“Mark here, will teach
script writing. Julisa will take the directing track. And we have two
performing tracks. Chuck will teach acting, and Kimberly…Kimberly…,” the
sponsor Essam paused and looked to me for help. “She will teach something…something new called Playback.”
This is how the trainers for a Drama Conference in Upper
Egypt were introduced to the 120 participants gathered for 3 ½ days of training
over the leap year weekend in 2008.
As the participants made their choices for which foreign
teacher they would be with for the weekend, they wanted more information. Essam
invited me to explain, to pitch the Playback track. I stood with my interpreter
and addressed a sea of eager faces. This was their first Christian Conference
solely focusing on drama training ever and they wanted to make the right
choice. I did my best to explain.
“From the first time I saw Playback in 2002, I have been
excited about the possibilities of this new form of theatre. It is new, created
in 1975 in USA, but now there is an International Playback Theatre Network, and
there are teams which practice it all over the world. It is simple, beautiful,
inexpensive, and powerful, even when performed by amateurs. It also seems that
it can be all these things in any language or culture. In a lifetime of being a
theatre practitioner, I’ve seen nothing else that makes the most of what
theatre has to offer that is special and different than television and films.
Theatre, you see, is an immediate art form. The live audience is as important to
the success of each show as the actors, play, or any technical element added.
Playback is improvised theatre that takes the fun of improv – like the
television show “Who’s Line is it Anyway?” and gives it depth and purpose
beyond just entertainment. Why? Because the stories, the content of the plays
come from the audience. The audience is part of the creative process. The lives
of ordinary people become the subject of art. In teaching you Playback, I don’t
have to worry about my understanding arabic or the nuances of your beautiful
culture. You already know what is taboo, you already know what is funny. I will
teach you how to improvise it on stage with adaptable rituals we use in
Playback, and you will be ready to perform anywhere and anytime. Come learn playback
with me this weekend and be perhaps the very the first to know it and use it in
North Africa.”
Sixteen brave souls signed up for the Playback track, which,
even after the introduction still felt like a mystery to them. But thankfully
for me, they jumped in with both feet from the very first session; giving
themselves wholeheartedly to the process of learning Playback. My translator
kept remarking about their enthusiasm unhesitating involvement. She said, “I
can’t believe they’re doing this! It’s especially unusual for upper Egyptians,
because they tend to be more reserved and conservative.”
Where to Begin?
Concentration, Observation & Working as a Team
After quick intros in a circle (name/sound/action then
everyone immediately copies), I started with an exercise called Diamond
Ensemble, a variation on the acting “Mirror exercise” where partners
face one another and copy the actions of the leader to the nth degree of
exactness. Diamond Ensemble uses 4 people facing the same direction, 3
following the one in the front. There are 3 simple rules: 1. Go very slowly, 2.
Don’t make any movements in front of your body, 3. Change leadership when the
person in front turns their head more than ¼ turn to the right or left. When
done even moderately well, it can look like a choreographed dance. It forces
the participants to concentrate, forget about themselves, and pay attention to
details. People thought that it was Playback. But I told them that we were just
starting off with some exercises and games that would help them in Playback
later.
What Did You Learn?
We debriefed the Diamond Ensemble; how it felt, & what
they learned. It’s always rewarding to hear people share what the experience
brought to them. I asked them how they felt about worshipping God with their
bodies. I shared with them how important this has been for me. I believe we all
have Spiritual temperaments that long to worship God in more ways than the
typical tradition and ritual, Bible study, or celebration in a congregation
singing worship songs. There are some of us who best worship God and hear from
him by being in nature, or through care giving, or activism – fighting
injustice or a righteous cause, there are others who are drawn to simplicity –
the ascetics, and then there are some like me who best worship and sense God’s
presence through our senses. Through beauty and our body we know his presence
or sense his love. An exercise like Diamond Ensemble can be a profoundly
worshipful experience when we are moving to worship music or meditating on a
passage of Scripture.
For the conference, I’d chosen Isaiah 61:1-4 to be a theme
passage and asked them to read it aloud. Later we would try the Diamond
Ensemble with the phrases of this passage rolling around in our minds, and
sometimes being called out by the leader, or repeated by the group.
But this was all we had time for in our first night
together.
Day Two: More
Exercises to Prepare for Playback
To work on creating pictures, getting comfortable in one
another’s space, and creating depth and levels on stage, we worked on some Sculptures
to go with the themes of Isaiah 61:1-4. In teams I observed them
discussing and planning at length what they would do and started to worry that
they’d ever get to a point this weekend of being able to instantaneously make a
Fluid Sculpture or a Freeze Frame Story without first discussing it. But this
was an important step in the process and they made pictures reflecting “Release
for the prisoners,” “Rebuild the ancient ruins.” And two for “Day of Judgment.”
On the second day I introduced the Fish Tank. “This is kind
of a crazy exercise. You’ll think there is no point to it, but you will see
later how important it is.”
I asked them to begin walking around the room to fill the
space and not bump into one another. Clap once to start. Two times they freeze. One clap they
start again. Then we added a three clap to freeze with an emotion. They started
to pay attention to each other as I eliminated the claps and challenged them to
start and stop as simultaneously as possible.
Next we eliminated the clapping. Anyone in the group can
stop, and if we’re paying attention to one another, the whole group stops.
Anyone can start again and we all will follow. I know there are some that like
to be the leader, so we’ll limit you to only stopping or starting the group 3
times. Let’s add ages to our walks. I’ll call out “Young child,” or “proud
teenager,” or “elderly person” and try your best to copy one another even in
the way you portray these ages. It was getting harder!
What’s the point? Is all of this just silliness? Definitely
not. They finally got it. They finally started to act as a unit, to start and
stop together, sensing organically when to begin, and when to stop.
Later when they were learning all the forms of Playback
which require the group to sense when the action needs to come to a stop, they
had gotten really good at this.
I kept reminding them of the Fish Tank exercise “You see?
You thought I was crazy, but now you know how to stop together, you listen and
pay attention to each other. You sense it among yourselves.” I added, “If you
are paying attention, and not just about you trying to be a star, you will know
what to do, your imagination will take over, and on the spot you will make up
something that fits, and works together as a group.”
Almost Ready to Start
The class came in from their lunch break with the room
transformed into a Playback performance space. It heightened our expectation of
what was finally going to happen. But we still needed to know how, so we took
some time to read through and translate the descriptions of the setting, and
the players. Having reviewed Jo Salas’ Improvising Real Life, I had made
a handout of the nuts and bolts of who does what and how they do it, and how it
all works. Before the trip, I’d had some Egyptian friends in LA help with
translating the key words, and now I was running down the list of names and
descriptions: the conductor, the teller, the actors, the musician, the cloth
tree and what is a transformation or correction? I taught them some about how
to look and listen for the “essence” of the story, and the structure of
stories. We talked about the structure of playback: the conductor’s interview
of a teller, the setting up, the enactment, the acknowledgment and “bringing it
back to the teller.” It was sometimes tedious to get through these descriptions
with translation, but I tried to break it up with activities or exercises to
keep us from getting bogged down in words (or wearing out Dalia my
translator!). I interspersed some vocal and physical warm ups, and we even had
fun with a mini mime lesson: grabbing the steering wheel of a car, and how to
get in and out of a car.
Finally we were ready to invite some classmates to the
teller’s chair and try out some scenes. We had some terrific stories. Pets
running out into busy streets, jumping off running trains, being stranded at
JFK airport in New York, finally being free to be myself. I fell in love with
my students as I picked up some Arabic along the way. But the phrase I’ll never
forget is:
Yalluna Netfallug… “Let’s Watch!”
