In 1971 after taking a five
year break from improvisation, David Shepherd (co-creator of Compass with Paul
Sills, and the Improvisation Olympics with Howard Jerome) formed Community
Makers in New York City.
The organization was set up to correct ailing communities by using
improvisation as a people’s theatre. This article was originally published in
Dramatics Magazine, December, 1971.
COMMUNITY MAKERS: RESPONSIVE THEATRE
By David Shepherd
Suppose that the third reel
of a film was destroyed accidentally in the projection room. The whole show
would be cancelled, naturally.
Suppose for a moment that the
Living Theatre is late for a performance (or any other touring company).
Imagine that their bus breaks down in a snow storm. It’s 9:30 on a Saturday
night. There are 500 customers waiting in the theatre and in bars along Main Street. Is the
show cancelled?
What’s to prevent some of
these 500 from putting on their own show?
This is a question that I’ve
been struggling to answer over the past year. Put it this way: What prevents
people from creating their own entertainment IN THEIR OWN HOMES?
Is the answer lack of
leadership or inability to communicate? Ignorance of one’s own roleplaying
potential? Unwillingness to draw attention to real concerns? Or are we living
in a basically passive society, where most people are not willing to exchange
canned entertainment they could create, or the sports they could play?
Of course during blizzards or
celebrations, people do try and do succeed in creating entertainment – through
jokes, dancing, charades, discussion and debate. People do go somewhere – so
that the very change of setting is a kind of entertainment. For instance, they
go from their living room to a bar, or to Coney Island,
or to the park.
But the living room
entertainment that I’m talking about doesn’t require a taxi or a beach buggy or
even a stroll down the block. This kind of “organic” entertainment makes it
possible for you to go on a trip without moving from the room where you are
together with your group.
I’m talking about a way of
making conversation part of a performance. And making conversation as easy as
just talking to someone at a party.
This, it seems to me, is one
possible theatre of the future – an activity that people can do in their homes
just as easily as they play Monopoly or plan a dinner party or put on charades.
I call this activity
“Responsive Theatre” because this name encourages an idea of theatre that
responds and that is relevant to what people feel at any one moment. To go back to the 500 people waiting for a
touring company in a snow storm on Saturday night, Responsive Theatre would
reflect how they felt about the snow storm, the disappointment of no “pro”
show, the fact that it is Saturday night – time to improvise.
Responsive Theatre would be
100 percent improvised, a way of presenting the collective talent of the
audience to itself – without rehearsal. A way to explore the concerns of the
audience. A way to satisfy its needs.
Let me sketch the rough
design. I’ve discovered by creating “responsive settings” over the past nine
months – in homes, discotheques, churches, classrooms and auditoriums.
My design begins at the door
to the Responsive Setting. Instead of being met by an usher or Maitre D, the
participant is met by a player. The participant can also be given the
opportunity to choose – let’s say between soft lighting and bright lighting, or
between rock-and-roll and country music. He becomes involved in his own
entertainment at the door. (If the normally passive player makes a choice, he’s
entering a program that may lead him directly into the playing area by the end
of the evening.)
Next the players helps the
participant discover other options: to drink wine or soda, to eat sandwiches or
potato chips, to dance or watch others dance, to write suggestions for scenes
on the walls or fill out “order cards,” to join a political discussion or
simply sit with any group that has an empty seat at its table. The player is
responsive to whatever the participant needs.
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| Two audience members on the dance floor at a disco play out a wild party. |
Direction signal cards are
passed out among the participants or the direction signals are posted
prominently on the walls. Sample signals would be: FREEZE! …. Stops the action,
REPLAY, FEEL IT! LOUDER! TURN OFF THE SOUND, FORWARD IN TIME, BACKWARD IN TIME,
SWITCH SETTING, GET TO THE POINT!, APPLAUSE…..ends the action.
There are three or four ways
by which the participant now becomes responsive himself – thereby shaping the
entertainment he will get: he can vote for themes, characters or confrontations
that he wants to see enacted; he can learn how to direct an improvisation by
trying out signals on players sitting at his table; he can prepare to join the
roleplay himself by entering into “responsive games” with the players; finally,
he can change the roles of the evening – assuming he’s not a new-comer and
knows what he’s doing: for instance, he can suggest some signals be used and
others discarded.
