me, it’s just making connections, and I think it’s still a lesson that I’m learning, so I can tell people do this, but still having to practice that for myself, because I think one of the things that we do, I think as community folks, I feel like I’m always uplifting other people. I love that. And then sometimes I’m like, oh, I could uplift myself, too. I can open doors for myself, as well. And so I think this last year I was able to do that, and that was probably the older version of me telling the younger version of me, you can do this for you, too. You’re part of the community. You’re part of the community that you’re caring for. So yeah, speak up. Speak up.

Yura: Yeah. Well, tell us more about what this last year has brought you.

Nicole: Yeah. Abundance. And I would say probably from 2022 and 2023 were just overwhelmingly abundant, and joyous, and just seeing things come to fruition and offerings coming in, in a way that I hadn’t really experienced before. In 2022, I actually, we finally staged our first full performance for Matriarchy Theatre, a play called Quantum by Tara Moses, and it was a beautiful experience. And I would say that at that time, I had finally launched Matriarchy, said, we’re here, we’ve been born, here’s the name. And then I did a small GoFundMe and I hate asking for money. I’m not a good fundraiser, I just don’t like doing it. And so I put it out there, which was a huge ask for me. It’s the speak up thing that we didn’t do too well. It did pretty good. We had a little bit of donations and I was so grateful for that, but we didn’t get anywhere near the ask that I was hoping for, but we still ended up getting that by other means.

So at some point, the board of Teatro Espejo came to me and said, “We would like to fund your first production for Matriarchy Theatre.” And so they gave me a lovely budget to put this show on, and I thought that was amazing. I cried. I wasn’t expecting that. I wasn’t expecting that, and it still gives me tears. I was able to do every single thing that you need to do for production. All my artists were paid, all the designers and creatives were paid, we rented the venue, we paid for the rights, we did publicity, everything that under the sun, they even paid me. Teatro Espejo paid me to direct my show for my company. Which that was not something I was expecting. And it was, again, a gift that I didn’t do things for Teatro to get things back like that, but it was just started. And all of this abundance really started snowballing in such unexpected ways.

I also started doing mantras just around welcoming those things, and the abundance, and the care, and I’m cared for, and the universe will do what’s right for me as long as I’m putting good out into the world. And that was 2022. And then I also, as much as I don’t like asking for money, I also am not really a big fan of writing grants because I want to spend that time making my art right. But I did, I finally applied for a grant and I received an NEA grant, which was huge. It was probably the first grant I had applied for in years. And I got the grant and I have to give big props to the grant advisor I had talked to prior to applying. He gave me some really good advice. And then I was able to put that funds towards a project that we put on stage in 2023.

And a long story short, in 2023, at some point, I did that thing where I took my own advice and spoke up for myself. A director put a call out for a dramaturg in the community, and her name is Dina Martinez, and she’s such a trailblazer, and such a beautiful human, and she’s a director and an actor. And I immediately answered like, oh, I suggested somebody, and I said, “I can do it, but also there’s this other person,” I don’t like putting myself out there, but she immediately messaged me back and said, “I want you as my dramaturg.”

Yura: That’s cool.

Nicole: I know. Because it’s, I’ve been doing dramaturgy for a long time, but never “professionally” or where I’m actually being credited for my work. And so her bringing me on board to do that opened a bunch of doors for me to continue doing dramaturgy, to continue doing my intimacy choreography work. And she actually came to speak to my class the other day because I’m doing dramaturgy for her production of Fade right now. And I told her I’m always opening doors for people. And I said, “I want to thank you so much for opening doors for me,” because I’m usually not putting myself out for opportunities like that. I’m always just making sure that all my people have opportunities. And so I said, “I’m so grateful for you, at my ripe old age, giving me the chance to do that.” And so that’s, to me, that’s the community care. That’s the community care. And it’s also a testament to women having each other’s backs. Yeah, women of color, having each other’s backs.

Yura: Matriarchy.

Nicole: It’s been an amazing two years.

Yura: Yes. I’m so happy for you.

Nicole: Thank you.

Yura: I love everything, all of this manifestation work. That’s definitely something that I really resonate with and understand. And just what you were saying about putting the GoFundMe out there and still getting everything you needed, just in a different way. So I think that’s a big part of a manifestation of when you have a vision and you create a plan, being able to flow with what the universe gives you that actually can sometimes be even more than you could have imagined than what you planned for.

And then I love the use of the mantra meditations. That’s something also that I have gotten into and even gotten trained in, now, is a meditation teacher.

Nicole: Oh, really?

Yura: Yeah. And the type of meditation uses mantras in this way.

Nicole: Nice.

Yura: Because, so some of the science, if anybody is interested, it’s called the Reticular Activating System, and basically, it’s this part of our brain that allows for a type of signal, a type of GPS coordinates input for us. It’s like when a dog gets a scent and then is able to have that scent available and what it’s able to be looking for and finding outside in the world. So in that same way, when we use mantras, when we use an affirmation, when we visualize something very specifically, we are calling that energy into our own, and therefore, start to notice it when it’s around us. So maybe it always was there. Maybe there was always someone who had information or who was the next step to something that you were looking for, but you never had the conversation about it, or maybe you end up going to an event that just intuitively calls to you and you sit next to the person that exactly is needing is giving you what you need.

So that’s the beauty and the work of this, affirmations of this meditation of this kind of calling and really focusing in our power as humans. So I’m so happy for you and all of the amazing success you’ve had, the abundance, the shift into that perspective. And I also will say Tara Moses, amazing person, we’ve had her on the podcast.

Nicole: So nice to talk to.

Yura: So you can check out that episode.

Nicole: I totally will. I totally will. We did an interview, or what do you call it, Instagram live with her, I think on opening night when we did her show. I love her, yeah. And I’ve read all of her plays at our NPX. I’ve read every single one. They’re just so great. Yeah.

Yura: Yeah. I also would love to tap more into the conversation on fundraising, I think. Yeah. Let’s get into a little offering of tips because you have some information on grant writing and I can definitely share on the individual giving. So the crowdfunding, I actually have an article that I wrote a couple years ago interviewing the Movement Theatre Company and giving ten tips for crowdfunding campaigns because actually, the successful campaigns worked in a similar way that you ended up working with, in terms of having people that were already organizations or people that were already committed to the project before launching the crowdfunding campaign. And this actually functions a lot in the way that individual and fundraising strategies and departments work. This is from my learnings from graduate school and from working at the Public Theater, actually.

Nicole: Oh, nice.

Yura: So there’s basically strategy that goes on before you even go public about a fundraising campaign. So this is where also if you’re able to secure a matching gift, so someone who is going to match a certain amount of donations, you’re able to then actually bring that in into the crowdfunding space. And a lot of people are very motivated by the idea and the knowing that their donation will be worth double, in terms of if they give, this money will be matched. And so there’s that tip.

There’s also letting people know about your crowdfunding campaign before you launch it so that you have people that are already going to donate in those first few days.

Open yourself up to receiving support, receiving wisdom… There’s plenty of things that we can turn to people who have done these things, who have experience, who have the wisdom and receive that. 

Nicole: I’m going to write these tips down. They’re such good tips.

Yura: Building the momentum. I’ll add the link in the show notes, as well, to this article. Yeah, there’s so much strategy, so much support that you can have over individual giving, and really all of these aspects of leadership. I think with this community aspect, too, for listeners to really open yourself up to receiving support, receiving wisdom. As leaders, as founders, we are often called to do a lot, if not everything. So there’s plenty of things that we can turn to people who have done these things, who have experience, who have the wisdom and receive that. So now I’ll pass it to you and if you’d like to share some of the tips you got on grant writing.

