Center Theatre Group News & Blogs

The Art of Teaching Theatre: Who Needs Stuff to Make Drama?

Shannon Michael Wamser — Mon, 31 Aug 2015 20:30:00 -0700

The Object Lesson opens at the Kirk Douglas Theatre on September 9, and its focus on stuff inspired us to take a closer look at the stuff/resources we think we need—but might not have—to do drama. As this new school year starts, we recognize that some schools have lots of resources and some have none, but that stuff should never be a barrier to incorporating drama into education. Local teaching artist Shannon Michael Wamser gives his account of why drama is so unique—even in the arts—for the lack of material resources it requires, and offers ideas on how to utilize the simple stuff to get impressive results.

I was a geeky, sensitive kid growing up in a small Pennsylvania town, and I felt out of place most of the time, until my high school drama program offered me a like-minded community. It was there that I first learned what makes theatre unique as an art form: you don’t need money to make a play.

We were mounting Beauty and the Beast, and my teacher pulled me aside, pointed at a pile of stuff and said, “We need a set. This is what we have. There’s no budget.” And after a long day experimenting with orchestra risers and long swaths of material, we had a fantastic castle with grand drapes and staircases (of sorts), all without spending a dime.

In a time when more and more arts funding is disappearing, it can seem harder and harder to create an effective drama program that sufficiently engages students. But the truth is that we don’t need big budgets and expensive technological elements to create a powerful piece of theatre. All we need are the tools we already have: imagination, commitment, and will.

That is not to say that big budget musicals don’t have their necessary place, but there is more than one way to make a play. In a time when we are constantly plugged in, digitally connected to people thousands of miles away yet isolated from the people sitting next to us, it is more vital than ever that we create experiences that allow us to tune into each other directly. Theatre is the last place where we can have an unmediated communal experience, and such experiences are more necessary than ever.

So find a book of beloved short stories, or choose a theme and create your own. Have students raid their parents’ closets for old clothing. Collect newspapers, fabric, and any discarded objects that have imaginative potential. And then begin. Simply say, “This is our story, and this is what we have to tell it.” Simply ask, “How does this stuff turn into a magical forest… or the streets of Manhattan… or the castle of the Beast?” Our capacity to imagine is our greatest evolutionary excess, and we are hardwired to love great storytelling. This approach may be challenging, but it will yield transformative results. And best of all, students will leave the experience with a strong sense of ownership for what they created and the understanding that there doesn’t always need to be an app for that.

Lope de Vega, a prolific 16th-century Spanish playwright, famously said that all he needed to create a play were “four trestles, four boards, two actors, and a passion.” He was right. And still is. The power of the theatre lies not in realistic spectacle, but in the engagement of the imagination of the audience. The transformation of a piece of fabric into a shadow screen or the cloak of a king is often more transcendent than any million-dollar flying car or falling chandelier ever could be. The resources we need to give students engaging, transformative, exciting, creative experiences in the theatre are all around us. It just takes a little imagination. Luckily, we have that in spades.

Do Your Objects Own You, Or Do You Own Your Objects?

Center Theatre Group — Wed, 26 Aug 2015 20:33:00 -0700

Peter Walsh has been organizing people’s homes and lives for 15 years and is the author most recently of Lose the Clutter, Lose the Weight: The Six-Week Total-Life Slim Down. He said that there are a few reasons why people acquire so much stuff. The first is social. “People are taught, through advertising and socialization and through friendships,” he said, “that if you just buy the right thing, you can acquire the life you want.” Walsh calls this “investing in the promise that comes with the product,” and it’s particularly dangerous in this time of cheap and easy credit, when we can purchase anything we want from anywhere in the world at the touch of a button.

But we also get attached to objects because of their meaning—whether it’s a gift, an inheritance, or a souvenir. Standolyn Robertson, a professional organizer who appeared on the TV show Hoarders, said, “For a lot of people, the object becomes their only connection to the memory.” So getting rid of the object also means getting rid of the memory—and getting rid of the person who gave the object to you. “Even if you go to a conference, and you get free stuff that you don’t really like,” she said, “if you got rid of the stuff, it means you didn’t really go to the conference.”

