E. T. W. Combatting Common Sense: An Anthology of Scripts
INTRODUCTION: COMMON SENSE AND DEAD METAPHORS IN THE ENVIRONMENTAL THEATRE WORKSHOP Tentative Conclusions written originally for participants in the Hamilton Ecoresearch Project by Stephen Johnson
Introductory Anecdote: Early in the history of ETW, we organized a van tour of Hamilton Harbour, as a performance workshop. As participants entered the van, they were each given a sheet of paper with basic information for a character and a situation that would be site-specific–a resident of the area next to the steel mill, an owner, a fisherman, and so on–and as we arrived at each location, the appropriate participant was to give an improvised talk, and answer questions based on their fact sheet. It’s a simple workshop, that might work to create ideas for later use–and make the tour more interesting. As often happens in interdisciplinary events early in their history, all the participants were actors, except for one woman, who sat in the back of the van, quiet and clearly nervous from the moment we gave her a sheet of paper and told her she would be performing later. Again, as often happens. Late in the tour, we arrived at an old graveyard, the site of a cholera epidemic in the 1830s, the result of poor sanitation. We walked into the centre of the graveyard, and just as we wondered who was supposed to speak at that location, this young woman rushed up to us and asked if we’d seen her husband. She was quite distraught, clearly shaken, out of breath, distracted. She proceeded to beg us to help her find her husband, who had disappeared some time before while helping to bury the dead from cholera, who were dropped at the entrance to the graveyard and abandoned. She was afraid he’d died, she was desperate.She continued.
And we were mesmerized. For some time, I was completely out of my world and into that other, frightening place. This was certainly–and acknowledged by everyone to be–the best performance of this tour, and in effect accomplished what we all wish we could do as actors. Move us, change our minds about a time and place, make us think. The participant, Tanya Burgar-Suligoj, was a graduate student at the university, in the Genetics program. She had never acted, but had joined us because she believed in the interdisciplinary nature of the project. She had a passion for the cause that made her give a powerful performance, in that moment. She remained involved with ETW throughout its life, and her example served us well. That monologue–altered somewhat and, of course, without the immediacy of her emotion and spontaneity–is in this anthology as ‘Lillian: the cholera epidemic.’ What follows is an introduction to some of the texts produced by ETW for the McMaster Ecoresearch Project–that is, it is not a conclusion, though the project has ended. You will find what follows, out of necessity, tentative and disjointed. It is the nature of such experiments.
Communication:
The first question you will have is, "Why theatre?" in the midst of an interdisciplinary–but primarily Science/Social Science–project on the environment. The answer is, because all non-written communication is performance. Any lecture-demonstration, any sermon, any video documentary (even), involves a performer and an audience. The performer constructs a persona/character and, most likely, prepares a script or a scenario. The performer rehearses, and then performs. Any performer prepares for an imagined target audience, and alters the performance as the relationship with the audience develops. This is no secret. Any lecture–the seminar series run during the course of this project included–will bear this out.
Theatre is a species of the genus Performance. It is the species that foregrounds, or exposes the workings of the genus. It acts as microcosm. A theatrical production is, for the most part, about the performances that we give in the wider world. For that reason, theatre can be about how we communicate; and it can be a tool for better, more effective communication. It doesn't have to be, of course; this paper isn't about Cats, although I'm sure there's an environmental message in there somewhere. Interdisciplinarity and Communication:
The Ecoresearch Project is interdisciplinary. Interdisciplinarity is all about the communication between organized groups that speak, if not different languages, then at least different dialects. Again, we only have to go to the Friday seminars of this project to see how this works itself out in practice. The language of the discipline must be altered; a translation must be made so that those not initiated into the historical and intellectual context--the culture--of the discipline can still understand what is being said.
How is this accomplished? In my experience, by several means. By longer, fuller explanations of basic ideas. By an avoidance of specialized language. But there are more extreme ways: in particular, by the use of visual and verbal metaphors to relate the specialized knowledge to the world of the unspecialized (as, for example, when someone shows me three kinds of cat-tail and compares them to three kinds of wiener).