Nicole: I would say, because I’m not a huge grant writer, and I’m not, I would say that particular grant, the reason that I applied for it was because it was an individual artist grant, and you got to just propose the project you wanted to. You didn’t have to fit into a box, which, for me, is really challenging. I want organizations that I work with to organically create, from the heart, what they want, not to try to check off boxes. And so that’s what drew me to that particular grant.

So I had an advising session and going in, I knew that I had two ideas in mind, and I knew that whether or not I got the grant, I was still going to do those projects. And I think that, for me, was like, we either are going to get this support or we’re not, but we’re still going to forge forward and we’re going to do the project, we’re going to figure out how to do it. So I proposed two projects, and I spent most of the advising session talking about one particular project, and the advisor was so generous with their time and advice, and that project was Quantum by Tara Moses, that was that. I think it was before I set up the GoFundMe, I don’t remember. And I said, so I want to do this play. And the very end, we were about, our advising session went on for a while because we were having such a great conversation. And then at the end I said, “Oh, let me just tell you about my other idea.” I proposed the idea. And he goes, “That’s the one. Apply for that.” And I was like, okay.

So he gave me, he talked for me for maybe a minute and then he had to go because we had already been going over time, and I was like, okay. So I think one, it was a clear idea. Two, it was from such an authentic place, and three, it was, I already knew I was going to do it regardless of whether or not I got external funding or this particular grant. And that ended up being my project Just A Pinch: A Uterus Play about health advocacy around women and women plus, people with uteruses, reproductive care at outpatient appointments. And so we got the grant for that. And again, I knew it was a project that I was going to do regardless because it didn’t check off boxes for others, it was aligned with what we wanted to do with Matriarchy Theatre.

Yura: I love that. It also reflects back to this manifesting speech I was talking about, in terms of you have what you are wanting to do. And so with that core, you’re able to attract the things that will help you by sticking to that, that core thing of what you’re looking to manifest.

And I love the tips of seeing if you’re the right fit, energetically. You can almost know when you read a description, is this right for me? Is this, are they looking for something else? Almost scanning through if it’s something that has some red flags or there’s all kinds of things that you might want to be aware of when you’re applying for a grant, in terms of what do they require for the reporting. Similarly, the match. A matching aspect to it where you need to be raising funds for it to be able to get that, which I think this also ties to your second recommendation around really knowing that you’re going to do a project and having other options out there that can, actually, for a lot of grant opportunities, really support your application because whether they have a matching component to it that you do need to be able to have other funds coming in. But also there’s this aspect of saying, these are the other ways that we’re getting support for this, these are other partners that are already with us, these are the ways that we’re going to do this. And so a lot of times, grants and organizations and people want to support something that is being supported by others. And so joining in on the community aspect of being able to co-produce something. So yeah, I love those tips and I really hope that it helps for people who are listening.

Nicole: Also, I really love that you were talking about scanning the grant to see if it’s right for you. And I think one of the things I always say, my favorite thing about being an artist is that I get to be around other artists. So when we’re scanning those, a lot of times I know that if we aren’t the right fit, that we’re sending it to other people because there’s enough for everybody. There’s going to be times when I don’t get the funding, but my friend or organizations that I love are getting the funding, and I feel like there’s enough for everyone to go around. And so if it’s not for you, send it to the person you think it is, because we’re all working to do the same thing, which is bringing beautiful art into the world.

Yura: I love that. And that goes back to what you were saying, too, about the jobs that come around. It’s beautiful. Yeah. I actually, I have this network of visionaries, free community forum that I’ve started where I can post all kinds of healing and teaching information about this type of work for leaders and founders and visionaries, and then also, there’s a one for grant opportunities where I just post all kinds of grant opportunities. I used to have a newsletter, but this I found it a little bit easier for me to just post it in there and then it’s on there and anyone can see it. The past history, too.

Nicole: I always feel so loved when somebody sends me a link to a grant. Even if it’s, I look at it and I’m like, oh, it’s not for me. I just feel so loved when they’re like, here, you might qualify for this. I’m like, thank you. I appreciate you thinking about me.

Yura: Yeah, it’s good energy. It’s receiving that support, that prayer from another that you want to see.

Nicole: That belief and faith in your work, yeah.

Yura: Amazing. I have another question for you about your ideas and thoughts around the future of the theatre industry. As the theatre industry evolves, what do you believe it’s asking of us as creators and leaders?

As the theatre world evolves, I don’t think we answer to it. I think the theatre world answers to us.

Nicole: Your questions are so good. I think the theatre world is such a big entity because community is so important to me. I don’t care to answer to the theatre field or the theatre world. I care to answer to my community, and theatre is the means by which we get there. The storytelling is the means by which we get there. I will say that as leaders, when I’m thinking about people who are part of our community, whether they’re youth, or younger people, or older people, they want us to be, for me, when I’m leading, I usually start with: I’m fallible. I will make mistakes. I don’t have all the answers, but I know what my goal is and I know what my mission is, and I know that I come with good heart to try to do this thing, and you’re welcome to come in and bring your energy.

So I think leading in a way where we’re human and we show up as our authentic selves, and that we’re willing to apologize if we make a mistake, and be that human person, but also try to hold ourselves up to a standard where it’s not the regular thing that we’re making a mistake, but that we don’t have all the answers. I think that’s one thing. And I think another thing as a leader is to get out of the way so that other people can lead. So I’ve said since I started Matriarchy is that I’m not building Matriarchy for me. I’m building it so that I can give it away five, ten years down the road. We’ve built this thing together, now take it if you want it. It’s just carving out a space that we get to collectively create, and so that we’re leading together. I might be the person who started the thing, but I can’t continue it alone. What is even the point of that?

We talk often about the notion of decolonization, and I also talk sometimes about a pre colonized space where we are flattening the hierarchy, and that’s something that I try to do within Matriarchy is we definitely have people who have roles as the director, or the artistic director, or the lead, or whatever the case may be. But when it comes to the community care, we try to flatten the hierarchy while also having channels in place should, we just did Just A Pinch and we had a wonderful artist, Bessie Zolno, come in and talk consent, and boundaries, and mental health advocacy, and conflict resolution. And we had a chain of, if you are having an issue and you haven’t been able to talk it out one-on-one, you’re going to go to this person. If it’s an issue with Nicole, you can go to the board. If you have an issue with the board, we don’t have a board, we have guiding matriarch. You can go to a guiding matriarch. If not, then you can go talk to Bessie, so that everybody feels truly cared for and that they have a voice.

And so I think it’s about getting out of the way of these notions of what is a leader. Just like I like to get out of the way with the notions of what is professional actor? What is a professional theatre? My standards are not the standards of a PWI. I don’t try to align to that. Professional is what we want it to be, what we want it to look like. And so as the theatre world evolves, I don’t think we answer to it. I think the theatre world answers to us, to a certain degree.

Yura: That’s beautiful. Thank you so much. Right, I have one more question for you. So reflecting on your journey, what has been the most rewarding aspect of carving your own path and building your own table?