So how do we keep the aspirations and the memories—and ditch the stuff? “There’s nothing wrong with remembering the past, and there’s nothing wrong with preparing for the future,” said Walsh. But keepsakes packed away in boxes don’t do that, nor do items of clothing that no longer fit.

Robertson said that she counsels her clients—many of whom have hoarding disorders—“not to keep all the stuff but to keep the best of the best.”

Walsh recalled a woman who had put all her beloved grandmother’s things in storage, then left them there for 26 years; she couldn’t bear to throw anything away. After Walsh found out that her favorite memories of her grandmother were of baking together, they decided to build a shadowbox in the woman’s kitchen to display some of her grandmother’s cookie cutters, rolling pin, and handwritten recipes. “Every time she walks into the kitchen and looks at it, her heart sings,” said Walsh. Putting items on display conjures up memories; keeping things in boxes does not.

Sometimes, letting go can be as simple as telling a story about an object, said Walsh. He advises people who have to clean out an entire house to “grab some friends, a few bottles of great wine, and just sit and tell the story of the objects.” Walsh said another strategy he frequently advises people to employ is to take photos of things—like childhood toys or inherited furniture—before selling them or disposing of them.

Which brings us to the next frontier: digital organizing. “It’s so easy now just to take pictures that people never take it a step forward and figure out how to save the best of the best and share those photos with loved ones,” said Robertson. We don’t put our photos on display; they live in our phones. As a result, she predicts that the next generation will grow up saying, “‘My mother lost her phone, so I have no childhood photos.’” Robertson said that there will be a lot more work for organizers as people grow as overwhelmed by digital clutter as they do with physical clutter.

Walsh said that it’s also interesting to consider how we talk about that overwhelming feeling clutter gives us. “When we talk about clutter, we use words that we don’t use anywhere else,” he said. “‘I went into that room and I felt like I was suffocated.’ ‘You go into that garage and feel like you’re buried.’ ‘There’s so much stuff you just can’t breathe.’” Objects have the power to suck the life out of us, he said. “We think of our things as inanimate objects, and in some ways they are, but the truth is, stuff has incredible power over us,” he said. Organizing for him isn’t ultimately about the stuff, he added. “It’s about helping people redefine their relationship to their stuff.” And then he inserted a reference to Fight Club: “Instead of their stuff owning them, they own their stuff.”

A Small Gesture, a Powerful Honoring: Floating Lights after ‘Bent’

Rosemary Marston — Mon, 17 Aug 2015 20:38:00 -0700

I sat paralyzed. Heavy. Destroyed and confused at how vicious my own species can be to one another. Then the stage manager called for a 10 minute break, and the cast of Bent dispersed. It was a staff-invited dress rehearsal—the last before heading to the stage at the Mark Taper Forum—during the workday, and it took all my power to pry myself up from my seat and head back to my desk. Staring at my computer, tears streaming from my eyes, all alone in my office, I ached for an outlet.

My colleagues knew, of course, that Bent, which tells the story of gay persecution in Germany during the Holocaust, would be powerful and painful. It was at the first read-through, though, when the devastation of this show truly revealed itself: the script is powerful, but the intimacy and energy these actors omit over the course of the story hits a chord that is usually deeply hidden. We had to offer something—even a small gesture—to our patrons. We had to hold space, especially for folks like me, who are tremendously affected by witnessing such trauma (even in an artistic representation of trauma), before we could expect them to drive home and continue living in this world which has new light—or rather darkness—shed on it. So we assembled a team of Center Theatre Group staff members, and started thinking of what that space might look like, and how an honoring could be created.

A former professor of mine, Helene Shulman, and her coauthor Mary Watkins, wrote about these types of spaces in Toward Psychologies of Liberation:

"Entering into these spaces may require more silence than dialogue, a kind of hospitality or empathetic witness for which the primary ritual is presence or touch. Essentially, spaces of recollection are a way of constructing altars or memorials to what has been ruined in the past."

