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\nTheatre as Cultural Exchange: Stages and Studios of Learning
\nArticle in Theatre Symposium \u00b7 January 2017
\nDOI: 10.1353\/tsy.2017.0001
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\nTheatre as Cultural Exchange: Stages and Studios of Learning
\nAnita Gonzalez
\nTheatre Symposium, Volume 25, 2017, pp. 12-28 (Article)
\nPublished by The University of Alabama Press
\nDOI:
\nFor additional information about this article
\nAccess provided by University of Michigan @ Ann Arbor (30 Aug 2018 20:11 GMT)
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\n12 GONZALEZ
\nTheatre as Cultural Exchange
\nStages and Studios of Learning
\nAnita Gonzalez
\nIt was a pleasure presenting for \u201cTheatre Symposium: Cross-Cultural
\nDialogue on the Global Stage\u201d in April 2016. The symposium offered a unique opportunity to dialogue with colleagues about how global
\nperspectives influence our practice. Whether we work in performance,
\ntechnical production, or theatre studies, our artistry and scholarship expand when we take time to learn about other cultures and consider how
\nour production seasons, classrooms, and professional work might change
\nby introducing world perspectives. Global travel begins in our minds.
\nWe must first imagine a broad context for what we consider to be theatre; then we can engage with new paradigms that will define the future
\nof our artistic forms. Even though we work in diverse contexts, each of
\nour areas of expertise can benefit from engaging with literature and practices that take us away from our comfort zones. Intercultural experiences,
\ncoupled with meaningful interactions with people who differ from us, expand our minds. As the head of the Global Theatre and Ethnic Studies
\nminor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, I advocate for theatre practices that foreground diverse cultures and promote engagement
\nwith intercultural communities. \u201cGoing global\u201d enhances our ability to
\nabsorb multiple perspectives that can broaden our understandings about
\ntheatrical practice.
\nOften I hear that we are all humans under the skin, but through my
\ntravels and classroom experiences I have learned that while we share common emotions and physiques, ideologies and belief systems can be really
\ndifferent. And that is the beautiful thing about the theatre. It provides
\nan opportunity to physically, viscerally experience another perspective of
\nhuman existence. As a scholar and practitioner I find performance to be
\nan ideal way of crossing borders. When I think about stages and studios
\nof learning I wonder, how do we teach for a global future? Most theatre
\nprograms offer a combination of literature and studio courses coupled<\/p>\n
Theatre as a Cultural Exchange 13
\nwith a production season. In general, we remain committed to teaching
\na canon of plays that reflect the history of Euro-American, English-language theatre. Global and multicultural theatre appears as the spice to enrich our experience of a progressive historical evolution of Western drama.
\nEscaping this approach to theatrical training is a challenge because, as
\nfaculty members, often this has been our training, our experience, or our
\narea of expertise. It is intimidating to approach learning about the cultures of the entire world. In addition to a plethora of plays, there are language barriers. And if each cultural drama represents a distinct ideology
\nand cultural context, then how can we immerse ourselves in all of these
\ndeep histories and experiences?
\nWe can begin to connect to other cultural positions just by considering our own background and heritage. Each of us brings experiences
\ngleaned from a lifetime of immersion in a unique cultural context. Too
\noften, we underestimate the impact of our learned cultural behaviors on
\nour daily arts practice. Faculty members and students in American classrooms tend to think of themselves as part of an assimilated, hegemonic
\nmiddle class. If we consider our ancestral heritage, each of us actually carries distinct cultural knowledges or understandings. For example, we tend
\nto forget that our grandparents may have come from Ireland or that we
\nmight have been raised on a farm or an island rather than within a suburban community. Our heritage connections travel across generations and
\nimpact our worldview.1
\nOne of the exercises I introduce in class to help students begin to
\nthink about global identities is to have them \u201cperform their identity\u201d
\nas an opening activity. When I start this exercise, at first there is confusion. White students tell me they do not know what to perform. African
\nAmerican students ask me if they can perform any identity. I encourage all
\nstudents to select a song, dance, or poem that is about who they are and to
\nperform it. Within this exercise I have seen poignant theatrical acts. One
\nperformance that stands out for me is the work of a student of Swedish
\ndescent who performed a ritual of stuffing Christmas sausages. He stood
\nin front of the class and began to demonstrate how to grind and stuff the
\nmeat. Then he spoke about his brother joining him in filling the casings,
\nand as he worked he recalled how this activity connected him with family
\nand heritage. He cried while performing this memory, remembering an
\nalmost-forgotten ethnic heritage. This performance of identity is just one
\nof many that students have presented that point to our global environment. What is interesting about doing this exercise over time is the vast
\nregional differences that emerge from the same assignment.