Let me give an example now of
how this works in practice. At last night’s performance of Responsive Theatre
in Manhattan, the suggestion “Attica”
was given. “The parents of a prisoner” and “the wife of a hostage” were asked
for. Time: “Just before Governor Rockefeller makes his decision not to
intervene in the prison riot.”
We were playing with about
eight signals, which were visible to everyone watching. As the improvisation
started a regular customer became disappointed. She felt that the players were floundering
in sentiment and that the audience was embarrassed for them. She directed the
improvisation to jump forward in time to after the Governor’s decision. She
then asked for a change in roles.
Now “SWITCH ROLES” is not one
of the signals we encourage. It’s enough for a player to switch setting or time
without switching his role.
“Switch roles!” the viewer
called out. “The father of the prisoner is now Governor Rockefeller, and you
two girls are his aides. You’re trying to decide whether to intervene or not.”
We “responsive players” do
not like this kind of suggestion, as a rule. We prefer a viewer use just one
signal, and select that signal from a list of permissible signals. Here was a
viewer coming on with the authority of a Tyrone Guthrie. She was changing the
rules of Responsive Theatre. She was asking us to be more responsive than we
wanted to be. But we did respond. Rudy, our black player, played the Governor,
with two white aides, Penny and Diana.
(It is this tension between
players, viewers and dramatic content that makes an evening of Responsive
Theatre fizzle, burn, or blast-off. Some customers and players maintain that
the “bad” nights are the most interesting.)
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| At the Manhattan Theatre Club Cabaret. Members of the audience (left) move into a scenario about "turning on." David Shepherd, center. |
“Switch roles!” the same lady
soon called out again. “You are now Mayor Lindsey with his staff.” For a
minute, it seemed we were channel-hopping during the 6:00 news of September 13,
1971. Then our energy hit a peak, the audience applauded, and Attica
as a theme-for-the-night passed from the concerns of the audience.
A successful Responsive
Theatre episode need not be complicated. Acting on the participants’
suggestions, the players can move directly toward uncovering the basic
emotional and ideological content of our daily lives. The results are often
quite simple and yet quite imaginative. I asked Penny Kurtz, one of our
players, to describe a typical experience in a responsive situation, and her
answer was a telling evocation of this aspect of our improvisations.
“I remember my first
experience with Responsive Theatre. We were given the suggestion of an elevator
with two people – a man and a woman. I volunteered. Suddenly I find myself
entering a small elevator, with a suspicious gentleman following me in. The
door is still open. He stares at me, and I return his gaze. My mind flashes
“Don’t push your floor button til after he does.” We stand motionless for
several moments.
“We exchange some small talk.
Finally he pushes his button: third floor. My floor. I smile. He smiles. The
door closes. Maybe he isn’t following me after all.
“Freeze! You go out together
for coffee.”
“We sit, talk, relax and
discover that we’re both very lonely and afraid. Ronald (as I learn to call
him) has been afraid of women all his life. He’s been seeing a psychiatrist. I
want to help him. I take his hand. I think I’m going to fall in love.”
“Applause!.....and the scene
ends.” Sometimes we’re asked to jump from century to century, switching roles
and settings at the same time, as we chase after the theme of women’s
liberation, or pollution, or child raising. It becomes impossible to respond.
So we must set guidelines.
The “entertainment order”
that we work from has to be stage worthy; just as a candy store cannot serve a
steak platter, so we cannot stage a suggestion like a “bar with a horse and a
goldfish talking about acupuncture in the year 1492.”
If we don’t have the skills
or knowledge to handle a suggestion, then we ask the person who gave that
suggestion to help us; this works best when there are two trained players for
every amateur.
If we simply don’t like a
suggestion because we did it last night or because we find it banal, or because
we think it’s in bad taste, then we warn the audience that at the risk of
boredom, they must take responsibility for directing their own suggestion.
