Mask Theatre Workshop

From Executive Director Dale Savidge

For 3 hours on December 17, 2011 I was privileged to participate in a theatre workshop with a group of teens and young adults on the autism spectrum in Anderson, IN. Doug Berky (a mask theatre performer) and Andrew Nelson (leader of the Autism Theatre Network) led us through a series of theatre games and mask work. The 8 young men and their teachers entered in with enthusiasm and afterward expressed how much they enjoyed and benefited from the mask theatre exercises.

The young men tried on expressive masks (masks created with an identifiable emotional expression), animal masks and character masks. It was fascinating to observe them enter into these “characters” as they played out scenarios and interviews. Their bodies became animated; their voices ranged widely in volume and inflection. The masks provided the guys a safe space to hide in as well as a way to express themselves.

What’s interesting about this workshop is how the three of us came to share that space with that group of guys on the spectrum. I met Andrew at an autism conference in 2010, when I was just beginning to learn about how theatre works with autism. I’ve known Doug for many years as a solo performer. Andrew came to the 2011 Applied Theatre Conference as a teacher and Doug registered as a student in the autism/theatre track Andrew was teaching, a track I also participated in.

After the 2011 conference Doug and Andrew started talking about how Doug’s masks might contribute to theatre therapy and autism, and Andrew started using them in his work in WV. What a happy collaboration of a professional theatre artist and an autism expert! This kind of synergy is exactly what we hope for in the Applied Theatre Center and in our conferences.  Since the 2011 conference participants have taken what they learned and placed that training in service to other people in their communities.

I’m convinced there are many other ways theatre can be applied to the needs of individuals and communities, and we’ve only just started exploring collaborations such as Doug and Andrew’s. It’s one of my dreams for the ATC – a place where people network, connect and create together new ways of applying theatre.

Lear Debessonet’s Odyssey and some thoughts on aesthetics in applied theatre

From ATC Executive Director Dale Savidge

I was privileged to experience a new community-based adaptation of the Odyssey, the epic poem by the Greek poet Homer which dates from the 8^th century BC. You won’t find the author mentioned in the playbill because this is a reimagining of that classic work, one of the earliest extant works of Western literature.  It has been brought alive in modern day southern California by the auteur-director Lear Debessonet and her collaborator Todd Almond and was performed from September 30-October 2, 2011 at the Old Globe in San Diego.

Lear is the director of Stillpoint Productions, whose mission statement reads:

Stillpoint Productions is a New York-based collective that creates multidisciplinary performances fueled by the collision of historical fact and contemporary imagination. Stillpoint's plays draw from eclectic source materials to open up resonant questions specific to this human moment. Combining the rhythmic and visual virtuosity of film, the raw expressiveness of dance, the rough storytelling of clowning, the relevance and humor of NPR, and the extra-ordinariness of church, Stillpoint aims to maximize, challenge, and reinvigorate theatre.

I’d known of Lear’s work in NY and especially her site-specific adaptation of Don Quixote with the Broad Street Ministry in Philadelphia, but only from a distance. I knew that she was working at the intersection of art and community, and that her work was embedded in the communities where she created it. For two years she had been interviewing people in San Diego about their lives, how they came to live in this place, and what it meant to be a member of the community. The result was The Odyssey: A Music Theatre Event.

Much has been written about the relationship between applied theatre and aesthetics. It is generally conceded that when the purpose of theatre shifts from art or entertainment to process-based experiences intended to meet human needs that the level of quality will decrease – and that it’s okay because the purpose isn’t to win an award or receive a great review. (I’ve been wondering if the criteria for awards and reviews aren’t skewed to begin with, but that’s another article.) I’m more of a “yes, and” person rather than a “no, but” person and my feeling has been that we should not concede aesthetics when our focus is on the value of the process, even when the process is applied to people who lack the training, experience or ability to create what we commonly call “good theatre.” Maybe we need a new definition of theatre aesthetics?