Nicole: Yeah. I would say, man, it’s been a long journey, but very, very intentional. I think one of the things, when we are building our own tables or creating our own path, it’s because we know that the other tables don’t fit. I didn’t even want to be at the other tables. You know what I mean? A lot of us aspire to the X, Y and Z because that’s what it looks like. I never really did. I just wanted to show up as myself. And so I said no to a lot of projects because they didn’t align with my core and my heart. And I’ve had conversations with other theatremakers where it’s like they feel like their career suffered because of having to say no to things that they believed in. And I certainly feel like, yeah, I had an intention to show up a way that I wanted to show up. And so I had to say no to a lot of things.

And I’m okay with that because I also have the other end of the spectrum where I have friends that say they’re doing well in their career, but they had to compromise who they were. And so they’re in a place right now where they’re really, really going up against a battle with a lot of just different things, and I think that we can all understand that. And I didn’t want that to be my battle. I was like, that’s not my battle. Why should I be battling that when I can be creating something beautiful? And so for me, the biggest reward, and I’ve really recognized this the last couple years as I’ve been pushing forward with Matriarchy, and also in my freelance work as a director, and a dramaturg, and an intimacy choreographer.

I remember one day sitting in rehearsal and I was so grateful to myself, to my ancestors, to my grandmother, to my family, to my mom, for making sure that I always showed up as myself. Because here I am sitting in this rehearsal room being who I am and showing up 100 percent as Nicole— authentically Nicole. It took me a really long time to get here and get in this room, but I’m me. And they’re embracing me and accepting me and seeing me, as me. And that is the biggest reward, and that’s what I want for my other teatristas, theatre workers, community. In Matriarchy Theatre, you always get to show up as who you are, and you will be cared for, and you’ll be valued, and you’ll be seen, and you’ll be loved, and there’s a place for you. And we get to create what theatre is. Nobody’s going to tell us what it is. We get to say what it is.

Yura: Yes. Amazing. Thank you so much, Nicole. Yes, everyone, please go ahead and follow, subscribe, like, Matriarchy Theatre. You can find them on Instagram. Right?

Nicole: Mm-hmm.

Yura: And thank you so much, again, for joining us today. It’s been such a pleasure and honor.

Nicole: Thank you. It’s been such an honor, and I’m just really grateful for this time with you. Thank you so much, Yura.

Yura: This podcast is produced as a contribution to HowlRound Theatre Commons. You can find more episodes of this show and other HowlRound shows wherever you find podcasts. Be sure to search with the keyword HowlRound, and subscribe to receive new episodes.

If you love this podcast, post a rating and write a review on those platforms. You can also find a transcript for this episode along with a lot of other progressive and disruptive content on howlround.com.

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The Segal Center presents an excerpt from The Children of the Dead, which has been recently translated into English by Gitta Honegger and published by Yale University Press. The excerpt will be performed by Helga Davis and directed by Tea Alagić, followed by a panel with Gitta Honegger, Tea Alagić, Pavol Liska, and Kelly Copper, moderated by Frank Hentschker.

Copies of The Children of the Dead will be available for purchase. To pre-order the book, click the link here.

Synopsis:

The Alpenrose is a mountain resort nestled in Austria’s scenic landscape among historic churches and castles. It is a vacation idyll that attracts tourists from all over Europe. It is also a mass burial site.

Amid the snow-topped peaks and panoramic vistas, ghosts haunt the forest: Edgar Gstranz, a young skier who died in a car crash; Gudrun Bichler, a philosophy student who committed suicide in her bathtub; and Karin Frenzel, a widow who (perhaps) died in a bus accident. As the three slip in and out of the hotel, engaging unsuspecting tourists and seeking a way to return to life, the soil begins to crack under their feet as the dead of the Holocaust awaken: zombies determined to exact their revenge.

Scrupulously rendered for the first time in English by Gitta Honegger, The Children of the Dead takes readers on a mind-bending ride through time, space, and memory. Concocted from experimental theater, splatter film, Gothic literature, philosophy, religion, and more, Jelinek’s phantasmagorical masterwork is a fierce confrontation with our fraught legacies in the name of the innocent dead.

Biographies:

Elfriede Jelinek (b. 1946), an Austrian poet, playwright, novelist, and activist, received the 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature. Her numerous works include the novel The Piano Teacher. She lives in Vienna.

Gitta Honegger is the authorized translator of Elfriede Jelinek. Besides her novel The Children of the Dead she also translated her “texts for speaking;“ among them On the Royal Road: The Burgher King; Shadow. Eurydice Says; Rechnitz; Charges (The Supplicants); Fury and her most recent works, the trilogy Sun/Air/Ashes and the biographical text Full Disclosure. She also translated the plays by fellow-Nobel laureates Peter Handke and Elias Canetti, as well as of Thomas Bernhard and is the author of the biography Thomas Bernhard: The Making of an Austrian.

Tea Alagić is an internationally acclaimed, multilingual director. Based in NYC, her credits include off-Broadway, regional and international productions of both traditional theater and devised work. She holds a BFA in acting from Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, and an MFA in directing from the Yale School of Drama, where she received the Julian Milton Kaufman Prize in Directing. She serves as professor of directing and collaboration at MFA, The New School for Drama since (2012,) from 2016 she is serving as Head of Directing Department at MFA.

Helga Davis is a vocalist and performance artist with feet planted on the most prestigious international stages, and with firm roots in the realities and concerns of her local community. Her work draws out insights that illuminate how artistic leaps for an individual can offer connection among audiences.

Not long after I met Alexis, I ran into artist Christin Eve Cato during the Frida Kahlo-inspired immersive piece A Ribbon About A Bomb by ECC, in which small groups of visitors were escorted through a house on Governors Island by three famous female artists from history. Another interactive, visually stunning haunted house fueled by multidisciplinary collaborations that drew young audiences—they sold out several times over.

I already knew Christin from seeing her perform with many Latinx-led organizations all over the city, and I was lucky enough to snatch her up for a play I wrote and directed for the HOT! Festival at Dixon Place in 2017.

I’ve been following her work for the past seven years, and in it there is always an effortless presentation of powerful, compassionate, relatable, and important storytelling that includes a broad scope of topics and characters from a plethora of backgrounds and ages. Recently, she added the word Obie to her resume.

DeVo: I was shocked but not surprised to see you go off to get your MFA for playwriting, you were a star in my book, and I was lucky to have had you for a staged reading. You were so brave and offered so much to that role for my whacky horror play. THANK YOU!!!

I wonder if you miss the stage, from a performance perspective…

Christin Eve Cato: I do miss the stage from time to time, and I still perform. Being an ensemble member with Pregones/PRTT often lends me this outlet. So does the Latinx Playwrights Circle—I often participate in readings of new work. At the moment, I am also exploring the aspects of performing in my own work.

DeVo: That could be cathartic!

Did you go full throttle on writing because you thought there was a gap for you to fill?

We would love to see more programming to support living artists and find innovative presentation methods to attract new audiences.

Christin: I’ve always been a writer. I would say I was a writer before I was an actor. I think what made me go full throttle into writing for theatre was the silencing I kept witnessing. The silence, exclusion, the lack of representation. As a person with a Jesuit education (Fordham), I was taught with an emphasis on the meaning of existence, the importance of archival work, and documentation as a necessary tool for the preservation of history. This is the school I come from, and theatre operates very similarly. Plays are literature. It’s history. As I came to terms with the ways my experience and the lives of so many others have been neglected by the American theatre canon, I felt called to write.