\nIn New York, students tend to perform hyphenated identities\u2014Italian<\/p>\n
14 GONZALEZ
\nAmerican, Irish American, Jewish American. In Florida, people performed
\ngeographic locales\u2014being northern redneck or being from Miami or
\nGeorgia. When I teach in Michigan today, students often perform Detroit, a city\u2014and for the first time last semester I observed students performing their identities as test-tube babies. The world is changing and it is
\nhard to keep up. There are real challenges in thinking about how to relate
\ntheatre training to all of these identities. How do we incorporate a globalized world into our research and theatre-training programs? I propose
\nwe think about three modes of bringing global consciousness to theatre:
\ncollaboration, exchange, and finding the global in the local.
\nCollaboration
\nSince each of us is most familiar with our own cultural contexts, it is
\neasiest to learn about other cultures through collaboration. Working with
\nsomeone from a different background allows both partners to experience
\nnew ideas. In collaborations, we tend to carry a lot of unexamined assumptions with us. Studies document first-world or upper-middle-class
\ntendencies to approach cultural exchange with a \u201csavior\u201d mentality. This
\nmeans that we enter any cultural exchange believing that our own experiences, when shared, will enhance and improve the culture we are visiting. Inherent in this approach is an assumption that our partnering cultural community needs or wants to be assimilated into our behavioral
\nmodes. Even when we try to accommodate other cultural modes, we can
\nlose sight of our own myopic visions.
\nHere is an example from graduate school. When I was working on my
\nPhD at the University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison, I was charged with directing a play called El Guitarron by Lynn Alvarez in collaboration with the
\nuniversity\u2019s Latino students. For this production, the department made a
\nstrong effort to recruit and involve Latino students. It was assumed that
\ntheatre students would contribute knowledge of theatre practice while the
\nLatinos would contribute cultural knowledge to make the show a success.
\nYet hidden in this plan were a lot of assumptions about how theatre
\nshould be done. We presumed that time would work the same across cultures, with everyone showing up ten minutes before rehearsals ready to
\nwork. That didn\u2019t happen. We presumed that our priorities would be the
\nsame and that the play\u2019s needs would take precedence over other activities,
\nlike family gatherings. That didn\u2019t happen. Things really came to a head
\nwhen we presumed that Latino audiences would adjust to our theatrical
\nticket-buying rituals\u2014that people who wanted to see the show would
\ncome to the box office to buy tickets. Our Latino collaborators told us
\nthat in their community, people sell tickets by holding a block of tickets,<\/p>\n
Theatre as a Cultural Exchange 15
\nselling off individual tickets to family and friends, and then returning the
\nunsold tickets and the money to the sponsor. The department was unable to accommodate this procedure, so we ended up with primarily university audience members.
\nMy point here is that a successful collaboration needs dialogue and discussion. At the University of Wisconsin, and in many institutions, it is assumed that non-institutional communities will assimilate and adapt to the
\ninstitution\u2019s norms. This creates an unbalanced circumstance in which the
\nnon-institutional is devalued. Offering a collaborative opportunity ideally
\nmeans that both sides are willing and able to make adjustments. The Latino students\u2019 approach to selling tickets to the production was not incorrect or in need of improvement; it was merely a different solution to
\nthe play\u2019s outreach and promotion needs.
\nCurrently, I am involved in another theatre project ( help with nursing paper writing from experts with MSN & DNP degrees) called the Storytelling Incubator, a collaboration with the Sault Ste. Marie Chippewa
\nTribe.2
\nWhen I moved to Michigan to form the Global Theatre and Ethnic Studies minor, I immediately looked for local partners. I was introduced to the Upper Peninsula and the Chippewa community of Michigan
\nthrough Dana Sitzler, a colleague from our Government Relations office.
\nOur exchange activities with the Sault Ste. Marie community have taken
\nabout a year to develop and we are still exploring the twists and turns.
\nAs I began the process of working in this very rural community, I understood that notions of what theatre is might be distinct.
