The Self and The Stage: Critical Inquiry

The Self and the Stage

Ethnography as Theatre of the Oppressed

Jenna Alstad - 2019

What if we were to imagine a theatre in which the stories represented on stage mirrored the stories of those sitting in our audiences? While we may feel that our productions reflect the experiences of people in our seats, do they really?

We are living at a time, more vital than ever, to listen to the voices of the people most affected by issues of injustice. The stories most often portrayed on the theatrical stage fail to represent the voices of those most marginalized in society: women, POC, and LGBTQIA+ voices. I know this from a personal perspective. In my theatre career, I have performed in exactly three plays that have featured a female lead. Of these plays, only one featured a lead that did not rely on the support of a man. Of the 20+ productions I have worked on in other capacities, only five featured a female lead, two of which did not rely on a man. I have worked on one production that has featured a LGBTQIA+ female lead, and no productions have included trans characters. Of all the plays I’ve been involved in, only one was written by a female playwright.

My personal experience reflects broader statistical trends. An article posted by the Guardian showed that, of the 1,917 plays produced in 2017, 26% were produced by female playwrights and 0.004% were written by genderqueer playwrights. Women wrote only 36% of new plays, 15% of revivals, and 9% of the classics. As far as representation goes, women are more likely to be seen as mothers, caregivers, love interests, and villains than they are to be represented as protagonists with power, agency, and free choice. When present, LGBTQIA+ characters are usually defined by their sexuality or gender identity without developing other facets of their character. Consequently, they cannot become full, multifaceted characters. By denying more complex representation, dominant culture establishes and perpetuates expected norms.

Iris Marion Young defines this phenomenon as “cultural imperialism”, the act of a dominant group “taking the culture of the ruling class and establishing it as the norm.” By erasing these stories from our stages, our society denies these people their representation in an attempt to erase the people themselves. By doing this, the dominant class creates an entire group of “others”, denying them their personal identities and experiences. Young goes on to say, “Those who are oppressed by cultural imperialism are both marked by stereotypes and made to feel invisible. The stereotypes define what they can and cannot be.” (p. 285-286)

In a time where our audiences continue to diversify, it is our duty to present stories that speak to them and honor their identities. As Augusto Boal, founder of theatre of the oppressed, would say, “Theatre is the art of looking at ourselves.” We seek to find ourselves represented on stage. The theatre, mirroring society, is designed for the white man, hiding under the guise of inclusivity due to the overwhelming amount of gay white men represented on stage, commonly referred to by LGBTQIA+ community as “the gaytriarchy”. We cry over Prior Walter in “Angels in America,” and even mourn the loss of Matthew Shepard alongside those in “The Laramie Project,” but we fail to represent the stories of Gloria Steinem, Marsha P. Johnson, Malala Yousafzai, and countless other womxn and queer icons. Even beyond that, we fail to represent the stories of the people in our audiences. Rarely do our stories ever so intimately connect with our audiences, rarely do we find ourselves on stage.

Theatre has a long history of representing those with power, money, and elite status; however, theatre’s origins are complex and date as far back as humanity, predating systems such as patriarchy and white supremacy. Despite this, to view theatre history through any lens beyond that of white supremacy and patriarchy is difficult, as much of the documented history omits stories of the oppressed and privileges stories of the elite. As Charlotte Canning states, “Women’s theatre experiences, until recently, have rarely appeared in theatre histories, and each generation of women in theatre has had to invent itself anew.” This is to speak primarily to women’s experiences in mainstream theatre, but what of those whose theatre experiences lie beyond that of just women? What of those stories of other oppressed groups? To answer these questions, we may look to the work of Augusto Boal.

Boal believed that the specialized craft of theatre had something to offer his community Boal began to teach theatre techniques as a method for confronting social injustice; he called this Theatre of the Oppressed. Theatre of the Oppressed originated in Brazil and greater Latin America when military dictators began censoring the theatre. Boal’s theatre, Sao Paulo, was forced to censor and cut pieces from their season, so Boal and his fellow theatre makers took to the street as a form of protest performance against the oppressive regime. Boal’s theatre was inevitably shut down and in this moment Boal found that “face-to-face with our audiences, we realized how like them we were.” Boal goes on to say, “we had lost the rings on our fingers, but not our fingers; our costumes but not our bodies; our illusions but not our dreams. We were like our audiences because we were human beings like them.” Boal went to the people and began teaching everyday citizens how to express their experiences through theatre, giving voice and space to those often deemed unimportant by institutionalized theatre.

What if we imagine a different theatre, Boal’s theatre perhaps, one in which the stories represented on stage mirrored the stories of those sitting in the audience? Boal challenges us to “hope that one day – we’ll be able to convince or force our governments, our leaders… to ask their audiences – us – what they should do, so as to make this world a place to live and be happy in – yes, it is possible – rather than just a vast market in which we sell our goods and our souls. Let’s hope. Let’s work for it!” We are entering into a world in which theatre is no longer a muse for the elite, but rather returning to its roots as a voice for the people.

But how do we affect change? I am from the grassroots perspective that if we seek change in the world, we must, first and foremost, create it for ourselves. But perhaps, as I’ve argued elsewhere, Boal’s theatre does not work for us, here, in the United States in the same way it functions in Latin America.

If TO does not do the work of promoting agency and social consciousness among oppressed peoples in the US, how do we utilize the theatre as a tool to fight oppression? How do we bring the self to the stage? Though not traditionally seen exclusively as “Social Justice Theatre”, I would argue that the practice of “ethnotheatre” could be used as a powerful tool against oppression in the U.S.. Ethnotheatre, as defined by Johnny Saldaña, “employs the traditional craft and artistic techniques of theatre… to mount for an audience a live… performance event of research participants’ experiences and/or the researcher’s interpretations of data.” Ethnotheatre’s main goal is to investigate a facet of the human condition, utilizing ethnographic research techniques to compile material to translate into a performance medium. This style of theatre production can be done on as large of a scale as “The Vagina Monologues”, an ethno-play that has been performed by hundreds upon thousands of actors across the world, or as small as “The Girl that Grew Up Out of the Ground,” an ethno-play I created to be produced locally by and for the people who participated in its creation.

Ethnotheatre shares roots with TO in that it seeks to present stories of those not traditionally represented in the theatre. Often primarily executed through interviews, ethnotheatre presents the real voices of real living everyday people. But what does ethnotheatre really do for the communities it is produced about and for? Does it genuinely leave a positive impact? In the production of ethnotheatre piece "Inside Out of Mind", focused on the work of healthcare assistants working with people with dementia, they researched the effects and impacts of the work on those who participated and healthcare professionals who viewed the performance as audience members. Of the healthcare professionals who viewed the performance, “92% said the day would have a positive impact on their work with people with dementia.” One respondent to the performance stated, “I have learnt that people with dementia have feelings and I have learnt to appreciate how they must feel.” Ethnotheatre teaches empathy and compassion in a way traditional theatre does not. It connects us intimately with those whose stories are shared and speaks personally to experiences in our own worlds.

Ethnotheatre has the power to bridge the deep divide in the theatre community created by systems of inequity and oppression. By bringing the power of voice back to the people, we can create the world Boal envisioned. A world in which the people are given power and agency over their political systems through the deeply personal practice of protesting through storytelling. Through ethnotheatre, one may begin to see themselves on stage. One may begin to see themselves as actors with agency within their own lives.