Writing comes very natural to me, and so does acting. However, writing feels easier and more

accessible to me. Quite frankly, I think actors in New York theatre are often overworked and underpaid, which can get really stressful. I think this is one of the main reasons why I want to venture into solo performance. I want to perform on my own terms and hours and just be the kind of performer that I haven’t been able to be yet: absolutely 100 percent me, Cato in the raw.

DeVo: Have you seen any productions recently that have shown some strong examples of how we can decolonize the theatre space?

Christin: I’ve seen great things developing in the Black and Latino theatre spaces. There’s a deeper focus on collaborations and co-productions, and the results have been some really strong and exciting seasons. Like how in spring of 2023, three Afro Latina playwrights had their Off-Broadway debuts (me, Guadalís del Carmen, and Julissa Contreras). Our shows sold out. My play Sancocho and Julissa’s Vámonos were extended twice by popular demand… this is how we decolonize spaces.

DeVo: I’ve been talking with colleagues about how the process of writing has changed so much for a lot of us since the pandemic hit. You are a champion of creating new spaces, which I love. Can you talk a little about “survival” and “rituals” and the way your work has adapted over the past two years? What have you’ve learned? What methods have you shed?

Christin: I think the pandemic also gave many of us the gift of pausing and having time to reflect on the things that needed improvement, art we’ve been dreaming of creating, and significant changes that had to be made. Although the shutdown hurt many artists financially and emotionally (physically as well), many of us had no place else to turn except inwards. This was the survival. This place of stillness is where creativity and inner strength is found. I think the practice of intentionally taking a pause is extremely important and essential for the creative mind.

Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder: Welcome to Teaching Theatre, a podcast about the practice and pedagogy of theatre education, produced for HowlRound Theatre Commons, a free and open platform for theatremakers worldwide. I’m your host, playwright and theatre professor Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder.

Welcome back to Teaching Theatre. On this episode, we’ll be talking about how we teach difficult material in the classroom. I’m excited to welcome two of the smartest and maybe funniest people I know, Darren Canady and Megan Gogerty. Darren Canady’s work has been seen at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, the Alliance Theatre, the Horizon Theatre, American Conservatory Theater, the Aurora Theatre, Chicago’s Congo Square premier Stages, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and London’s Old Vic. He’s an alum of Carnegie Mellon University, New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and the Juilliard School. He’s currently an ensemble member of American Blues Theater, a core writer at the Playwright Center, and teaches playwriting at the University of Kansas. Darren, welcome.

Darren Canady: Hey, thanks for having me.

Elyzabeth: And we have Megan Gogerty, a playwright, standup comedian, and professor at the University of Iowa Playwrights Workshop, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in playwriting and comedy studies. Her latest one-person show is called The Once and Future Emma Goldman Clinic, Celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the first abortion clinic to open east of California, the Emma Goldman Clinic in Iowa City. Megan, thanks for being here.

Megan Gogerty: Thanks for having me.

Elyzabeth: So we all teach classes in playwriting and script analysis, which means we have to teach students how to read plays. So maybe we should start there. So how do we read plays, or rather, what do you want your students to think about when they’re reading plays?

Darren: I hope this is useful. So I teach playwriting within the auspices of a creative writing program that’s within a department of English. And so a lot of my students end up coming to playwriting after experiencing writing and reading in other genres. And I think the first thing that I end up trying to get them to move their minds towards is, it’s called a play for a reason. We call it a play, not a read. And to try to think about the ways that sound live, the flesh, the vividness of it, how to think about what’s on that page as a two-dimensional capture of something that’s experienced, hopefully as messily and as vividly as possible in three dimensions. So I think that that’s maybe one of the first things is to rethink the notion of what we mean by read, is one of my first steps.

Megan: Yes, I super agree. And in fact, this year I’m doing something fun. I’m excited about what I’m doing, which is traditionally the way I’ve taught script analysis is they go and read the play by themselves and then they come to the classroom, and then we talk about it or do an exercise about it. And this year we’re just flipping that on their head, and that they’re going to come to the classroom and we’re all going to read it aloud together. And then they’re going to go home and do whatever exercise or reflection or whatever I want to do. So we’re just inverting that because I want my students, just like Darren, to understand that a play is a thing that happens in time. And I have said, I don’t know how many times, countless, every year, you should get together and read this aloud.

You should get together and read it aloud, because there are plays they just don’t get unless they read aloud. And frankly, some plays are hard to understand if they’re just read on the page. That’s a real skill that sometimes I think those of us who are professionals forget that that’s a whole thing to learn. And so then I’m like, why do I keep suggesting this? Why don’t I just make them do it? And the other thing I’m excited about is by doing it this way, then they’ll actually have to read the play.

Elyzabeth: So we teach them how to read the play, and we want our students to grow and challenge themselves. So we assign the material that asks big questions and digs deep into uncomfortable topics. So how do we approach that difficult material in the classroom, especially when that material leads to difficult conversations?

Darren: I like to question, why are we using the word difficult, and where we put that. To talk about, it’s one thing to talk about the “isms” of our world; it’s another thing to label someone’s identity and the presence of that identity as difficult.

Megan: I love that.

Darren: So just because we are talking about queer folks, just because they’re Indigenous folks in the piece—”Okay, we’re going to have a difficult conversation”—immediately connects in the student’s mind, okay, that identity is difficult. I want us to step away from that and get to the place of saying, “Okay, this is outside of your experience. Sure. And I’m going to need you to dig down deep and start to develop some new tools within your toolbox.” Some of us call it empathy. But I am finding a lot of times there are colleagues both within our field and outside of our field, again, I’m teaching within creative writing and also experiencing colleagues right outside of it. Well, it’s a Black piece, so we’re going to have difficult conversations. Is it? Or is it just a play about a family as a starting place?

Megan: It also depends on who is in the room and what they are coming in with, and where they are. So teaching freshmen is very different than teaching graduate students, for example, and I teach at a primarily white institution, but it’s not an exclusively white institution. So if we’re having conversations about race and racism, thinking about who is in the room and what’s their lived experience coming in is going to… There’s some students I have to educate more about the basics of American society, and there are other students who are already prepared to have that conversation. So I don’t know if there’s a one size fits all answer to that question.

Darren: I’m in a weird place, right? Because I am at a predominantly… definitely a PWI, and for many of my students, I am one of the first Black instructors they’ve ever had and perhaps one of their first out queer instructors all in one very interesting body. So they’re like, “Oh, wee.” And so one of the starting places is to create a space where no one feels like… Try to get people to start conversations where they don’t have to be profound. What hit you? What caught you? What are you paying attention to? And to bring the skills of the close reading to the text, both when I’m introducing plays and when they’re working with their own scripts. And what I mean is saying, “I felt this thing,” and me constantly saying, “When? When? When? Get into the text. Get into the text.” As opposed to needing to be like, Obviously this is a response to this presidential nominee.”

Like, okay, yes, you felt a thing and whatever you felt is what you felt. I’m not going to fight you on that. Where is that in the text? What did that do to you? Where did that come from? And similar with the performance. If I take you to a show, which I require, what were the moments that popped for you? Why were you in it? Where did you… You might have felt great, you might have felt awful, but why? What in the text? What in the piece? And so, then whatever the topic is, it is about the shared either text or shared experience, which allows the conversation to move a little bit forward. I’m not saying it’s always a success, but those are two tools that I try to keep on the track at the same time.