\nWe began by meeting with two sectors of the community, historians
\nfrom the town and members of the Chippewa tribe\u2019s cultural education
\ndepartment. Each had a very different idea about the purpose of our project ( help with nursing paper writing from experts with MSN & DNP degrees) and about how the town\u2019s history might be told. After discussions,
\nwe decided to first immerse our students in teachings about Anishinabek Chippewa traditions, and then to develop a workshop and performance program that might unite both sectors of the community in common activities. During the first part of the project ( help with nursing paper writing from experts with MSN & DNP degrees), students stayed at the
\nMary Murray Culture Camp on Sugar Island, where they participated in
\nsunrise ceremonies and teachings about corn and fire.3
\nThey were able to
\nmeet and share stories with both elders and youth of the community. In
\nthe process, they learned about themselves and came to question the way
\nthey were educated in their school programs about Native American presence in the United States. The experience of cultural exchange allowed
\nstudents to think about who they were and what they knew from a different perspective. In the process, they gained self-awareness about their
\nown cultural beliefs.
\nThe second part of the Storytelling Incubator expanded our collaboration to include the town as well as the tribal community. While our<\/p>\n
16 GONZALEZ
\ngoal was to unite the two communities, in practice we worked separately
\nwith two organizations: the Soo Theatre and the Chippewa Tribe. We
\nfound that these two cultural institutions operated within very different
\naesthetic traditions. Ultimately the project ( help with nursing paper writing from experts with MSN & DNP degrees) was best served by organizing
\ndistinct exchange activities. The main objective of our second phase was
\nto present a staged reading of a play about domestic violence, Sliver of a
\nFull Moon, by Oklahoma Cherokee Nation author Mary Katherine Nagle.4 We were able to utilize tribal facilities for housing students and for
\nrehearsals. For the performances, tribal administrators also gave us access
\nto The Dream Catchers Theatre, a state-of-the art facility located within
\nthe Kewadin Casino complex. The space offers lights, catering services,
\nand a stage with a dance floor.
\nCultural differences in this collaboration emerged once again around
\nproduction mechanisms. Because the play directly addresses sensitive issues of violence against women, our partners suggested we consult with
\nFigure 1. Students participating in the Storytelling Incubator project ( help with nursing paper writing from experts with MSN & DNP degrees) remove kernels from hard Indian corn as they learn how to prepare corn soup. The Sault
\nSte. Marie Chippewa Tribe education department invited elders to teach the university students cultural traditions as part of the theatre exchange project ( help with nursing paper writing from experts with MSN & DNP degrees). Photograph by Anita Gonzalez.<\/p>\n
Theatre as a Cultural Exchange 17
\nthree local organizations: the Chippewa Advocacy Resource Center,
\nthe Diane Peppler Center, and Uniting Three Fires against Violence, a
\nstatewide advocacy organization. In this collaboration, we did not want
\nto make decisions without considering tribal perspectives about how a
\npublic event should be handled. We incorporated honoring and healing songs into the presentation because the Native American community wanted to honor the women for their bravery in telling their stories.
\nThe healing songs provided support and helped to ease any emotional
\ntrauma the women might have felt as they relived their traumatic experiences. Throughout the process we adapted our theatrical practice to accommodate an alternative approach to storytelling through performance
\nthat would heal the community by making public the stories of women
\nwho had been harmed by violence.
\nOutside of the reservation, we conducted workshops with community
\nmembers. Students and faculty members interacted with the Soo Theatre,
\nthe town\u2019s European cultural community theatre, by offering workshops
\nFigure 2. University of Michigan student Mia Massimino listens as a docent explains settler history of the Sault Ste. Marie region during a tour of one of the
\nhistoric houses. An engaged learning exchange project ( help with nursing paper writing from experts with MSN & DNP degrees) educated students about
\nhistory and culture of European settlers and Native Americans in this Canadian
\nborder town. Photograph by John R. Diehl Jr.<\/p>\n
18 GONZALEZ
\nin theatre games as well as musical theatre and opera practice. Collen Arbic, president of the Soo Theatre, supported our residency by introducing us to her theatre\u2019s membership. We held informational meetings with
\nlocal, nontribal theatre practitioners, but they did not participate in production activities for staging the Native American play.
\nEach community, even within the same town, approached the business
\nof theatre-making differently. Ultimately I do not know that we were
\nable to bridge cultural differences across the two Sault Ste. Marie communities. Even though some of the tribal facilities were directly across
\nthe street from the local Soo Theatre, it was hard to bring the two constituencies, the white European descendant community and the Native
\nAmerican community, into the same space. One group was invested in
\nthe Eurocentric arts of opera and ballet, while the other valued Native
\nAmerican cultural events such as powwows and bingo. Our performance
\nbrought a few members of the non-native community into the Kewadin
\ncasino performance space, but most of our audience members were also
\ntribal members. Nevertheless, by collaborating on a project ( help with nursing paper writing from experts with MSN & DNP degrees) that crossed
\ncultural lines, students were able to experience how different processes of
\nperformance can be. They could see the limits of collaboration, and we
\nall learned that sometimes bridges cannot be realized.