Why do we go to such lengths to communicate? We do this because, as a speaker, we want other minds to think the way our mind thinks--we want to change the minds of other people. As an audience, we want to learn what is happening in this other discipline because we want to change the way we perceive the world (I cannot now go to Coote's Paradise without seeing three different kinds of wiener--I mean, cat-tail).
The "interdisciplinary" intention reaches its boundaries--its most rewarding and most problematic region--in the attempt to communicate with "the general public." This is the vaguely-defined, non-specific target audience that does not speak any specialized dialect of scientific English. This is the most rewarding audience to reach, because it is ultimately how people with special knowledge change the world--by changing the minds and habits of this non-specific audience.
On the other hand, the main complaint levied against interdisciplinary studies is that it waters down--simplifies--the discipline. By this argument, the common ground between any two specialist world views, technologies, and methodologies, is either two small or too vague to be of great value. Such activity loses focus, precision, claims to authority--and power. The distance between the language/world-view of the specialist and the language/world-view of the layperson only accentuates this potential problem.
I emphasize this problem because I believe anyone reading the scripts included here will raise that issue. "But it's so simple," you will say. I hope that by taking a look at this case of interdisciplinary communication--the "case" of ETW--we all might learn something about this process of simplification. Common Sense and Dead Metaphors:
One of the basic means by which we communicate is metaphor: that is, the identification of similarity in difference. It helps to define and describe the world: "Richard is a lion" is a lie, but it helps to define and describe Richard.
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that there are two kinds of metaphor--living and dead. Dead metaphors are those we use without knowing, unconsciously. Living metaphors are those we think about--the arresting, disruptive metaphors that change our thoughts, allow us to understand a scientific principle--and, not coincidentally, the kind we find in a good poem ("while the evening is spread out against the sky, like a patient etherized upon a table"--not what usually pops into our minds as we look up).
Metaphors help to shape our world-view. When they cease to be recognizable to us as metaphors, they become unconscious patterns of thought. We assume a great deal about the world without being conscious of it. We put our garbage out and it disappears. We flush our toilets, and it all goes away. The clock moves, and it never occurs to us that the clock is a man-made measuring device, and not time itself. This constitutes common sense (the way the anthropologist Clifford Geertz writes about it in his book Local Knowledge): it is what we assume without thinking. These assumptions are also reinforced by metaphors. To realize how long-lived a metaphoric habit can last, try saying, "Our position on the earth revolved into sight of the sun at 7:08am this morning", instead of "The sun rose at...." The sun didn't rise, and we all know it; but the habit remains. This may seem a very simple-minded example. But consider that I know I should compost, reduce, reuse, recycle, carpool, etc, etc, etc--and yet it is not yet a habit of life. Other habits formed early in my life run strongly to the contrary. These are simple matters to change; but I never knew where my garbage went until one mind-bending, nightmarish trip to the dump as an adult. And I never thought about it. There was nothing there to make me think about it. Such unrecognized habits are all "dead metaphors."
In order to communicate new information and a new world-view to a group that is not "like-minded", you must disrupt its "common sense" through the aggressive use of "living metaphors"--aggressive, eye-opening metaphors. Lecturing Using Metaphor:
When I watch lecturers trying to communicate to a general audience, I can identify the use of three metaphoric tools (there are, no doubt, many more):
They visualize (perhaps schematize is the better word): this is a picture of an atom, a molecule, a process, and so on.
They humanize (or anthropomorphize): a cancerous cell is "an ambitious bad actor".
They analogize: the amount of oil dumped down the sewers from automobile crank-cases adds up to so many oil tankers; cat-tails are like wieners.