Megan: That’s huge, Darren. That is huge. And let me co-sign it. I think that one of the hardest skills, especially for people who are not actors, is to approach plays inside their own bodies. Can we articulate the experience that we are having, not our intellectualizing of the experience we think we should have? But I get really frustrated with conversations about the symbolism of a play. I get really frustrated. Because that’s a very literary analysis, which is lovely and great, but we’re in the theatre, and I want an embodied experience. I want you to be able to articulate: what is the embodiment? Where did you feel nervous? Where did you get excited? Where did you feel lost? What are the feelings? And can we start there? Can we articulate what the feelings are? And I find that that question is difficult for eighteen-year-olds, but it’s also, in some ways, more difficult for my graduate students.

I have some graduate students who are so… Because they’re scholars. They’re on their way to become professors, and so they’re ready to drop the ten dollar words and the liminal dichotomy of the blah, blah, blah. They’re waiting for that. And it’s like, “Okay, but how do you feel in your gut? Get in the body and articulate from there.” Because from there, while your body is… You don’t have to be the expert on all theatre to be an expert on your own experience. And the first way in to any play is your embodied experience. And then we can contextualize and blah, blah, blah. Because you’ll get students, especially if it’s a play that is way outside their comfort zone, where their embodied experience is to go, “No, thank you. I don’t want it. I don’t like it,” which is great. let’s talk about that. But until we talk about that, we can’t really go forward. And any conversations about context and blah, blah, blah, become intellectual exercises.

My supposition is that if we’re checked in, we’re going to be paying attention to each other more as well, which is part of what makes those conversations so tense sometimes, is when people feel isolated, alone.

Darren: You actually… Megan, thank you for saying that. I do feel both within the confines, Elyzabeth, of the conversation that we’re setting up here around controversial topica, controversial content or difficult content, both there and more broadly, I am moving to a place of trying to create a more holistic space in the classroom. And I think Megan, that’s exactly what I hear you say more and more. There’s a great colleague of mine, Megan Kaminsky, who’s a poet who does… I do check-ins just as like, here’s a warmup question at the top of class, on the top of workshop. Megan actually does physical exercises that really allow you to check in with your body. And of course for theatremakers, particularly, as Megan pointed out, for those that are coming from performance and directing backgrounds, that’s warmup, right? You must check in with the body to do the work.

And I would love for us to move that over to also the script work so that we’re not separating, as Megan points out, the cerebral from the lived experience. Because ultimately that’s what we’re trying to get at. And my supposition is that if we’re checked in, we’re going to be paying attention to each other more as well, which is part of what makes those conversations so tense sometimes, is when people feel isolated, alone, “Am I the only person who thought this was racist? Am I the only person who doesn’t know what’s happening in this scene because the characters are Asian or from this other subgroup? Am I the only person who doesn’t know why the play was written?” And if we’re checked in, we start to be a little bit, I think, a little bit more open and a little bit more receptive to the energies that are happening around us.

Elyzabeth: So people have a lot of big feelings about the term “trigger warnings,” which—especially when it comes to theatre—which is really made to be triggering in some way. It’s meant to be this cathartic experience. How do you guys feel about that? Yay? Nay? I can tell Megan has some thoughts on this.

Megan: It’s my time to shine.

Darren: Amen. Take it away.

Megan: So I have a whole soapbox about this, so bear with me. I think it’s important… Sometimes what gets lost in this conversation about “should we have trigger warnings?” and “should we not have trigger warnings?” is this understanding of what a trigger warning is and what a trigger is, right? And so it’s useful to remember, just quick back of the napkin context, is that a trigger is a word that is associated with post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD]. It is part of the trauma response. And the idea is, let’s say you’re a veteran and you’ve come home from the war, and you have PTSD from all of the shooting of the people that you had to do. And one day you’re in the convenience store parking lot and a car backfires, and your brain thinks you are in combat again. Even though you’re not in combat, you have a physiological response: you are triggered, and you are pale and flushed, and your heart is beating, your adrenaline is spiking, and it’s like you are in the combat zone, even though you’re just in the parking lot of a Get and Go. Okay? That’s what a trigger is.

It’s about trauma. And the way that we got into trigger warnings is because somebody pointed out that there is a lot of trauma on college campuses. There is an epidemic of sexual assault. The number for especially women is one in five. Your chances of getting raped when college, if you’re a woman is 20 percent, one in five. If you are a man, that’s a smaller number, but still. So we have this one in five is a huge number. And unlike the combat veteran at the Get and Go, who presumably combat was in the past, if I’m facing a lecture hall full of students of a hundred students and 20 percent of them have trauma about or were sexually assaulted, it could be as early as last night. So that’s who I’m talking with, and I need to teach my students in a way that they can hear me.

And one of the ways that psychiatrists or whoever, psychologists, psychiatrists in the medical field, one of the ways that you can avoid those PTSD flashbacks is if you can give, say our veteran, a heads-up. Like, “Hey veteran, Fourth of July is coming, and there’s going to be a lot of fireworks,” so that when the fireworks go off, their brain has an opportunity to go, “Oh, this is not combat. Actually it’s fireworks,” and they can be in their bodies and not have that trigger response. So a trigger warning is about letting traumatized brains have an opportunity to breathe so that they can take in the material. I think from that perspective, it’s a no-brainer. If I’m going to teach a play with heavy material, material with suicidal ideation, material with sexual assault, material with a lot of violence, it’s a no-brainer to say, “Okay, I want all one hundred students in this lecture hall or all twenty students in this discussion to be able to hear me.”

And I know that many of them are traumatized, and so I’m just going to give them a heads-up, “Hey, suicide’s mentioned in this play. Hey, there’s sexual assault in this play,” so that their brains can be with us in the discussion. So from there, the trigger warning filters out of the academy and now goes into the theatre industry, and people are like, “Well, we’ve got to put trigger warnings on our plays.” And then there’s this real pushback about, grumble grumble, “You’re spoiling the play,” but here’s where my opinion comes in. Okay, I have an opinion, strong opinion here. It’s not spoiling the play, and those people are crybabies. That’s my opinion. Okay? So if I go to see, let’s say Long Day’s Journey into Night and somebody gives me a heads-up, “Hey, there’s suicide and drinking,” that doesn’t take anything away from that play.

I just go, “Oh, what a lovely night in the theatre I’m about to have. This sure is a long day’s journey into deep, dark night.” It’s fine. It doesn’t actually spoil anything for me. But if I have a traumatized brain, it may allow me to stay in the play. And I also feel, while I’m on my little hobbyhorse here, I also feel that a lot of the resentment and the grievance around trigger warnings—like grumble, grumble, grumble—comes from an impulse that some folks have about not wanting to care about other people’s feelings. And I think that if the trauma that 20 percent of our students were having was not sexual assault, was not gendered in that way, that maybe there wouldn’t be such a strong pushback. In other words, friends, misogyny. Thank you for my soapbox. Rant over.

Darren: Megan and Elyzabeth, can I ask you questions?

Elyzabeth: Of course.

Darren: I’m always the practical place. I deeply hear that, and I keep trying to figure out what… It normally is like 0.02 seconds, not 0.02. But I will say, “Okay, we’re moving into workshop. You’re going to start bringing in scripts. Please do consider your classmates.” And I will have tried obviously to have already modeled for them in our discussions of other scripts how I am approaching trigger warnings or content warnings. And if you have a distinction there, I’d love to hear it too. But what do the two of you tell students about appending trigger warnings to their own scripts, particularly, I think… I suspect, or at least for me, I tell them it’s a little bit different in a workshop setting when you’re trying to develop a thing and you’re not entirely sure what you have, versus if we’re in production, or maybe it isn’t. Maybe you’re both like, “No, actually it’s the exact same thing.” I’m just curious, what are y’all takeaways, thoughts?