Keeping in mind the power of simplicity and presence, we decided to create that space as folks exit the theatre by offering them LED tea lights to place in the reflection pools outside of the Mark Taper Forum. Night after night, audience members leave this beautifully tragic story and enter the plaza, where hundreds of lights fill the water. It’s a stunning image. Palm outstretched, staff members ask, “Would you like to float a light for remembrance?” and couples, elders, and young people bend down to place them in. When the candle touches the water, it illuminates.

Some people stand at the railing, in solitude, looking out at the lights for quite some time. Some hold hands or stand with another. Some say prayers. Some people have specific family members in mind: “Thank you. I would like to float a light for my uncle. He was in Auschwitz and didn’t survive.”

Certainly, this ritual—this space for commemorating those lost and acknowledging the struggle that still exists today in our world—is a small gesture. But even small gestures and rituals can help us to collectively heal.

Standing by the railing one night after the show, witnessing those around me watching the lights, the ache I felt alone at my desk after that rehearsal wasn’t nearly as strong. A woman nearby said to me, “When I tossed my candle in the water, I watched it light up—I made a wish and then watched the ripples move out and touch the other candles. It gave me hope.” I, too, left the theatre that night with a little more hope.

In the Community: Leimert Park is Excited About Cultural Exchange

Michael Datcher — Mon, 17 Aug 2015 20:36:00 -0700

Through the Looking Glass is the brain-child of playwright and poet Jerry Quickley. The initial iteration of the project was developed while Quickley was in residence at Stanford University. Quickley assigned Stanford students and Alameda County incarcerated youth to write imaginary autobiographies of the “other” group based on what they thought they knew about them. The project’s second phase involved the group members meeting each other, and then writing revised autobiographies. Quickley crafted this raw material into a play, which was then presented as a staged reading. Leimert Park- and Montebello-affiliated residents will go through a very similar process.

The outreach process involved talking to Leimert Park stakeholders and having them recommend people for consideration. We also placed flyers at businesses throughout the area. And, we spent time on the streets speaking with anyone who seemed like residents as they walked through the neighborhood. After reaching out to dozens of people over the last couple of months, the final Leimert Park project participants were selected. Excitement was the common theme that seemed to connect the prospective participants throughout the selection process.

As I made phone calls to alert individuals of their acceptance into the project, I received genuinely emotional responses. One especially moved participant asked me to repeat the exact words I had just told him to his wife. Apparently, they had been talking a great deal about the possibility of him being accepted, so when my call came, he wanted to share his joy—and the excitement of making a difference.

Why Is ‘Bent’ More Relevant Than Ever?

Kacey Wilson — Thu, 13 Aug 2015 20:41:00 -0700

In 1979, when Bent premiered in London, the general public did not know about the thousands of gay men and women who were persecuted by the Nazis during the Holocaust. The play helped illuminate the fate of the 15,000 gay men who were sent to concentration camps and the fact that the pink triangles those men wore had similar meaning to the yellow star worn by Jewish prisoners. But why is Bent important today? What can it teach us about identity at a time when America and Europe have at last embraced gay, lesbian, and a broader range of sexual identities than ever before?

Max, the main character in Bent, is told that the pink triangle is the lowest label he can be assigned as a prisoner. Thinking it’ll help him lead a better life in the concentration camp, he convinces the guards that he is Jewish and wears a yellow star on his uniform instead. Another gay inmate, Horst, tells Max that wearing the yellow star “is a lie,” and that Max “should be proud.”

Rabbi Denise L. Eger, of West Hollywood’s predominantly LGBT Congregation Kol Ami, explained that Horst teaches Max “a great lesson about not hiding in the midst of light or darkness.” Bent, she continued, “teaches all of us, gay and straight alike, to not repress who we are. To be fully human, one must let one’s inner soul shine.” Horst and Bent’s message speaks to Eger personally as well. “I have worked very long and hard to be able to encourage people to embrace both healthy sides of themselves,” she said, “and not compartmentalize their human sexuality from their religious or spiritual traditions.”