\nInternational Exchange
\nInternational exchange, like any collaboration, brings artists together to
\nswap ideas. Most international exchange programs emphasize summeror semester-long study at a foreign university. Some schools offer faculty-led programs. For American theatre folk, the most common destination is London. While I have led programs in Mexico and Costa Rica,
\nI am going to focus on four different UK project ( help with nursing paper writing from experts with MSN & DNP degrees)s because each project ( help with nursing paper writing from experts with MSN & DNP degrees)
\nengaged with British culture differently. Some involved observation and
\ntourist experiences, while others immersed students in one-on-one dialogic exchange with local partners.
\nIt seems natural to travel to England to study theatre because the language is the same as in the United States and we have heard so much
\nabout Shakespeare. We want to immerse our students in the history and
\nculture of the Bard. Still, I would like to point out that there are many
\nother global sites for English-language theatre\u2014Nigeria, the Caribbean,
\nSouth Africa, Toronto\u2014but here I will focus on England, describing four
\ninternational exchange programs that I have led. My first UK project ( help with nursing paper writing from experts with MSN & DNP degrees) was
\nsimply attending plays. The State University of New York at New Paltz
\nhas an annual program where students spend two weeks seeing about ten
\nplays in London. The program introduces students to styles of British<\/p>\n
Theatre as a Cultural Exchange 19
\nprofessional theatre and allows them to experience such historical London
\nsites as the reconstructed Globe Theatre. With this program, I most appreciated the way that the students\u2019 eyes lit up as they discovered life in
\na country where theatre has been supported and nurtured for centuries.
\nBecause my students at that time were New Yorkers, they were less impressed with the vibrancy of the city and more impressed with the multiple
\naesthetics and culturally diverse plays they were able to see in London.
\nAfter two years of leading this type of excursion, I proposed a more
\nimmersive experience in which students would be able to devise new
\nwork and learn with British practitioners. For this second, three-week
\nexperience, the students were housed at Kingston University. In addition to classes in British culture, they also participated in six workshops
\nwith British artists\u2014producers, scholars, choreographers, directors\u2014to
\nlearn how they might develop new work within the British landscape.
\nThe workshops increased student immersion in cross-cultural dialogue.
\nFigure 3. University students from Michigan sit on a mountaintop outside of Oaxaca, Mexico. One among many study abroad offerings led by Anita Gonzalez, the
\ninternational exchange program took students out of their comfort zones and exposed them to new ways of thinking about art and culture. Photograph by Omar
\nAlonso.<\/p>\n
20 GONZALEZ
\nAfter completing the workshops, the class participated in a devising project ( help with nursing paper writing from experts with MSN & DNP degrees), which involved reimagining scenes from The Tempest while thinking about gender-specific and postcolonial responses to the play. While
\nthe students could have studied the play at home in their classrooms and
\nlearned about Caliban as a postcolonial subject, or about how the opening shipwreck scene connects with the history of Jamestown, the project ( help with nursing paper writing from experts with MSN & DNP degrees) allowed the students to connect with local artists. They learned more
\nabout British perspectives on the play and made professional connections
\nwith British directors and scholars.
\nMy third UK exchange was supported by the Global Intercultural
\nExperience for Undergraduates (GIEU) program at the University of
\nMichigan. This exchange program offered an opportunity to travel with
\nstudents to Liverpool and engage with the black communities of this
\nnorthern port town.5
\nWe spent one month interacting with local partners
\nand arts organizations. After learning about Liverpool, students worked in
\nsmall teams to volunteer with local not-for-profit agencies, including Africa Oye, The Brouhaha Carnival, The Green House Project, The Somali
\nWomen\u2019s Project, and the Black E performance space. Our coordinating
\ncommunity partner and sponsoring agency was the Merseyside Dance Initiative (MDI).6
\nIn addition to helping us to connect with the agencies,
\nMDI arranged housing and located a theatre for us to perform in. Because
\nthe students collaborated closely with local artists, they were able to really
\nsee differences and similarities between British and American cultures.