Megan: When it comes to new plays, when you have a room full of playwrights, I think it’s really important at the top of the class to have a conversation about what our class policy is going to be. And this speaks to just a larger approach to teaching, which is that thinking about teaching less as a top down, “I’m going to inform you of this great knowledge that I have that you don’t have,” and more circular and collective, and that we are going to learn from one another, which means that we have to come up with some collective agreements about how we’re going to operate. And having a conversation about what is the function of a content warning? What is the function of a trigger warning? If you have a good classroom set up and you have a strong classroom where the students all trust one another and trust you, that can be a really wonderful conversation to have at the top of the semester, where students can say, “Yeah, look, and also I have some family stuff in my background and I need a trigger warning about this, that topic.”

That kind of thing can be really useful. And also it just allows folks to understand that we’re not talking to faceless masses, that when we read our plays, we’re actually talking to the other people in the room, that the other people in the room are our first audience, and they are whole people unto themselves. And I have found that my students are happy to extend that courtesy to one another. They don’t have a problem with it at all, because we’re talking about… It’s no longer theoretical, it’s about these actual people. “I don’t want Sandy or Eric to be upset or to not be able to engage with my play. Oh, that’s the worst if they weren’t, can’t read my play. Oh, my God. Especially if I could just give them a heads-up and then they could read my play, then that’s what I really want.”

Darren: Well, and I do think there’s something, Elyzabeth, I love your point about finding those places where students are empowered. And I think that’s another portion of this, the bigger topic of empowered, but also empowered means you’re also carrying a responsibility. This is not high school. This is a learning community, and I’m facilitating learning, and I carry a certain responsibility, but so do you. Because you reminded me there as well, Megan, like, “Oh, right, I start every semester with a discussion of community agreements, and those live on our website for the class.” And you’re absolutely right. Yeah, that’s one of the places to really address that. And then to the point of our conversation is a way to set up, how do we want to engage each other when we do run up against things where we disagree or we feel something struck a nerve? That’s difficult. That’s challenging.

Elyzabeth: Well, and that’s a great segue into my next question, which is how do you handle situations when students push back either against the play or against you or against what someone in class has said? How do you make sure that the conversation remains constructive and productive?

Megan: Well, there’s two different times that I think it’s useful to draw a distinction between. One is if we’re dealing with a new play that a student in the class has written, and we’re workshopping this new play. That’s one set of circumstances. The other is if we’re reading an established play, a classic play that the students are encountering for the first time. So when it’s the second, when it’s a play that is established, let’s say everybody’s reading, I don’t know, Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine or everybody’s reading… Whatever we’re reading. We’re reading Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop, whatever we’re reading.

One of the rules that I have in my class is I say, “For the purposes of this class, we are going to assume that every play that we read is a masterpiece. And that if we don’t like it, if we feel outside of it, if we find ourselves bewildered by it, that is our cue to lean in closer to dig deeper and find out more about it.” But also, that doesn’t mean you have to like all the plays. In fact, learning which classic plays you can’t stand is an important part of your education—

Darren: Amen and Amen.

Megan: And serve you For the rest of your life. And so by all means, go to the bar/milkshake shop or wherever they go, go to the place where you go and be like, “Can you believe Tennessee fucking Williams?” Go ahead. Go ahead at that spot. That’s the time to trash. But in the classroom, because what we’re trying to do is figure out what can we glean out of this play that we can use for our own education. So it’s not about celebrating the play, it’s about milking it. Because sometimes students will read a play… I certainly have had this in my own education before, where students will read a play, especially a difficult play or an unusual play or play that’s weird, and their knee-jerk response is they hate it. And then they get into it and unpack it, and then it becomes their favorite play. And they get so thrilled about it. And so that’s my method to… Because I don’t want to rob them of… I don’t want them to decide too early.

We also want our students to swing for the fences. We want our students to take big, big swings and try things out. And that means sometimes, in fact, it is inevitable that they’re going to step in it.

Darren: I just want to co-sign everything Megan just said, including that starting place of the two distinctions. Because Elyzabeth, I love that question. And I do find that, at least in my playwriting workshops, we have to separate out those two places of pushback. And I also find, this may be because I’m also teaching in the Midwest, so the distinction that I will find is that no matter how open I try to make the workshop experience, there is something about the power that I wield as a professor that I would say 70 percent of my workshops I find out after the fact, because someone felt like they weren’t supposed to bring that up in, and when I say bring that up, of an actual resistance to something within the play. So there’s this Midwestern politeness that I have to combat or that I have to help them see and unpack, which they don’t necessarily see as something that’s filtering and stopping them from being completely open about where they stand with the piece.

And I will say what I want to really… What I have learned is to model as often as I can, as early as I can, the behavior and engagement. And to Megan’s point, there’s always at least one play where I explicitly tell students, “I am not a fan of this piece, and I have programmed it because I need you to understand, we still have to do the work of finding out what is this playwright doing? How are they doing it?” It’s speaking to someone in the case of… There is a play that I cannot, honey, I can’t stand this play for so many reasons, and I have programmed it twice, and students see me actually sweating in the classroom because the end of it makes me want to flip tables. And this play, which shall remain nameless, and the playwright have honors up one way and down the other, and it’s a contemporary piece.

Megan: Listen, when this podcast recording is over, I need to know the name of that play.

Darren: Yeah, I absolutely will. Absolutely. Point is I really want to co-sign that aspect of having it there and nevertheless doing the work of the analysis and figuring out, also embody, “Why am I sweating? Why is it bringing out rage in me?” And also telling the students, “It’s okay to feel strongly. Let’s unpack that and let’s also observe why you might have been like, I don’t care about this play. And yet for that person who’s in the room with you, they’re like, ah. And let’s get into that conversation as safely”— I don’t think there’s anything… I don’t believe that there’s anything that’s completely safe. I tell students—”release that notion, but as safely as we can.”

Elyzabeth: So what happens when it’s a new play? Because that’s a slightly different situation because also presumably you’ve got the writer in the room.

Megan: Yeah. So here’s the hard part about teaching playwriting, which is that you can’t do it in pieces. You have to do it all at once. You can’t just like “Today we’re going to talk about dialogue.” You have to write the whole play every time, and every time it teaches you something, right? And we also want our students to swing for the fences. We want our students to take big, big swings and try things out. And that means sometimes, in fact, it is inevitable that they’re going to step in it. It is inevitable that a playwright with all good intentions is going to write something that is upsetting, that is obtuse.

They will have missed some huge part of the culture that everybody in the room seems to know but them. It’s inevitable that that is going to happen. And so, knowing that, when we have our first day, our collective agreement, that first week, that’s one of the things we talk about. What are we going to do when that happens? What do you want to happen when it’s your play and you step in it? And how do you want it to be resolved when somebody else steps in it and you’re a responder? Let’s talk about what we’re going to going to do there. And there’s a whole… By talking about it before any of the issues come up, it can take some of the sting out of some of those conversations. Because what we all want to do is get better as writers. What we all want to do is we really want to benefit from all of the different perspectives that are in the room.