The Odyssey was a step forward in my thinking, because here was an artistically challenging work (akin to Lee Breuer’s Gospel at Colonus) which engaged the community on so many levels I lost count. Here were Broadway-credited performers singing alongside kids from an inner-city YMCA; a gospel choir backing up an urban hip-hop dance company; a high school percussion ensemble following a group of Globe Theatre donors. The blend was effortless, not jarring, because everyone had been united in the telling of an archetypal story with relevance to their shared life in the city of San Diego.

What struck me was that the performance by the Equity professionals was not diminished by their youthful, inexperienced collaborators; rather, the commitment the professionals brought to their parts infected the novices and in a way elevated the whole ensemble. There were no divas in this show, there were no star turns. It appeared to me that a choice had been made to create an ensemble piece, and the community performers were not merely backup singers (or a Greek chorus) but instead were central to the whole experience.  And it appeared to me that the professionals had bought into the deal without any reservations.

It was an instructive experience for me as I’ve struggled to find ways of bringing theatre to amateur or disenfranchised groups of people in Greenville, SC without unthinkingly dismissing quality and aesthetics. Such a dismissal would be an insult to the people I work with, be they students or the homeless or people on the autism spectrum. In fact, accepting high standards of theatre as our collective goal shows them the respect and value they deserve as creative people – and no matter their disability or station in life they remain creative people.

The Odyssey modeled for me how a director can attend to theatre as art and theatre as community celebration and empowerment at the same time. Congratulations to Lear and all those who collaborated with her. Put Stillpoint Productions on your radar and when the opportunity arises be sure to take in one of their productions.

Applied Theatre Center at the Autism Forum

From ATC Executive Director Dale Savidge

It was a pleasure to be a part of the SC Autism Forum on Saturday August 6, 2011 in Greenville SC, representing the Applied Theatre Center. The forum is held every two years and is a networking and resource sharing event for parents and caregivers to people on the autism spectrum. Families, friends, educators and professionals in medicine, social services and the arts participated.



ATC Executive Director Dale Savidge with visitors.

In addition to keynote speakers and workshops, the forum featured an exhibit and resource fair. I learned a lot from the speakers but even more from informal conversations with people attending the forum. Caring for someone with autism is a huge commitment and often adds a great deal of stress to the normal pressures of family, work, school and other ordinary life challenges. Through agencies like the SC Autism Society, among many other support groups, people on the spectrum and their families are provided information and encouragement.

Our booth had a steady stream of interested people. What I learned is that people immediately recognize the value of theatre in the care, education and development of people on the spectrum. I have long recognized the potential of theatre to affect personal and social improvement in audiences and participants, but I assumed I had learned that through graduate study, teaching and experience. This recognition, however, goes to the close relationship between theatre and life which Augusto Boal wrote about in Games for Actors and Non Actors: “We are all theatre, even if we don’t make theatre.”

It doesn’t take a college degree or years of theatre experience to see how applied theatre is a rehearsal for reality (a phrase borrowed from Boal). The Applied Theatre Center is developing ways to connect theatre artists with their community in order to place our wonderful art at the service of the people around us – people who are either not able or not inclined to participate in traditional theatre but who, when given the opportunity, willingly engage in applied theatre and benefit from that experience.

And everyone it seems, whether or not they are trained or experienced in theatre, knows this to be true.

Interview with Track Leader Andrew Nelson

From Marketing Director, Katy Beth Cassell -

Andrew Nelson will once again be leading our Theatre and the Autism Spectrum track at the Applied Theatre Conference June 28-30, 2012, in Greenville, SC! Andrew, founder of the Autism Theatre Network (autismtheatre.org), is a Positive Behavior Support Trainer with the West Virginia Autism Training Center at Marshall University where he provides Family Focused Positive Behavior Support and training to parents, teachers, and professionals on a variety of autism-related topics. He is the author of Foundation Role Plays for Autism (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2010) and his work has been noted in American Theatre, The Autism File and Tathaastu: So Be It magazines. Below are a few questions that I asked him, followed by his answers. Get ready to have your interest peaked in Andrew's work!

KBC: What is your background in theatre? How did you get involved in applied theatre?