It is only one small step from these to the world of the theatre. The recent seminar on cat-tails included a staged interview, by the lecturer, with herself on video. This exposed the fact that she was giving a performance, and playing a character. It disrupted the audience's expectations by dividing her character into two parts. It identified (metaphorically) herself with a reporter in a nature documentary (not The Nature of Things, surely), and emphasized the technical information she was giving. It was good theatre; it addressed the problem of communication, and tried to resolve it through role-playing.
There are more obvious examples of the use of metaphor. Laidlaw's Earth Academy sends volunteers into schools to teach children about the environment. One volunteer wears a dress made out of tin cans. Another uses a map with garbage velcroed all over it. These are visual metaphors for conservation and for pollution. They disrupt the audience's world view by their artificiality. In another part of the world--New York City--the puppeteer Paul Zaloom tells an entire story, set in an industrial park, using puppets made entirely of the garbage we would find in that setting. Of course it is part of his point that the garbage is villainous, and can take over, destroy. His point is made by anthropomorphizing the garbage (as a metaphor: The garbage is a living monster). The point is also made by its very artificiality. If it looked like our preconception of "a puppet", the point would be lost. The Monologues--The Character as Metaphor:
The most simple--and easily missed--metaphor of all is the actor playing a character. The performer is "this historical character", and is not; the performer is in the past, and is not. The actor is "a turtle", and is human. By playing a role--any role--a performer creates a connection between him/herself and the role, that constitutes a metaphoric identification. If we as an audience forget about the performer and lose ourselves in the character, of course, then the metaphor is invisible--dead. Realistic theatre aims for that. But, at least by some theatrical theory, this kind of theatre isn't very good for changing minds, or disrupting our "common sense". Only if the audience can connect the performer with the role can minds be changed.
I would ask you to remember that as you look at these simple scripts. Sitting on the page, they are dead metaphors--or nearly dead. Their effectiveness depends in large measure on the actor's performance. The actors disrupt the audience's assumptions by, for example, playing more than one role, or playing the role in an extreme fashion.
The Monologues created by ETW's 1994 summer company are a good case in point. At first glance, no doubt you'll find entertainment and information. The historical "North Shore" monologues offer a sense of the history of humanity in its local environment. The contemporary "South Shore" monologues offer the extremes of humanity's relationship with its environment. No strain there; decent, useful theatre, but they do not seem to fit the metaphoric disruption I have just argued for.
For example, the monologue of Lillian, who has lost her husband to cholera, is quite straightforward. It is certainly possible to lose the actress in the role. But consider the context: you are standing in Cootes Paradise at dusk, in 1994; she is talking about death and diseased water in the past as you stand beside water in the present; you have already seen this actress play Mrs. Simcoe, so you're not completely fooled; and you can probably hear traffic somewhere close by. It is a subtle notion, but I would propose to you that the actor, if successful, has changed your mind by identifying the past with the present physical setting. That historical sense, however basic it seems, is by no means typical of our "common sense". We do not assume a history to the water at our feet. "The Home Show"/"Perfect Paradise"--Sympathetic Anthropomorphism:
So often in workshopping any performance, ETW anthropomorphized--made human--the nature we meant to explain and defend. This should come as no surprise, since the only world-view ("common sense") we know is based on egocentric, human perceptions. This seems reasonable. So, too, does the use of such tools as the creation of animal characters. By humanizing animals--human actors playing animals does that quite well--we build sympathy for them. We feel what they feel, and so we have a vested interest in not hurting them.
This is a reasonable lesson for an environmentalist to teach--and an old one. For "The Home Show": we all need a home, and so we should share "the commons". For "Perfect Paradise": we all have very narrow views of what an environment is, and what its needs are; not surprisingly, they coincide with our needs; it is a revelation to find that the needs of others must be met as well. These are not simple concepts, although they are simply presented using a strong, living metaphor.