And we want to offer our comments to one another as gifts. “Let me help you write a better play. Let me give you something that you don’t have because I’m rooting for you, because you’re my colleague and I want you to do well. And so I have this information.” And one of the things we say is, especially if somebody has stepped in your pudding, somebody has stepped in your pudding, you have the right to not give that comment right away. You can think about it. You don’t have to be on the hook to… If something’s not sitting right with you and you need seventy-two hours to process it, that’s okay, right? So that’s just a couple of ways that we go about it.

Darren: I will say, for a variety of reasons, here at KU, I’ve been part of a group of folks who lead discussions around hot topics in the classroom, hot moments in the classroom. I don’t love that label. Oh god, “hot moments.” But it takes up a lot of this. And one of the things that I think sometimes we in creative writing fields take for granted, particularly theatre folk, is that one of the key ways that we as a field have addressed this, is to actually have workshop models for those that do have a workshop process. I think that’s one of… So first of all, cosign everything Megan said, those are tactics that I definitely cosign, and I would say, anyone listening, please use them.

So this is me just adding, don’t overlook the, or discount or take for granted the usefulness of a workshop model and a workshop process. It is, I think, a potentially… I hope this isn’t a spicy comment. To me, it is so dangerous to have someone walk in, present their work, and we just opened the floor and we’re like, “Okay, what did you think?” And I will say, in full transparency, it surprises me the number of folks who still just basically do that. And there are equity issues there. And particularly, Elyzabeth, thank you for convening this conversation. This conversation and its topic is exactly why we do need process.

So students know here’s how we, based on our community agreements, are going to take up a text. And it’s a process where, as Megan pointed out, somebody is going to step in it. And where is the step in the conversation that we have where we can, with respect and with honesty, take up, you done stepped in it? Don’t think you did it intentionally, but here’s how we are going to respond as audience and receiving of what that did to us. Interest of transparency, I still use Liz Lerman and critical response process up one way and down the other. I modify it because sometimes some groups are ready to have the comment step and some are not quite ready for the comment step.

Megan: That’s it. That’s it. Yeah, that’s a hundred percent it.

Darren: Some people love Save the Cat! and other methods do what you do. I do recommend having a process.

Megan: I’m also a big fan of the Anti-Racist Writing workshop, which talks about Liz Lerman. And there’s a great quote in it, and I’m flipping through my copy that I keep on my desk, hoping to find it. And of course I can’t find it. But there’s a great quote about how the people who want brutal honesty are usually people who already feel welcomed into the workshop space because of their identity, which I think is really, really great. And that when students ask for brutal honesty, what they’re really saying is, “Take me seriously as a writer, please.” Which I will. Which I will. But that… It’s not useful to say mean things. It doesn’t help you become a better writer. It’s not useful.

Elyzabeth: So how do you guys handle situations where you are teaching a play that is outside of your experience or outside the experience of the majority of the students in your class, especially if they’re not connecting with the material?

Megan: Well, the first step, I think, is we have to acknowledge the reality in the room. So it is not unusual for me to have a class of a hundred percent white kids, farm kids from small towns in Iowa who have come. Their conception of a play is, You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, which they were in in high school, and now they have come to college and everything is a lot harder and weirder, and they’re out of their depth already. And then I’m like, “Welcome to Suzan-Lori Parks,” and they’re having to figure out that the words they’re reading on the page is a play. Do you know what I mean? They’re looking at Topdog/Underdog or The America Play or any Suzan Lori Parks, and they’re going, “What does this have to do with, You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown?” They’re just trying to figure out what that is. And so acknowledging that, I think, is important. That’s one thing.

What do you got, Darren?

Darren: It’s interesting that you say outside of myself, because when I think about… Because I grew up in Kansas and I’m in the crossover generation where I think we finally… As I was coming through high school, we finally were doing some major work about rethinking what we called the “canon.” That I was reading the majority of things outside myself because they were predominantly white authors for years and years and years. And so what I learned to do with that is to start from the place of close reading. So I’m being a little bit repetitive and saying what is on the page? And I think the thing there, so I guess always co-signed Megan, one thing that white supremacy does is it centers a white narrative. And so the first step when we’re like… People are butting up against, I can’t access this. I don’t know this.

One, maybe it’s not for you. It could be that the audience, not necessarily for you. Doesn’t mean you get to check out, to be clear, but maybe that was intentional. Two, and to actually think about what happens if we center… and that means normally unpacking what do we mean by centering? So that’s a conversation that also has to be had. But if we make this experience at the core of the conversation as opposed to the other, the margin, it’s weird. What happens if we say it’s normal? What do we see? Release that. Let’s pretend this is completely normed, and let’s not pretend. Let’s say, because in the world of this piece, it is. It’s completely normed. What does that do? That’s one place where the conversation goes. I will also say, I normally find that I have to keep in my back pocket, contextual stuff.

At some point I’ll have to pull out, “Here’s a review. Here’s an interview.” Those sorts of things become vital. And because we’re theatre artists, what did actors who worked with it struggle with? Particularly if it’s a piece that is thorny, and there is work where people talk about… I mean, again, actors, directors, designers are so flipping brilliant, and so many of the times the things that we are struggling with as readers are things they were the first people to struggle with. And so I love having done some of that to say… And here’s the other… So that’s another tactic. I also, I’ve been known to program work by my friends. So like, “Hey, can you Zoom?” And now we have Zoom. “Can you Zoom in?”

And I will tell students, “Are you struggling with something in this script? Hey, why don’t you ask the person who created it what that was?” That’s another practical way that I, when I know that I’m not, I don’t have the spoons, I don’t have the expertise if it’s… Those are the ways that I work. And I love programming work from people that I know who are wildly different from me. So I can be like, “I’m glad you asked that, my student, so-and-so is going to be joining us on September sixteenth, and I want you.” And I will warn them. I’ll be like, “And I will actually calling you to ask that question, or I’ll just put you on the spot.”

Megan: Let’s just talk about white people for a second. Because I’m thinking about… James Baldwin talks about white innocence and how the project of white innocence that in order for white people to not lose their minds, having created all this tragedy, the way that they live with themselves is to distort reality, to preserve their white innocence. So this project to protect the innocence of white people, so they have plausible deniability about the horrors of American history is a real thing. And I have, in the past few years, one of the things that I am doing when I’m teaching primarily white people, and we’re talking about plays with Black playwrights or Indigenous playwrights or playwrights of color, is that we talk explicitly, before we talk about the play, we talk explicitly about white supremacy, talk about white innocence.

And I have a whole PowerPoint, I do whole framing to get these eighteen-, nineteen-, twenty-year-old students caught up in just… Get them to see the bubble wrap that they’ve been wrapped in their whole life that is preventing them from seeing what is obvious to people who are outside of that bubble wrap. So we have this whole conversation, and still I’ll teach say, Topdog/Underdog, and I’ll say, “Why are their names Lincoln and Booth?” And they’ll be like, “Oh, any other reason besides race, it must be some other reason. It has to do…” Right? People go out of their way to avoid saying, avoid talking about race, but because there is so ingrained in them, this is a hot button, and I shouldn’t see it, and I need to protect my innocence. And so sometimes just talking about that in a way that is kind, that in a way that is rooted in everybody’s humanity, if we can just acknowledge the reality.