AN: I studied acting at the University of Minnesota - Duluth. I loved performing and writing, and really enjoyed learning about unique directors like Jerzy Grotowski, Peter Brook, Artaud, Meyerhold and others. I was always a very physical actor and loved studying actors like Ryszard Cieslak of the Polish Laboratory Theatre, actors who seemed to use acting as a tool for spiritual expression and psychological development. During acting school I read about people like J. L. Moreno who were blending theatre and psychology in a very special way. This appealed to me and I knew I wanted to do something similar with my life.

When I started working with individuals with autism, I was given the opportunity to experiment with acting techniques as a means to work on self awareness, confidence, and socialization. This changed everything for me. I instantly realized the power of applied theatre. Parasuram Ramamoorthi from Madurai, India taught me a great deal about the precepts and concepts of applied theatre and I have spent the last 5 years or so trying to develop new concepts and a network for people to share ideas (www.autismtheatre.org).

KBC: What applied theatre projects are you currently working on?

AN: I just returned from Pennsylvania where Cindy Schneider (Acting Antics), Chris Nealy (Autism Society of North Carolina), and I spent 7 days training a group from Hong Kong in autism-theatre techniques. From that experience, the three of us have started a new book project together. Also, I am working with actor, mask-maker, and friend of ATC Doug Berky on a project using a set of emotion masks he created. So far the masks have been used for teacher training and will be used with friends on the spectrum starting this fall. Doug and I met at last years "Applied Theatre and Marginalized Communities" conference sponsored by ATC.

KBC: What will you offer in your track at the conference?

AN: I am working with ATC on ideas for next summer's conference. We hope to share some of the new ideas Cindy, Chris, and I are working on. We are also talking about the idea of actually taking participants out on a field experience to put autism-theatre ideas into action in the community. I talk with people often about the 2011 conference, which was tremendously positive. We still actively participate in a Google Group started by participants during the 2011 conference (see www.autismtheatre.org). The 2012 conference will definitely build on the amazing energy generated last year. I hope to see you there! 


Be sure to check out www.appliedtheatrecenter.org to read about all of the tracks that are planned for the 2012 conference! 

Applied Theatre Beyond Borders

From Executive Director Dale Savidge -

I had the pleasure of working with 15 people in San Juan, Puerto Rico the week of July 10^th in a variety of applied theatre techniques. The purpose of the 3 day workshop was twofold: to teach them a few interactive theatre styles so that they might consider further training and to lead them in the exercises for their own personal benefit.

We did not begin as a homogenous group; 3 of us were from North America and the Puerto Ricans were teachers, counselors, pastors, students, actors, and dancers – some worked multiple jobs. What we did share was a love of theatre and a desire to use theatre in service to people. We were highly motivated and it took very little warm up on the first day to begin relating at a very deep level.

We tried sociodrama, role playing, bibliodrama and forum theatre. We used our own stories and stories from literature. We improvised for fun, and we improvised as a means of exploring psychological and cultural issues. We discovered topics we all cared about and we spent time enacting our explorations through imaging, scene building, forums and role playing. It was an exhilarating few days.

I was impressed by how easily theatre translates across cultures, even languages. Our interpreters were busy on day one (Spanish to English and vice versa), but as we grew accustomed to each other less of the workshop needed to be translated, because I became less verbal and also because we were communicating in ways that did not rely on words. We shared ideas, feelings and Puerto Rican cuisine. We discovered we had more in common than we had initially thought.

These days strengthened my belief in the power of theatre to unify, challenge, and change people. And it wasn’t that we set out to change each other – we each, in our own way, were being changed through our interactions with each other and through the experience of reliving our personal stories. The Applied Theatre Center is committed to extending these experiences to communities which will benefit in similar ways.

Applied Theatre for the First Time

Today's blog is from friend of Marketing Director Katy Beth Cassell and educator Mallory Morris. Mallory is a theatre educator, actress, and director. She served as education resident at Long Wharf Theatre for the 2010-2011 season. She has also taught at Seattle Children's Theatre, South Carolina Children's Theatre, and the Warehouse Theatre. This blog is about her first experience with applied theatre through a workshop she attended led by Tim Webb from Oily Cart, a British theatre company that works entirely with children with disabilities, at the One Theatre World conference. Read how Tim's workshop introduced her to how she can use applied theatre techniques in her teaching.