\nThe students learned about black identity and how it works differently
\non the other side of the water. For example, African American female students noticed that white British men found them attractive and complimented them, something that seldom happened in their hometown of
\nDetroit. They also recognized that US historical events, such as the civil
\nrights movement and the life and death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had
\nlimited impact on the British community. Most of all, the student travelers learned about themselves. When British people asked the American
\nstudents where they were from, most could offer no response other than
\nthe name of their hometowns. Recognizing this lack of heritage, the students began to reconsider their identities and how to describe their point
\nof origin. At the end of the project ( help with nursing paper writing from experts with MSN & DNP degrees) we developed and performed a devised show for our community partners.7
\nThe play incorporated student
\nperspectives about their experiences and allowed them to verbalize their
\nfeelings about their identities and those of their British collaborators. In
\none section of the play, they performed what surprised them about British customs: tea, small cars, politeness, and language differences. Later
\nin the play, they talked about their newly gained understandings of class,
\ntheir concerns about social justice, and the challenges that America offers<\/p>\n
Theatre as a Cultural Exchange 21
\nfor social mobility. This project ( help with nursing paper writing from experts with MSN & DNP degrees) was particularly satisfying because it was
\nboth educational and community-based, allowing students to use theatre
\nto learn about another culture through engaged and interactive activities.
\nThe current UK project ( help with nursing paper writing from experts with MSN & DNP degrees) I am working on has allowed students to collaborate as performers in a professional international theatrical production. Building upon my own academic research about African American
\ntransatlantic voyaging, I am collaboratively writing a new musical called
\nLiverpool Trading with the black British composer Errollyn Wallen.8
\nThe
\nproject ( help with nursing paper writing from experts with MSN & DNP degrees) has been developed in both New York City and Liverpool, and
\neach stage of the process has tested me as an artist and administrator.
\nThe story follows an Afro-Caribbean woman named Ayanna, who goes
\nto Liverpool in search of her father. After she lands, an Irish pub owner
\nnamed Monroe leads her on a time-traveling journey. As Ayanna searches
\nfor her ancestors, she discovers musical worlds of Ceilli, trip hop, tea gardens, and the Mersey beat.9
\nEventually, she finds her father and learns to
\naccept love. Once again, the challenge of this project ( help with nursing paper writing from experts with MSN & DNP degrees) has been in crosscultural notions about how theatre is ideally produced. Should work be
\ndeveloped in resident theatres? On university campuses? The UK has a
\nstrong system of \u201cresearch and development,\u201d but how does that complement our US context of private funding? In the United States, musical theatre composers usually write lyrics; that is not the norm in the
\nUK. And artistically, how do you tell two sides of a transnational story in
\na way that works for both sets of audiences? These are some of the challenges, and I do not yet have answers, but the learning curve has been a
\nwonderful journey.
\nDuring December 2015 and January 2016 my two collaborators, novelist Richard Aellen and composer Errollyn Wallen, came to the University
\nof Michigan to work with students on developing and recording songs
\nfor the show. Two weeks later we traveled to New York City to work with
\nprofessional actors on a staged reading of the script. Performers in both
\nlocations became more culturally aware as they discovered how African
\ncultures, in diaspora, contributed to both American and British histories.
\nThe play is written in multiple dialects: Irish, Afro-Caribbean, Jamaican,
\nLiverpudlian, London British, and New York (Brooklyn). As the actors
\nstruggled to understand the context for the dialects, they participated in
\ndramaturgical discussions about transatlantic travel, the Windrush generation,10 and British anti-slavery activism. The creative team talked about
\nblack and Irish relationships focusing on how neighboring, multilingual
\ncommunities supported cultural encounters and racial mixing. Our artistic process of having discussions about the script revealed the diverse cultural heritages of each of the artists in the room. Often, we talked about
\nthe actor\u2019s migration stories and discussed relatives who could have been<\/p>\n
22 GONZALEZ
\naffected by these cross-cultural exchanges. Learning about black and Irish
\nexperiences in London, New York, Liverpool, and Jamaica reminded all
\nof us about how minimal our degrees of separation across continents are.
\nClassroom Learning
\nWorking at global sites is challenging and transformative, but we cannot
\nalways travel. We spend most of our time working with students in classrooms. How do we bring the global to our daily university lives? The
\nminor I coordinate in Global Theatre and Ethnic Studies depends on
\nfinding the global in the local. We travel the world by reading, discussing, and staging plays from the canons of diverse cultural drama. Earlier
\nI discussed the \u201cperform your identity\u201d exercise. This exercise encourages me to value the tremendous amount of diversity that exists among
\nstudents in my local environment. America is already diverse, but most of
\nus walk in set patterns of encounter that prevent us from interacting with
\nthe cultural experiences of the people that surround us. Studio courses in
\nthe Global Theatre minor incorporate local visitors as core partners for
\nclassroom activities that come to share their expertise. These partners include campus constituencies, community organizations, and student organizations. Campus constituencies are departments and administrative
\nunits outside of the theatre department. I lean upon colleagues housed
\nin Latino studies or Asian languages, in religious studies or social work.