So many of my students are so afraid about being wrong or being embarrassed, that they will shut down rather than risk that. And so my job as a professor is to create a room where people can feel like it’s okay to hazard a guess and be wrong. It gets tricky because I have multiple audiences, so yes, primarily white students, but not exclusively white students a lot of the time. I don’t want to make the other mistake, which is catering solely to the white kids or solely to the cis kids or solely to the straight kids without—pardon me, adult learners. Adult learners is what I meant, not kids. Talk about the multiplicity of voices in the room. And so that is the trick, I think, to professoring in the twenty-first century.

I think the lesson of this moment in history for all of us is that there is no such thing as a neutral, objective point of view, that there is no such thing as an apolitical stance or an apolitical reading.

Darren: It is. And everything that you just said reminded me too, Megan, that this is hard work, what we do. Maybe we don’t say that often enough. I’m the first to say, I understand I’m not out here curing cancer, is always the famous line. And I get that. And also to do this well and to do this responsibly, it’s more than a notion, as we would say in my family. And it takes that careful consideration. I actually have to… Because I have anxiety, because of all these things, I actually have to meditate before each class.

I had to go in, to quote the old sayings about the church I grew up in, I got to go and prayed up. Because exactly what you’re describing, Megan, is I have to ask myself, go through the checklist. “Have I actually prepared the class to have the conversation that I want them to have? Have I prepared them process-wise so they can roll with anything that’s coming in from their colleagues in the work that they’re presenting?. Do I need to change my process? Am I being transparent enough in those changes to be ready for all of that?”

Elyzabeth: And I think it’s important for us to teach our students how to contextualize this work, because ultimately what they’re writing is informed by the world around them as well. Making sure that they connect why this writer wrote this play at that moment in time helps them connect to the why now question of the work that they’re doing too, right?

Darren: Yeah. And I appreciate too what you said, is that there’s so many tools that come from our field, and the thing is to… I want you to use those tools that you’re learning in other courses to apply in an equitable and just and challenging way to this. You might, understandably, you’re scared about saying the right or wrong thing. Well, let’s go at it from this way. Why this play now? Who is it speaking to? What moment is it speaking to?

Elyzabeth: Speaking of moments in time, this very interesting moment in time, scary moment in time, and we’re all teaching in states where public education, in particular, is under attack, where these plays that we are teaching, the content of these plays, the ideas of these plays, are under attack. How do we keep these stories alive? How do we continue teaching these stories? How do we make sure that our students see the value in these stories?

Megan: I’ll just say I think the lesson of this moment in history for all of us is that there is no such thing as a neutral, objective point of view, that there is no such thing as an apolitical stance or an apolitical reading, or I’m just going to teach, I’m going to teach Hamlet and I’m going to teach it, the whitest play in the world. I’m going to teach this play, and I’m just going to be neutral and I don’t want to get politics involved. I appreciate, I really empathize with that longing as a way to circumvent the aggressors who are trying to turn our society into a fascist state. I appreciate that. And also it’s impossible. So I think we have to first acknowledge that it is impossible to avoid this conversation and be ethical and be true to our mission. I teach at the University of Iowa, and our mission is really clear. It’s about discovery. It’s about diversity of voices and experiences. Not for some sort of kumbaya thing, not for some make the world a better place, although wouldn’t it be great?

It’s because we are smarter when we are surrounded by different points of view. We are smarter when different people are looking at a problem together. We are better, and we want to create knowledge, and so we can’t back away from the lived reality of our lives. And that is hard, and that is uncomfortable. And here’s where I look to my tenured colleagues to please lead the way, because it’s a lot more dangerous for people who are not tenured, who are easily dismissed. And yet also, I have to live with myself. I have to live with myself, and I have to teach my students how to navigate questions like how do you know what’s true? How can you tell? People are telling you all kinds of things. How do you know it’s true? Let’s start there, right? There are actual things that we can teach that I believe a college educational liberal arts education can help us through this difficult time, but we have to be brave about it.

Darren: I know this is recorded, so y’all can’t see my face. I look like a deacon sitting at the Missionary Baptist front pew. I’m like, “Yeah.” It’s a sermon. What Megan said, it’s so much what is also my politic as an instructor. And also I feel called in as someone who is tenured. So I think for those of us who understand the tenure system, which I think is the dismantling of it is underway and it will go forward. And so I think that is very prescient what you pointed out there about using the power that still exists within that system responsibly and to be brave. Elyzabeth, I love that question that you asked that got us here, and I think the way we keep those things alive is the bravery that Megan’s talking about, and also knowing that students, no matter what, one of the things that I love about the creative writing workshop is that students are going to come in with their narratives and their truths built, carried in their bodies.

And so I could do a curriculum completely based on some banana pants thing that some person…Let me not get too nasty, that some fascist leaning person wants me to do. And still, it is my job to create a spring… I still would never be able to completely keep out challenging, marginalized, intriguing narratives out of the classroom, because those are going to come in anyhow via what my students have lived. So better, I’d be responsible and create a receptive place rather than trying to do the impossible, which is to hold the door and be like, “We’re only going to do the things that these random people not in this classroom deem as safe.” When you are the one student who has paid money to be here and is carrying all of this joy and trauma and lived life, and you’re going to draw on that. Better I be responsible and ready and have built in work that yes, whether you are white, whatever your background, you feel ready to be challenged and challenging in your work, understanding that that is always going to be the call and that is always going to be there, is the other piece that I would add.

Megan: And I just want to throw in—this is obvious, or we’ve been taking this for granted, but just so that it’s spoken—this narrative that professors are trying to indoctrinate their students with a woke agenda is such hot garbage.

Darren: Hot garbage.

Megan: It’s such… I can’t get my students to do the readings. They’re not going to sit still for The Communist Manifesto. I’ll just—

Darren: Honey.

Megan: That’s not really happening. Right? This idea that… It’s just not really happening. And they want to say that it’s happening so that they can control speech, so they can control ideas. I get it, but it’s not right. It’s not accurate.

Darren: It’s not accurate.

Megan: We have to start with the truth and that what a college degree, especially an undergraduate bachelor of arts in the liberal arts is about, is about critical thinking. That’s what it’s about. And critical thinking requires you to live in the real world and not the imaginary world. We’re in 2023, about 30 percent of Americans are trying to live in an imaginary world. You can’t get smarter if you live in an imaginary world. You actually have to grapple with… We didn’t make it up. It’s not that racism exists, that sexism and homophobia, transphobia exists. There are just whole wings of the library. I wish it didn’t exist. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it was just a narrative? I’d love to come into classroom and be like, “Discrimination is over. We solved it, everybody.” Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

Darren: Wonderful.

Megan: That would be amazing. But it’s not true. And every time we do an experiment, every time we look to see if additives are different, we find a lot of these same issues that America has been stubbing their toe on since its inception are still with us. And so we have to acknowledge that reality.

Darren: That part.

Elyzabeth: Excellent. It seems like a great place to stop. Thank you guys so much for your time, for your wisdom, for your humor. I appreciate you being here with us today.

Megan: Elyzabeth, you are wonderful.

Darren: You are divine.

Elyzabeth: Thank you, guys. This podcast is produced as a contribution to HowlRound Theatre Commons. You can find more episodes of this show and other HowlRound shows wherever you find podcasts. Be sure to search “HowlRound Theatre Commons podcasts” and subscribe to receive new episodes. If you love this podcast, post a rating and write a review on those platforms. This helps other people find us. You can also find a transcript for this episode along with a lot of other progressive and disruptive content on howlround.com. Have an idea for an exciting podcast essay or TV event the theatre community needs to hear? Visit howlround.com and submit your ideas to this digital commons.