D’Lo, a transgender actor, writer, and comedian, said that hiding one’s identity can have unforeseen repercussions . “My wish for the world would be for us to stop hiding our secrets,” he said. When queer and trans people live freely and openly, it “allows more freedom for other people just by witnessing how people can live without shame.” D’Lo said that he and other queer and trans people like himself, “challenge society to see that we are you, and you are us, and it’s OK to not be normal.”

In the Community: Connecting Boyle Heights Residents to ‘Popol Vuh: Heart of Heaven’

Estela Garcia — Fri, 07 Aug 2015 20:46:00 -0700

So, my job was to connect people who work, play, and live in the Boyle Heights community with Popol Vuh: Heart of Heaven. The project set out to introduce participants to theatre, both through on-stage performance and the work that takes place behind the scenes. Phase one was to recruit community members to participate in performance workshops led by El Teatro Producing Artistic Director Kinan Valdez.

Our recruitment strategy was to target places where groups of people with a vested interest in the Boyle Heights community—community leaders and drivers—were already gathered. We also wanted to target people with a proclivity for the arts, as well as people who were already searching for these kinds of activities, even if they didn’t know what they were searching for.

“Drivers” are the people who drive people to community programs, or people who are well connected to the community’s heartbeat. The main driver of Center Theatre Group’s The Shop program has always been Jesus Reyes, the program manager for CTG’s community programs. Jesus lives, works, and plays in Boyle Heights and has a great deal of passion for the community and connections within it. One of his connections is Yolanda Rodriguez, a driver involved in a variety of programs in Boyle Heights and the Eastside who had attended The Shop programs in the past. She handed me her calendar of events and gave me the names and phone numbers of the people setting up these events. We hit gold with Yolanda because her connections turned out to be very fruitful.

Once we found the right people, we had to figure out how to convince them that our project was worth their time and would benefit the community. Below are what became my guiding points as we sought out to engage the community of Boyle Heights, and how we got close to 200 participants at our workshops:

Trust: Let the community’s drivers know who you are and what you are about, and gain their trust. They are community leaders, so their interest is already in the right place. If you are offering something good (and free), chances are they will be glad to have met you. They want the best for their participants, too!

The Ask: Ask the drivers if you can come and make an announcement at their next event or meeting. Ask for what you need, but do not push, and be respectful of the organization’s needs. Fit yourself into their agenda.

Pitch & Passion: Your pitch at the meetings will be different every time, but it also has to be truthful every time. I listen to the organization and what the people are passionate about, and I try to find a way that their passion intersects with our passion. A liaison not only connects people but connects the dots.

At the core of community-based work is the idea that our stories are connected, and we are one story. Theatre is connected to our everyday life because we tell those stories, and everyone has a story.

Deliver: Make the workshop accessible (in our case, this means all workshops are bilingual, easy to get to, and open to all levels of experience). The content should be fun and not just informative, but relevant to participants’ everyday lives.

My fellow community liaison Tiana and I attended so many events, made so many calls, and connected with so many people, but at the end of the day you never know who is going to walk through the door. We are lucky enough to have exceeded our expectations for the workshops we’ve hosted so far. Not everyone we talked to attended, but those who did were enthusiastic and committed. Many of them brought friends and family along, and we now have a strong group of regulars.

Ultimately, I realized that it’s not about “convincing” people to come, but about getting the word out to the right people and filling a need in the community. It is such a joy to see the work of the people we’ve encouraged to come, and to witness their joy and appreciation in turn. It gives all of the work meaning. So much of getting to know the community is becoming part of the community, and we are having lots of fun doing it.

Read fellow Popol Vuh community liaison Tiana Alvarez’s account of the experience here.

