Listen Up: Sojourn Theatre's Lessons in Community Dialogue

“Witness our Schools” performance and discussion at Roosevelt High School, Portland, Ore. Pictured: James Ingersoll, Ryan Keilty, Sy Parrish, Amanda Soden, Kimberly Howard, Jono Eiland. Photo by Steve Dipaola

There's a new energy in community dialogue and it's emerging from 21st Century ensemble theater. Community-based artists have long talked about including all voices in their projects for social change. But in the last decade, "inclusion" has taken on a new, more broadly democratic dimension. The bravest of community artists, in facilitating their communities' public voices, are willing and eager to let anybody speak. We got a lesson in this approach at the first nationwide Ensemble Theater Festival at Dell'Arte International in Blue Lake, Calif.

The festival was presented by the Network of Ensemble Theaters, June 21-26, 2005. Among its activities was a series of "lab presentations" by ensemble theater companies, intended to provide an opportunity for artists to share techniques.

Sojourn Theatre of Portland, Oregon, offered a lab presentation about the process of their community-based project "Witness Our Schools," a play based on interviews throughout the state that aimed to stimulate and encourage community dialogue about current challenges that confront Oregon's public schools. Education in that state is struggling with a mushrooming population, quickly changing demographics, political funding battles and fluctuating school policies.

“Witness our Schools” performance and discussion at Roosevelt High School, Portland, Ore. Pictured: Jono Eiland, Kimberly Howard, Amanda Soden, Hannah Treuhaft. Photo by Steve Dipaola

Sojourn was founded by a young artist rising to prominence in the field of theater and community dialogue. Michael Rohd received his MFA in theater at Virginia Tech, studying with CAN Co-director (and ensemble theater artist) Robert H. Leonard. Rohd has since become widely known as a consultant and practitioner, working with, among others, Cornerstone Theater, Ping Chong and the Animating Democracy Initiative in civic dialogue. His book, "Theatre for Community, Conflict and Dialogue: the Hope Is Vital Training Manual" (Heinemann, 1998), is used as a textbook internationally.

Sojourn Theatre's company members met and first worked together at Virginia Tech. Now based in Portland, Sojourn makes three kinds of original work: mainstage productions, community collaborations around the nation and touring shows.

The company's goals for "Witness Our Schools" were to present a performance piece about education that would describe what's happening inside Oregon schools, personify the issues, personalize the voices, clarify existing values and validate and reveal the wide diversity of community opinions in an atmosphere of mutual respect. They also wanted to "reveal the arts as part of the civic solution."

"Witness Our Schools" began in March 2004 with interviews at high schools in Portland, Hermiston and Coos Bay as well as city and county government sites and State Legislature and Department of Education sites. They also talked with activists and citizens statewide.

The play was developed through a summer residency at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, debuted in August 2004 and toured the state in high schools, theaters and community venues through May 2005. A key element was post-performance discussion with the audience as a means of energizing the interaction between leaders and citizens in new and dynamic ways. These interchanges were arranged and facilitated by the Oregon Department of Education. (The discussions live on at the Sojourn Web site, with an interactive online "comments" section for each of the performances.)

Dialogue Session from “Witness our Schools” performance and discussion at Roosevelt High School, Portland, Ore. Photo by Virginia Nguyen

Sojourn's artists are clearly committed to transmitting what they learned in the process of "WOS." The lab presentation was completely scripted, detailing the burning issues in Oregon education and revealing the dilemmas that surfaced in the company's process. Portions of the play were woven throughout.

What was interesting for the festival audience was Sojourn's groundbreaking method of community building and community activism that includes all voices and all sides of the debate. This kind of broad inclusion can be controversial for arts professionals, most of whom can be assumed to range politically from liberal to radically libertarian. We usually assume "inclusion" means an effort to incorporate the voices of marginalized groups, but not necessarily the voices of the already empowered or the political right. But true inclusion means presenting all opinions, including those of the "other side."

This wide-open approach is one way across the famous political divide that splits the U.S. population over so many seemingly intractable social issues -- like reproductive rights, environmental disputes and public education. After decades of "activism," of seeing everything in black and white, Americans find ourselves at a standoff, with both sides neutralized. Many community-based artists, like those of Dell'Arte, Cornerstone, Roadside and Sojourn theater companies, think we need to spend more time listening to each other. (I think we have to credit the Animating Democracy Initiative for tapping into this energy and carrying it forward into training over the last few years.)

Sojourn based the process of "WOS" on these principles (from the script of the lab presentation at the festival):

Michael Rohd: We believe that polarization and ideological stalemate, nurtured for political gain, are central to our nation’s inability to move forward on important social-justice and economic-justice and human-rights issues.

Hannah Treuhaft: One form of activism is the creation of spaces for civic dialogue.

Rebecca Martinez: We seek diverse presence and participation throughout the process.

James Ingersoll: We put the heat of ideology onstage, so the dialogue that follows does not start with extremes shouting to be heard — they’ve already been heard.

Hannah Treuhaft: Our shows ask questions. Lots of questions. The dialogues give people a chance to dive into those questions with a framework, and a starting point.

Kimberly Howard: We believe policy can be affected by collaboration. By building bridges. And the building of new surprising relationships.

Michael Rohd: Theatre, in process and in event, offers the potential for collaboration again and again.

Dialogue Session from “Witness our Schools” performance and discussion at Roosevelt High School, Portland, Ore. Photo by Virginia Nguyen

It remains to be seen whether this broadened approach will make a difference in Oregon education, but the experience certainly made a difference in the perspectives of at least one of the artists. Actor James Ingersoll noted in the lab presentation that his lessons were learned late in the project because he was not a part of it until the play was finished and it went on the road:

…once we went out on tour and the dialogues started, after the shows — that was it. Almost every Sunday, I would watch a stranger make some new connection — with an idea, with a person, with a perspective. I’d see the delight in someone’s eyes. The dialogues were split between whole group work — anywhere from 30 to100 audience members — and small group work. Each of us, each performer would lead a small group through parts of the process, with Michael and a facilitator sort of leading the whole thing. So each week, I spent at least 30, 40 minutes working with a group of strangers who often didn’t even know each other. I got to watch people. It was emotional for them, not just because of the passion running through these issues — I think it was the experience of spending quality moments with fellow citizens struggling with things that, in respectful ways — you could often feel the charge of that, the joy, even amid the tension.

And you know when we started, it was hard for me to connect to the issues we were dealing with. Democrat, Republican, Conservative, Liberal … I wasn’t that interested. I was pretty clear on my politics … and the issues — they didn’t really affect me. But after getting into the skin of different characters, and then meeting their real-life counterparts on the road — it forced me to take the voices of others more seriously. I had to question myself, my beliefs. It forced me to rethink some ideas, some stands … some simplifying I used to do when I thought about people who believed different than I did.

Sojourn's event caused many conversations at the festival. The contingent of festival goers deeply invested in the community aspects of ensemble theater had plenty to chew on – as did those who are accustomed to making radical political theater from one side of the debate.

Click here to download a transcript of the Sojourn Theatre lab presentation at the Ensemble Theater Festival. For more on the festival, read my report, published in the Fall 2005 issue of American Theatre magazine.

Linda Frye Burnham is co-director of Art in the Public Interest and the Community Arts Network.

Original CAN/API publication: September 2005