As I walked in to the “Theatre for Complex Disabilities and the Autism Spectrum” workshop with Tim Webb at One Theatre World this past May, I had no idea what I was in for. I had switched from thinking I could apply this information in my classrooms more easily than baby theatre, to lamenting my choice and pining for the baby theatre workshop instead, to complete skepticism on how I could possibly use techniques for students with Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulties with my students…especially without the budget that the Oily Cart Company has behind them.  In two years of working in various classrooms across the country, I had worked with children with mild autism or Asperger’s Syndrome  but never taught anyone with profound learning disabilities. How was this workshop going to benefit me and my teaching? What had I signed up for?

Tim Webb, a quirky British man, captured my attention and my imagination. He told us that Oily Cart created theatre without a fourth wall—theatre that engaged their audience in a welcoming environment that made them feel safe to explore. As a performer in an Oily Cart production, you look at the audience much more than the audience looks at you, creating a three way dialogue with the students, their carers and the performers. This constant checking in is vital when performing for an audience that does not display the expected behavior, ensuring a feeling of comfort and safety as well as the most engaging experience possible. Perhaps most importantly, Oily Cart shows incorporates all five senses, remembering to go beyond just seeing and hearing. The power of touch becomes incredibly important in Oily Cart productions, primary examples being the use of bubbles or heat in many of their shows. Trampolines, pools and specially designed flying chairs are also wonderful tools for bringing PMLD students out of their shells, providing muscle change and heightened awareness. These physical shifts can spark a mental shift.  

After taking us through several presentations, Tim turned the reins over to us, challenging the workshop participants to create a short piece of theatre that would engage the five senses and use the Oily Cart techniques we had learned about earlier. This segment of the workshop was my favorite part because it enabled me to break open a new set of tools and challenge my own creativity to think beyond regular theatrical practices: I did not have a general audience to entertain, rather I had to design a production for a very specific audience. Some groups re-imagined familiar fairy tales (like The Three Little Pigs that explored each house the pigs built and the experience of being blown down), while others created original pieces (like an outdoor adventure with Mother Nature through the changing seasons). It was certainly a new way of thinking about theatre…and one that excited me for the future.  I had never considered working in applied theatre, and I am still unsure of how supported this type of theatre would be in the United States (Oily Cart is subsidized in large part by the government). If given the opportunity and resources, I would love to create theatre for this particular audience that so clearly benefits from the experience they probably do not receive elsewhere. Just watch clips of audience reactions during an Oily Cart production. They prove the power of theatre over and over again.

Perhaps I would not produce theatre for these special students on the scale that Oily Cart Company did, but I could apply the basic concepts of sensory and experiential theatre to all teaching that I did. Wasn’t engaging my students in theatre the primary goal of my classes? Once my outlook shifted, I realized that yes, this workshop primarily focused on “Theatre for Complex Disabilities and the Autism Spectrum,” but my teaching  could learn something from how these special needs students engaged in theatre.

What are YOU doing?

From Marketing Director, Katy Beth Cassell -
In The New York Times today, there was a great article titled "A Safety Valve for Inmates, the Arts, Fades In California" (There is a link to this article on our Facebook page!) The article discussed the ways in which theatre and theatre organizations, such as the actor Tim Robbins' The Actor's Gang, truly make a difference in the lives of prisoners by sharing their art, sharing their passion, and sharing their time.

This article raised the question in my mind - what are YOU doing? What am I doing to share my art? To take theatre out of the performance hall and into marginalized communities?

My answer - I'm working for the Applied Theatre Center.
I became interested in applied theatre my sophomore year of college. At a state conference in South Carolina, I watched a documentary about a theatrical troupe from Rock Hill, South Carolina, called the Merry Pranksters.The Merry Pranksters are actors and actress with special needs and disabilities. They perform an original production each spring, and each actor and actress learns more than their lines - they learn that they have a unique gift and ability that they can share while developing social skills and confidence. The goal of the Merry Pranksters is to encourage other agencies to explore the use of theatre and drama and its benefits for those with disabilities.

