GUIDELINES FOR COMPANY PREPAREDNESS

PLAYBACK THEATRE FOR SOCIAL CHANGE
Prepared by Sarah Halley and Pamela Freeman, Playback for Change, Philadelphia

        >>As PT practitioners who are interested in improving access for all tellers, we need to:

        >>Identify the unheard and under-heard voices in our communities.

        >>Improve on how we invite tellers – i.e. assess and adapt our organizing efforts before a PT event as well as how we invite tellers during an event – to address diversity dynamics (like rank and privilege) that make inclusion more difficult. 

        >>Do the work necessary to play all tellers with authenticity and heart, which means working on our own social awareness and identity development, and learning about other cultures.

HOW DO WE DO THIS?

Tools and issues to consider:

--Analyze your community. Identify who’s in the mainstream and who’s in the margins.

--Examine who auditions for the company, who comes to shows, and where you perform. Who’s not coming? Who do you want to reach out to? Consider going to other communities and performing in places that are more culturally acceptable to the groups you want to invite in (such as churches in “their” neighborhood). *

--Actors must be trained to hear and embody the social dimension and cultural differences in a story.

--The company needs to work on diversity issues within the company itself. This would include telling stories about rank and privilege as it relates to class, race, gender, etc.

--It is important to do sociometric exercises from time to time to see where people are in the company, such as: Who is more/less connected to whom? What stories and themes are not being told? What is being marginalized/disavowed? Who’s in and who’s out? 

        --Important to work on playing characters that are difficult to play, such as people from other races, people who are overtly racist or sexist, or anyone who is outside your company or community mainstream.

--Company members need to work on addressing conflict within the company openly. Dealing with conflict helps one confront “nice” patterns that can feel oppressive to people outside the white, middle class mainstream.

--If you are white, work on white privilege. If you are a person of color, work on issues of internalized oppression.

--Consider rehearsing occasionally in affinity groups by race, gender, sexual orientation, or any other diversity dimensions that are significant to your group.

--Read articles / books on diversity issues and process them “in action” in rehearsal.

--Learn your history, and the history of the people you want to include.

--Use social justice exercises (like the power shuffle) as a warm up to stories. See www.trainingforchange.org  for a variety of exercises you can use.

--Go to diversity workshops individually, or as a company, or bring in diversity trainers. Keep pushing yourselves to go deeper in the work.

--Pick a project as a company that will require you to stretch and learn about another culture / social group, and yourselves (such as a Martin Luther King Day show, or working with immigrants).

--Once you’ve completed a project, pick another one. Keep stretching yourselves.

--Keeping pushing yourselves in rehearsal to listen for the social dimension, and find ways to bring it into the enactments. We’ve found that this work requires ongoing effort.

 * For more information on breaking downs the walls of class, see: Bridging the Class Divide and Other Lessons for Grassroots Organizing, by Linda Stout, chapter 7 “Invisible Walls”