Telling the Truth in a Small Town: Ukiah Players Theater

The Purpose and the Players

Ukiah Players Theater (UPT) helps residents in the Northern California town of Ukiah (population 14,600) to share private stories publicly in an annual production series entitled Telling the Truth in a Small Town. Audience discussion sessions follow each performance. The stated goal for the series is to foster respect and caring among residents and to promote a shared sense of responsibility for the community’s future.

Ukiah is located in a mountain valley in Mendocino County, approximately 100 miles north of San Francisco and 50 miles inland from the Pacific coast. It is home to the Pomo band of Indians, Italian grape growers, timber industry and agricultural workers and a mix of intellectuals and artists. Ukiah Players Theater was founded in 1977 by a handful of young theater artists who had moved to the region in the early 1970s in order to ‘live simply in a rural community.’

"After establishing homes, gardens and livelihoods, we wayward thespians discovered each other and began producing plays in this community," according to UPT co-founder, Kate Magruder. After five years of playmaking, fundraising and enthusiastic community support, Ukiah Playhouse was built expressly to develop and stage local productions. During its 24 years, UPT has evolved into a professionally managed nonprofit organization funded by ticket sales, grants and local contributions. In addition to the development of original theater pieces based on local history and community issues, UPT has offered an annual season of classical and contemporary plays.

Inspired by the honesty, humor and compelling truths expressed in her student monologue class at the local community college, co-founder Magruder organized and produced the first Telling the Truth series in 1994. Now in its seventh season, the 2000 Telling the Truth series included a special program to share stories that surfaced from a local California Council for the Humanities Community Story Project examining the impact of World War II on the lives of Ukiah residents. This program, inspired by Studs Terkel and entitled The Good War Project, helped residents remember, shape and record WWII stories to share with the broader community. UPT’s partners in The Good War Project included the Native American History Project, Mendocino College Community Exchange Program, Ukiah Veterans of Foreign War, Ukiah Daily Journal, Mendocino County Museum, Ukiah Senior Center and the Mendocino County Library. A range of activities was designed to help surface WWII stories, including: a book club, radio programming, a video and speaker series, writing classes, photo exhibits, a weekly newspaper column featuring a local veteran, a multimedia theater production based on Terkel’s book of WWII oral histories and a Telling the Truth performance featuring seven WWII stories by local residents.

	Francis Lockhart, Pomo Indian Veteran, Ukiah Player's Theater, The Good War Project. Photo by Evan Johnson

Several long-term outcomes were articulated for The Good War Project, including:

• Honoring and recording the stories of the generation who participated in World War II.

• Building bridges between collaborating organizations and strengthening collective efforts to create opportunities that nurture democracy and encourage civic dialogue.

• Creating the opportunity for the community to examine the unresolved trauma of local history; from this acknowledgement to begin the steps to healing.

• Heightening the awareness in the various Mendocino County communities that human feelings know no cultural boundaries; from this insight to discover the connective tissue of common humanity.

In addition to The Good War Telling the Truth production, the annual Telling the Truth in a Small Town was organized, as usual, around no particular theme. Many of those who told stories this year participated because they enjoyed attending previous productions. UPT staff encourages and supports interested residents by providing assistance with story, script and voice development. Both The Good War production and the open-theme production were performed for four nights to full houses.

In the 130-seat playhouse the community tellers take turns on the stage. Carefully crafted and emotionally revealing, each successive story weaves around the others. Audience members experience a pattern of voices and personal truths from perspectives seldom heard in the hustle and bustle of their daily lives.

This year, one teller, a soft-spoken man – someone many people knew but few understood – shared the anger he felt toward his abusive father, and the joy he found in the time he spent with his grandmother.

Another told the story of "Bloody Island," a local massacre of Pomo people by American soldiers in 1850. The massacre occurred so recently that the teller’s great-grandmother told him the story of her narrow escape hiding under water, between the tule leaves, breathing through a hollow reed. He said that he was prompted to tell this story publicly by a recent visit from his great-grandmother’s spirit. She told him that the events of the massacre must be known in the community so that forgiveness and healing could begin. According to Magruder, "There was an interesting combination of shock, grief and defensiveness that rumbled through the audience each night. The audience discussions that followed were astonishing in their candor, emotion and optimism; they were very powerful in diffusing the tension that had built during the difficult story."

Measuring Success

The content and delivery of these stories and the audience’s responses are considered the most useful measures of the series’ success. Attendance at performances and related events, such as public lectures and book discussions, are analyzed, and the series also encourages feedback immediately after performances and through written questionnaires, a weekly newspaper column dedicated to Telling the Truth events, and chatrooms on the UPT’s website. Magruder recalls, "For each of the four nights of this most recent production, at least half the audience stayed after the program to ask questions and share comments. The overwhelming response from both sides of the stage was a deep gratitude for the chance to organize and tell an important personal truth or experience, and the chance to witness it. An audience member even asked if we could offer a telling once a month."

One audience member sent Magruder this email the morning after a recent performance: "It seems to me that there are many similarities between Telling the Truth and a good sermon or revival meeting. Each brings together a group of people who are seeking something. The speaker(s) tell of their own pain, or of that which they have taken as their own, and they feel the pain again and therefore share it with us. The confessor admits vulnerability, perhaps even guilt and shame, and yet is not defeated, but carries forward with hope and faith. We, the audience, are asked to acknowledge our own pain. And we are invited to ask for forgiveness. Forgiveness for what we have done, for what we haven't done, for what we will do. Forgiveness for being human, for being imperfect. Their love and pain and their stories and songs softened my heart. They opened the door for me, invited me to walk through it, gave me somewhere to go."

Magruder is quick to note that some stories are harder for the community, "In past years, issues of mental illness, teenage pregnancy, living with cancer and domestic violence have cracked open some of the audience's tightly shut inner doors." The fear of telling one’s story in a climate not yet considered safe has also kept some from sharing, leaving tensions under the surface. For example, gay and lesbian youth at Ukiah High School recently declined to share a story because they feared retaliation and abuse.

While those involved in Telling the Truth as either audience member or performer have come to believe in the power of public story, they also recognize the challenging work of solving the community problems revealed in the stories. As one participant noted, "I’m a white woman married to a native man and know that the community needs to hear these stories because we need to understand why we don’t get along. Native and white live next door to each other and don’t even know these things – why we are still fighting. How can we deal with it if we refuse to know? First we need to listen, but the hard part is figuring out how to solve the problems."

Lessons Learned

Collective reflection on the Telling the Truth series is an ongoing practice. Series producers currently describe the following lessons and considerations for future work:

• Sharing stories is the most useful and powerful way to build a sense of empathy and responsibility to each other in this community.

• Great attention must be given to finding ways to include all parts of the community, and this may mean working with smaller groups in their own environments, at first.

• It is most effective to provide multiple forums and mediums to encourage people to tell their stories.

• It will become increasingly important to find ways to keep people connected to community telling and problem solving beyond the specific program performances and activities. For example: strengthening the connections between people in an ongoing way will require a community development staff/coordinator to follow-up on possibilities and challenges as they come up.

Original CAN/API publication: February 2001