\nCampus constituencies can aid in bringing global project ( help with nursing paper writing from experts with MSN & DNP degrees)s to the mainstage. And this includes possibilities for working across class as well as cultural boundaries. A partnership with campus constituencies might include
\nstaging a production with university maintenance workers or having students devise a work about area bus drivers. All of these possibilities will
\nbroaden the cultural perspectives of students, faculty members, staff, and
\nadministrators. It is about broadening the perspectives of all involved, reconsidering production and performance processes, and expanding the
\nborders of theatrical practices.
\nCommunity organizations are often knowledgeable about event planning, and universities can collaborate with them to make plays by figuring
\nout how to exchange expertise. For example, maybe the local church
\nwould like to include a song or dance performance in a fundraising event.
\nEven better, perhaps a locally organized music event includes spoken
\nword artists or krumpers11 who could introduce a new performance style
\nto students. In January 2015, I directed a Puerto Rican play where all of
\nthe characters needed to perform parkour. This athletic performance style
\ninvolves acrobatic leaps, slides, and jumps over physical obstacles. When I
\nbegan rehearsals I had no idea where I would find someone to teach the<\/p>\n
Theatre as a Cultural Exchange 23
\nart form. To my surprise, the university had a parkour club that I never
\nknew existed. Each time I look for an ethnic art form\u2014in Wisconsin, Tallahassee, upstate New York, or Michigan\u2014I find practitioners hidden in
\nplain sight. Not hidden\u2014merely outside of my own set patterns of encounter. Student organizations hold a wealth of expertise in multicultural
\nperformance forms. Although we are the teachers and they are the students, collaborative exchange means respecting their knowledge of folkand street-based performance and valuing that as theatrical practice. We
\nall know our students are faster with technology than we are. They may
\nalso be more culturally astute than we are.
\nFinding the Global in the Local means expanding our ideas about what
\ntheatre is. For some cultures, the storytelling of theatre is captured in outdoor pageants, street competitions, or daylong parades. These genres do
\nnot fit neatly inside of the proscenium box, yet they prevail throughout
\nthe world. Perhaps it is possible for theatre departments to embrace multiple theatrical styles and use these unfamiliar forms to train students in
\nglobal theatre. There are exciting developments in training that indicate a
\nshift in pedagogy. Devising is now a part of many department programs.
\nThis approach to performance de-privileges the written text, substituting movement, images, and intertextual symbols. With the success of
\nHamilton, more departments are embracing styles like hip-hop and spoken word; Asian movement forms have become a part of some training
\nprograms. And there is so much more to explore, such as masking, puppetry, and song as text.
\nOf course, at the bottom of it all is story. Stories grounded in multicultural performance aesthetics give students a chance to experiment with
\nstyle and master rigorous techniques for interpreting drama. Stories and
\nthe characters they feature matter if we are to really promote diversity of
\nculture and cross-cultural dialogue. For example, the 50\/50 by 2020 initiative of the League of Professional Theatre Women aims to achieve parity for professional women theatre artists by the year 2020. The organization recognizes that authorship may impact story and consequently hopes
\nto have regional theatres develop seasons in which at least half of the
\nplays are written by women.12 The same applies to multicultural theatre.
\nMy own theatre department primarily offers minority theatre students
\nopportunities to perform in Eurocentric plays. How do we change that?
\nHow do we promote theatre productions by and about people of color
\nas a valuable pursuit for all theatre students\u2014not just students of color?
\nI advocate bringing multicultural drama to the main stage\u2014not to
\nthe studio, not to the outdoor forum, not to the neighboring community. Why? It validates multicultural drama as a core value and an inherently robust site of theatrical tradition. We must work harder to locate<\/p>\n
24 GONZALEZ
\nunder-produced plays. Ethnic communities and their canons cover a
\nbroad range of historical styles. It is possible to study melodrama by teaching and staging the 1847 play The Black Doctor by Ira Aldridge or to investigate commedia by teaching the actos of Luis Valdez. This is not a radical
\nidea. Theatre audiences and their tastes shift with social movements.
\nWhile realism may have been radical in 1910, it is now all too familiar.