In the Community: Going Home to Make Theatre

Tiana Alvarez — Fri, 07 Aug 2015 20:43:00 -0700

And now I am back. Well, sort of. When Center Theatre Group Associate Artistic Director Diane Rodriguez asked if I would be interested in serving as a community liaison in Boyle Heights for Popol Vuh: Heart of Heaven, CTG’s collaboration with El Teatro Campesino, I was giddy with excitement. I currently reside in Downey, a nice neighborhood, but I missed the sense of belonging, community, and history of Boyle Heights. My years there involved lots of communal dinners, posadas (Christmas festivities), and fruit-swapping (oranges for lemons) with neighbors, as well as the occasional late-night ranchera or bolero jam.

But I was nervous about going back. Why? Because over the years on my visits home, I saw the neighborhood changing—dive cantinas becoming hip bars, grocery stores and other local businesses disappearing to make way for new Metro stations. In other words, gentrifying. I wasn’t sure what I’d find when my compañera/fellow community liaison, Estela Garcia, and I started to engage with the people of Boyle Heights, and get them involved in theatre- and art-making.

But now, a few months into the process, I have spoken with a wide spectrum of community members, from the working-class gente and immigrant women who organize other parents around social and educational issues to the up-and-coming young artists and the second- and third-generation Boyle Heights residents who are familiar with El Teatro Campesino’s work as an act of social justice. I wanted things to stay the same, kind of frozen in time; it’s that nostalgia thing. But by interacting with all these different people, I’ve realized that Boyle Heights residents are even more empowered and smarter about dealing with change than before, and with their own stories to tell and share.

Through our workshops at locations around Boyle Heights, I’ve shared laughs and joy with all these different kinds of people. Theatre and movement have become one more catalyst that brings our community together. Whether it was laughing about our hidden love for dance with parents at Stevenson Middle School or creating a “high wire” circus act from random objects in one of El Teatro’s workshops, we have all been learning how to transform our own stories and imagination into a creative process or dialogue. For example, in our “high wire” act, we combined our collective memories of the Mexican circo with the Mexican tradition of using found objects and leftover parts to make Rasquache art. We managed to give new life and meaning to everyday items like clothes hangers or the skeleton of an umbrella.

And the lovely thing is that those who have participated get to experience a truly collective practice of art-making! We’ve made the workshops accessible for everyone from kids to grandparents, and you can see in some of the photos here of our May and June workshops at L.A. Legacy and Roosevelt High School how amazing a group we’ve gathered.

Even if some of the workshop participants do not perform in the public staging of Popol Vuh: Heart of Heaven this fall, I hope they will take away the activities and skills they’ve learned. Maybe they’ll use them at a parents’ meeting, or for a school club or student group to raise awareness about an important issue. Perhaps they will be motivated to seek out the theatre, as a practitioner and/or as a spectator. At the very least, they will have experienced theater as something that belongs to them, too, and they will have become part of a rich theatrical tradition.

It’s good to be home again.

Read fellow Popol Vuh community liaison Estela Garcia’s account of the experience here.

Art, Inspiration, and Awkwardness at Your Story Onstage

Juan Silverio — Tue, 04 Aug 2015 01:32:00 -0700

I invited my friend Mary because I know she’s a bit of a theatre geek. We entered the theatre, and I looked at the set and saw an arrangement that looked like a band in a garage, walls decorated in “DYKE” posters and stickers, and twinkly Christmas lights hanging from the ceiling. Excitement washed over me, but I kept in mind the things our facilitator, who had prepped everyone in the rehearsal room upstairs before the show, told us to look out for: New Year’s, art, and love.

The workshops, the writings, the set, the actors—everything about Your Story Onstage elicited a desire to narrate my stories through writing and visual arts.

Around the middle of the performance, the two main characters, Will and Mike, are hanging out, and a man yells, “faggots!” I jumped out of my seat when I heard that. I felt as though all three of our bodies were paralyzed. The characters and the plot felt relatable to me throughout the show, but the connection felt the strongest during this moment.

I loved Girlfriend! The awkwardness between lines and characters was so PERFECTLY AWKWARD that I couldn’t stop smiling. The moment in which Will rolls his sweater up to make himself look like a nun and sings KILLED me, and brought me back to LIFE! When (SPOILER ALERT!) Mike kisses Will after he tells him he doesn’t care what his friends think, EVERY cell in me SQUEALED like an adolescent at a favorite band’s concert.