Members of the troupe spoke after the documentary was broadcast and it immediately peaked my interest in the many ways that theatre can impact various communities.

Five years later, I'm still working hard to spread the word about applied theatre and I'm so grateful to have the opportunity to work for the Applied Theatre Center. If you do not know, the Applied Theatre Center was started as a challenge to Executive Director Dale Savidge by a mother of an autistic son. She believed in the potential of theatre to aid her son in his social skills development and asked Dale to explore the possibilities. He, along with many others, quickly became convinced that theatre was a poweful tool in addressing the needs of those on the autism spectrum. His initial research blossomed into that of applied theatre in general because of the many strands connecting the applied theatre disciplines and the commonality of needs across people groups served by applied theatre.

People have needs, and some of those needs may be addressed by various forms of applied theatre. Applied theatre does not lecture people about the solutions to their needs, it engages them in exploring their needs and finding solutions through that exploration. Theatre is alive, and living is a lot like doing theatre. Theatre is a unique experience for living (and reliving) our lives and in that process experiencing growth into our full potential to live productively and happily in the world.

ATC is unique because it offers the only conference of its kind. While there are specific applied theatre conferences, such as those dealing with Playback theatre, improvisation, and Theatre of the Oppressed, the Applied Theatre Center produces a conference that addresses ALL of these in one setting. The ATC conference aims to provide specific training (in discipline tracks) but also allows for interaction between the various AT disciplines.

So, this is what we are doing. If you are asking yourself, "how can I get involved? How can I use my theatre to impact a certain community" or even "how could I bring theatre into the social work that I already do?" I would encourage you to look into our conference, June 28-30, 2012. We are very excited about the track leaders we are bringing in, but we are also excited to add an "applied theatre in action" component and take what we learn into the community of Greenville, SC, at the end of the conference. We will continue to post updates on our website and on this blog, and we all look forward to putting applied theatre in action with you soon.

Playback Theatre

From Executive Director, Dale Savidge -

I attended the North American Playback Theatre Festival in Boston, MA (June 16-19, 2011). Playback Theatre is an interactive form with over 30 years of continual practice in many countries and languages. This particular festival welcomed 32 Playback Theatre companies, and I went to learn about this very popular form of theatre.

What I observed were people passionate about stories, and telling stories. But unlike traditional theatre, which usually starts with a script, the stories they tell are brought by their audience, and through a set of conventions which have been developed over time (and are still in development) they invite an audience member on stage in order to elicit and then “play back” a personal story. Playback Theatre serves the storyteller, the audience member, by placing before them on stage something deeply meaningful to them, their story.

From these common practices Playback branches out into a variety of purposes. It is used in education, rehabilitation, therapy, community building and ministry. The practitioners I met were quite diverse, but unified by a common belief in the power of storytelling and a passionate desire to serve the needs of people with stories – that is, everyone.

Playback places a lot of emphasis on the emotional context of the story. Audience members who volunteer a story are asked often to express how they felt in the moment of the story and how they feel in the moment of the retelling of the story. Playback techniques (such as fluid sculpture, pairs and the playback process itself) have been designed to express emotions very powerfully. The conductors, musicians and actors are highly skilled in improvisational theatre and empathetic identification with the participants.

It is obvious to me that Playback Theatre has a lot to offer people, as do the other forms of interactive theatre we work with in the Applied Theatre Center. I first learned about Playback through the book Improvising Real Life: Personal Story in Playback Theatre, authored by Jo Salas. Jo was instrumental in the founding and developing of Playback Theatre and continues to work in the form as a member of the Hudson River Playback Theatre company. She has trained groups around the world in this form, and in June 2012 she will join our second Applied Theatre conference as the leader of a track in Playback Theatre.

Welcome to the Applied Theatre Center!

Welcome to the blog of the Applied Theatre Center of the Southeast! We hope that you will visit frequently to read about the work that we do, the planning for the 2012 conference, and other applied theatre practitioners across the world! Check out the 2011 conference recap video below, and for more information on us, please visit www.appliedtheatrecenter.org.