\nOnce again, we can adjust core beliefs about how theatre is made. One
\nway is to offer students opportunities to improvise, devise, and write new
\ntheatrical works, perhaps in collaboration with diverse cultural communities. In November 2015, I attended an event about theatre training at the
\nNational Theater Institute located at the O\u2019Neill Center in New London,
\nConnecticut. Thirty educators met to discuss how theatre training can
\nprepare students for millennial performance. We shared processes, saw
\nnew work, and exchanged ideas. I was most impressed with the industry
\ncasting agent who told us that we are not effectively training our students
\nfor the types of theatre that new playwrights are writing\u2014playwrights
\nlike Hansol Jung, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Sharon Bridgforth, SuzanLori Parks, Mary Kathryn Nagle, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Ping Chong.
\nWorks by these playwrights require fluidity of expression, physical awareness, an ability to move through theatrical styles like performance art, and
\nan understanding of how to perform a variety of different cultural forms.
\nWe can read these new plays in the classroom and stage them with
\nour students, working beyond our preconceived ideas about how to cast
\nalong racial or ethnic lines. All students, by embodying characters outside of their experiences, expand their repertory of available roles. They
\nlearn about world cultures through the process of physically enacting the
\nbeliefs and behaviors of another person. Ideally, universities are a place
\nwhere students and faculty members collectively explore new ideas and
\nparadigms for theatrical work as we train students for the theatre\u2019s future. Minority theatre did not suddenly appear on the stage as a result of
\nthe cultural revolutions of the 1990s. Latino, African American, and Asian
\nartists have been writing, producing, and staging theatrical work for centuries. These canons of literature enrich our understanding of world theatre in a global context.
\nFinally, how does writing and scholarship fit into the picture? The field
\nis changing. Increasingly I see scholarship that bridges disciplinary boundaries. Many of the authors in this volume have written essays that bring
\ntogether cultural studies and theatre studies. Scholars are finding linkages between classics, religious studies, and other fields as they consider
\ndramaturgies of diverse world communities. My own scholarship is also
\ninformed by collaboration and exchange. This happens in several ways:
\nI engage in dialogic performance when I work with artists, I collaborate<\/p>\n
Theatre as a Cultural Exchange 25
\nFigure 4. The home page of the interactive website 19thcenturyacts.com. The suite
\nof digital humanities tools allows users to visualize context for nineteenth-century
\nperformance and to learn more about underrepresented performers. Home page
\ndesigned by Clara McClenon.<\/p>\n
26 GONZALEZ
\nwith archivists at international archives, and I collaborate with teams of librarians and computer scientists on digital tools. By dialogic performance
\nI mean the kinds of exchanges that happen when people encounter one
\nanother and share practice to comment about identity. For example, my
\nbook Afro-Mexico: Dancing between Myth and Reality,
\n13 examines how indigenous and mestizo populations in Mexico perform African identities,
\nhow they dialogue with contemporary Afro-Mexican communities. While
\nresearching the book, I traveled to Mexican communities to dance with
\npeople. Through the dancing we were able to talk about how the body
\ncommunicates and what a foot stamp with a head throw might mean for
\neach of us. This embodied research\u2014physical dialogue and exchange\u2014
\nhelps me to craft the writing.
\nMy current research is about maritime performance. For this project ( help with nursing paper writing from experts with MSN & DNP degrees)
\nI have visited maritime archives in New York, London, Bristol, and Liverpool. Even as I mine the archive for information about how sailors
\nperformed, I engage with contemporary maritime communities, singing sea shanties at Mystic Seaport and working as a destination lecturer
\non Caribbean cruise ships.14 These experiences allow me to write scholarship that considers how different those worlds might be from my daily
\nlife while uncovering new information about port and maritime communities. My most complex research project ( help with nursing paper writing from experts with MSN & DNP degrees) is actually a digital tool,
\nwww.19thcenturyacts.com, that I have been developing for about four
\nyears now. This tool visually depicts nineteenth-century performance in
\nmultiple ways. The mapping tool allows users to see how artists working
\nin the nineteenth century toured in order to make a living. Here, the user
\ncan access information about Ira Aldridge, Jenny Lind, or Edwin Booth.
\nThe context tool provides images of places and artifacts and gestures to
\nprovide a sense of what performances looked and sounded like. I am particularly excited about this section of the tool because it replicates the
\nsense of browsing in the archive in a digital way. The tool demonstrates
\nhow even during the nineteenth century, the scope of the English-language performance world was international.