Likewise, workshops often tended toward the satiric when playing animals. This is an ancient and venerable form, common to caricature and the political cartoon. It is a natural tendency when actors build non-human characters that they will find the human "type" in the animal "type" and play the similarity for all it's worth. If sympathy is achieved by seeing what's human in the animal, satire is achieved by seeing what's "animal" in the human. The two tend to go together, as I think you will find. "The Home Show" and "Perfect Paradise" lean toward the sympathetic, but have some satire; "James Pond" and "Inspector Fish" lean toward the satiric, but not without sympathy. They both make their environmental points; the tone of voice is different. The Problem of Anthropocentrism:
If you browse through the pages of the journal Environmental Ethics, you will find that one line of discussion focuses on the "problem" of anthropocentrism. It is a problem, says this line of enquiry, because all morality is centered on the needs of the human animal. Despite the expenditure of much thought, ink and paper, no one has yet created a "non-anthropocentric" ethical system--at least, not one that might become the "common sense" of the general population. If this is a problem--and that is beyond the scope of this letter--it is a problem well-illustrated by ETW's work. It is human-biased because it must be. The identification of humanity and the rest of nature through the person of the actor subscribes to this anthropocentric view of the world. It should, then, be possible to explore just that problem, in all its complexity, through theatre. That's a hope for the future. "Kill Water"/Sound&Movement– Ritual and the Creation of New Habits:
After a volunteer planting program at a Prairie Restoration site in the midwest, a folk band plays and the participants are invited to "dance the seeds into the ground." At another site, a marriage takes place. In Eramosa, Ontario, a "community play" tells the story of the loss of land to Toronto real estate speculators; it is told to a large audience in an abandoned quarry. In a variety of locations across America, the Bread and Puppet Theatre creates public rituals inspired by local events; they are site-specific. These are manifestations, ranging from the experimental theatre to the work of ecologists, that point to a need for ritual.
A word about ritual. The key word in its definition, and distinction from theatre--to which it is related--is "efficacy". Simply put, historically, ritual was a performative act that actually changed the natural world. In primitive religions, the performance of a ritual healed the sick. In Christianity (depending on the denomination), the ritual act of communion changes the bread and wine into body and blood--not figuratively, but physically. Ritual has a powerful hold over the human mind; we and it are inseparable. It also has a good deal to do with our relationship to the environment, since its roots lie in the effort to control/appease that environment. If I do this, the world will do that.
Another word about ritual. There is a strong remnant of it in the varieties of culture we refer to as "folk". Even if these non-urban cultures don't quite subscribe to the efficacy of ritual, the habits of superstition, and wisdom, and song and dance constitute a legacy of that tradition. When any folk culture performs a song/dance that follows the rhythms and movements of their work, they are tapping into a ritual aspect of their lives. Their song and dance may not change nature, but the work in the field it formalizes and reinforces does. We may not see anything spiritual in it; but that may be our own contemporary failing. The use of ritual traditions reinforces the roots of the community, the habits of life, the skills and capacity to work together that allow the community to exist. In this sense ritual is spiritual, and also eminently practical.
When I mentioned to one scientist the case of the "dancing of the seeds", he quite rightly--poignantly--asked, "Isn't the work enough?" That is, isn't the knowledge that this small piece of the environment will be better for my work, enough? That's a good question. I believe the answer is no. The dance following isn't a reward for hard work finished. It's a ritual that reinforces the power of work to change the landscape, and the power of the community to change its relationship with the land.
All right--"potentially." That's the way the theory goes, at least. Ritual has made a strong comeback in the world of experimental theatre. In particular, dance movement taps into the world of ritual dance and the group character that defines much of primitive ritual.
As it happens, some of the improvisational games and rehearsal techniques used in the preparation of our performances has been influenced by this kind of theatre. Although you may find this a stretch, I would like you to read the description of "Kill Water!" (it cannot be a "script") as if it were a ritual. What does it teach about the environment? Does it teach differently than the other pieces in this anthology? What does it teach to try to create an "personification" of "smog" or "water"? We have not tapped ritual as an aid to communication as much as we might have. We haven't had time.