My favorite part of the post-performance workshops was the creative writing prompts. I had fun writing mine, but I really enjoyed hearing pieces from my peers. I felt a great sense of inspiration and appreciation from being in a room full of writers and artists.

This entire event hit EVERY nerve in me, both creative and personal. I was inspired from seeing the vulnerable, beautiful, and powerful art of Girlfriend. The workshops, the writings, the set, the actors—everything about Your Story Onstage elicited a desire to narrate my stories through writing and visual arts. I definitely look forward to seeing how my life experiences shape my creativity, as well as the art of others!

We asked two of the students who participated in our Your Story Onstage event on July 18, 2015 to tell us about their experience. Read the other student’s story here.

Writing My Own Story at Your Story Onstage

Chelsea Barker — Tue, 04 Aug 2015 01:26:00 -0700

Story Onstage student event, which consisted of a performance of the rock musical Girlfriend followed by workshops on how to incorporate our personal narratives and creative expression in our art.

I left this workshop feeling for the first time in my life that I had a right and obligation to write, and for no one else but myself.

Playwright Ricardo A. Bracho and social and racial justice educator Evolve Benton, also known as Emotions The Poet, led the workshops. Their focus was not only on just getting us to write, but to determine the where, when, and the people behind our stories. It did not matter if what we wrote was true, if it was the most spectacular thing we had ever written, or even if we liked it. We had just five minutes to respond to prompts like, “Write to yourself 10 years from now,” “Take a line from the musical and start a poem,” or my favorite, “Write a love letter to your favorite letter in the alphabet.” Each person, regardless of what state the piece was in, wrote something beautiful, interesting, or thought-provoking, even if it was a love letter to the letter “E.”

The workshops complemented what Todd Almond, who wrote the book for Girlfriend, discussed after the show in the talk-back. As Almond was answering questions from the audience about his writing process and his inspiration for the piece, he explained that Girlfriend started with him thinking about what has happened in his life over the past 10 years. His inspiration was not so much about finding something to write, he said, but about thinking back on his experience as one of the only openly gay teens in Nebraska during the 1990s. Almond said, “Wherever you go, there you are.” As simple as this statement seems, I began to feel as if there was more to it. Yes, if I am somewhere, I am there, but that is not the end of my story. As another cliché goes, life is about the journey, not the destination. The journey is made up of the places you go, the people you meet, the relationships you form, and the moments you experience. The journey is a mix of the ever-changing and the fixed, the planned and spontaneous, the passive and the active.

I used to think that in order to write, you had to already have a story—something exciting or incredible you have done or seen. I have been blessed to have had a pretty sheltered life. I haven’t had to deal with much adversity. I have never had to worry about where my next meal came from, and I have never been in a life-threatening situation. I’m grateful for all this, and for the values bestowed on me by my parents and Catholic school education. Both stressed the importance of being not only a good person, but a good citizen, which involved learning to place myself in others’ shoes—treating thy neighbor as thou wishes to be treated. Before my experience at Your Story Onstage, I asked myself, “Why would I write if I have nothing particularly moving to share? Who would want to hear the inconsequential struggles of little ol’ me?” I did not write because I felt as if my life story was not worth the time and effort. I did not think that anyone would want to be placed in my shoes.

I left this workshop feeling for the first time in my life that I had a right and obligation to write, and for no one else but myself. Whether it is fact or fiction, I see now how powerful and necessary it is to put one’s thoughts on paper. I see that anyone and everyone should sit down and take the time to write without judgment. I have found a new appreciation for not only myself as a writer, but for other writers, whether published, aspiring, or just scribbling in a notebook. If I left the Kirk Douglas Theatre with one concluding thought, it was that even though everyone has a story, you are the only one who can tell yours.

We asked two of the students who participated in our Your Story Onstage event on July 18, 2015 to tell us about their experience. Read the other student’s story here.