Sometimes the audience
accepts this responsibility. Sometimes it does not. Sometimes the players
respond to the collective direction of the audience. Sometimes for various
reasons, they do not. This is precisely the challenge of Responsive Theatre.
Let me go back to my own original question: WHAT PREVENTS PEOPLE FROM CREATING
THEIR OWN ENTERTAINMENT?
1)
LEADERSHIP. Our
culture, or at least the Anglo-Saxon culture, dictates that you take certain
steps before you dare perform. You have to prove your competence at a skill.
For instance, instead of humming and beating on a table with your fingers, you
must go first to music school. Instead of horsing around with some friends, you
must first go to drama school. In America most of the arts are run by
professionals, and those who participate pay the bill demand professional
leadership.
However, if improvisation can
be entered just as you enter a game like charades, then the professional can
serve not as the leader but as a technical assistant. In fact, the whole
activity of creating an improvised statement in your home can be stimulated and
guided by an inexpensive game plus aids like a phonograph record to show you
how other groups did it. The game will identify and support leaders.
We are about to make this
possible through Responsive Theatre.
2)
IGNORANCE OF
ONE’S OWN ROLEPLAYING POTENTIAL. People have no idea how interesting they are.
Find two housewives or two businessmen conversing in the corner of the theatre,
and turn a spotlight on them. Their first impulse is to say nothing. Their
second is to say something funny.
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| Players act out the suggestions of residents at the Coronet Nursing Home in Brooklyn. |
In
an improvisational theatre people are convinced that whenever they participate,
they must be funny. We are trying to break down this myth, so that the
spectator can accept his own identity and worth – so that he no longer thinks
of himself as low man on the talent pole.
3)
UNWILLINGNESS TO
DRAW ATTENTION TO REAL CONCERNS. Just as giving a suggestion in no way
guarantees that the players can stage it, so getting a suggestion in no way
guarantees that the spectator is telling you what he really wants to see. The
spectator is often so unused to participating in theatre that he immediately
challenges the player – dares him to do something absurd or obscene.
We
get endless suggestions for scenes in men’s rooms, men’s rooms in the White
House, President Nixon and Vice President Agnew.
Our
only way to break through is to go on playing – until the spectator becomes
bored with his own self-conscious sallies. We set up workshops at which key
members of the audience learn to do what we do. We keep asking for suggestions
that can serve to mirror and explore our life together.
It
will all become clearer when we begin to use videotape and other media at our
base – the Responsive Scene on the street floor of the Manhattan Theatre Club.
There we hope to discover how anyone can as a member make not only his own live
theatre, but also his own filmed theatre, poetry, songs, music, lightshows,
murals or even novels.
There
we hope to go on training young producers how to start theatres responsive to
the community. There we hope to train both our staff and many dozens of our
regular patrons how to be more and more sensitive and responsive to what really
concerns viewers – as a group.
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| Queens House of Detention. Inmates asked to see a scene about a Prison Doctor and an Inmate. |
And
when we’re through, sometime a long time from now, people will ask “how can
theatre express the most personal feelings of any individual in the audience?”
Or:
“How can a group cut the time gap between when they conceive and when they
produce a full-scale responsive production – for the public?”
For
ourselves, we are satisfied to be working to start more Responsive Scenes for a
more responsive society, today.
Michael Golding is a writer, director and improv
teacher. He can be contacted for
workshops, festivals and private consultations at migaluch@yahoo.com. Michael participated in the evolution of the
Improv Olympics & Canadian Improv Games. Artistic director of the Comic
Strip Improv Group in N.Y. & created the Insight Theatre Company for
Planned Parenthood, Ottawa. He is a faculty member at El Camino College
in Los Angeles,
working with at-risk teens and traditional students. He wrote and co-produced
the documentary "David Shepherd: A Lifetime of Improvisational
Theatre" (available for free on YouTube).
His book, Listen Harder, a collection of essays, curriculum and
memorabilia on improvisation and educational theatre, is available on Amazon,
Barnes & Noble and CreateSpace. Michael holds a BFA degree in Drama from
New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts & an MA degree in
Educational Theatre from NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education &
Human Development.
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