\nSo where have we traveled in this discussion? I talked about collaboration. I talked about research and dialogic partnerships. I talked about
\ncommunication and embodiment. Most of all, I talked about changing
\nour set patterns of encounter and moving out of our comfort zones, letting go of preconceived notions about what the journey of theatre looks
\nlike. We are not all the same. We walk with different religions, class backgrounds, racial experiences, and gender expectations. But we can find
\ncommon ground within theatrical expressions. To accomplish this, we
\nwill need to sit with the unfamiliar, ask disturbing questions, and invest
\nin learning new stories to define our practice. At its core, theatre brings<\/p>\n
Theatre as a Cultural Exchange 27
\nindividuals together to explore how life experiences merge into human
\nstories. The journey is most illuminating when we bring a wide spectrum
\nof voices into the \u201cempty space\u201d and recognize that cultural spaces we
\nmight imagine as a void are full of a diversity of lived human experiences.15
\nNotes
\nThis paper is adapted from a keynote presentation offered at the SETC Theatre Symposium at Agnes Scott College on April 22, 2016.
\n1. Gust A. Yep, \u201cEncounters With the \u2018Other,\u2019\u201d The Global Intercultural Communication Reader (New York: Routledge, 2014), 339\u201356. The entire volume is
\nuseful for those embarking on an exchange experience. Also see Lila Abu-Lughod,
\n\u201cDo Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others,\u201d American Anthropologist 104, no. 3 (September
\n2002): 783\u201390.
\n2. A video about the meaning and impact of this project ( help with nursing paper writing from experts with MSN & DNP degrees) is available at: http:\/\/
\nns.umich.edu\/new\/multimedia\/videos\/23367-u-m-course-challenges-studentsto-learn-about-native-american-culture-through-immersion.
\n3. Sugar Island is a small island located just east of Sault Ste. Marie on the St.
\nMary\u2019s River. The island is named for the many sugar maple trees that grow there.
\nThe Sault Ste. Marie Chippewa Tribe maintains their culture camp and powwow
\ngrounds on the island.
\n4. http:\/\/sliverofafullmoon.org\/ provides information about the origin of
\nthis dramatic work and documents productions at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, Stanford Law School, New York University, and
\nother locations.
\n5. In the United Kingdom, citizens of African and Indian ancestry refer to
\nthemselves as black communities because the nomenclature around blackness conflates multiple nationalities, ethnicities, and experiences into a single label. The
\ndesignation of \u201cblack\u201d includes British-born blacks, South Asians from India and
\nPakistan, Africans coming from countries such as Somalia, Nigeria, Ghana, and
\nSudan, as well as Jamaicans and Afro-Caribbean descendants.
\n6. Information about these vibrant cultural organizations can be found at
\nthe following websites: http:\/\/www.africaoye.com, http:\/\/www.brouhaha.
\nuk.com, https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/The-Greenhouse-Multi-Cultural-Playand-Arts-Project-194745240596801, http:\/\/www.granbysomaliwomensgroup.
\norg, http:\/\/www.theblack-e.co.uk, and http:\/\/www.mdi.org.uk\/
\n7. The performance video of the show, called \u201cFraming Liverpool
\nthrough Michigan Eyes,\u201d can be viewed at https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/
\nwatch?v=qOxHbbkXUac.
\n8. http:\/\/www.liverpooltrading.com
\n9. Ceilli is a form of Irish folk music. Trip hop is a music style that originated
\nin Bristol that blends electronic music with soul, funk, jazz, and Jamaican ska.
\nThe African Grove theatre, known as the first African American theatre company,<\/p>\n
28 GONZALEZ
\nwas founded in 1821 in a tea garden in New York City. Finally, Mersey Beat is the
\nmusical sound associated with the Beatles that began during the late 1950s when
\nservice workers on transatlantic passenger ships brought African American music
\nrecords to dance clubs in Liverpool.
\n10. The Empire Windrush was a ship that brought Jamaican settlers to England between 1948 and 1954 to rebuild the country\u2019s infrastructure after World
\nWar II. Jamaican immigrants who arrived during this historical time are known
\nas the \u201cWindrush\u201d generation.
\n11. Krumping is an urban dance style with percussive upper body moves performed with improvisation.
\n12. http:\/\/theatrewomen.org\/programs\/5050-in-2020-parity-for-womentheatre-artists.
\n13. Anita Gonzalez, Afro-Mexico: Dancing Between Myth and Reality (Austin,
\nUniversity of Texas Press, 2010).
\n14. Mystic Seaport is a maritime museum located in Mystic, Connecticut, where
\nvisitors and scholars work and study with actual vessels. My work as a destination cruise lecturer involves traveling to Caribbean ports and educating passengers about the history and cultures of the ports.
\n15. Here I reference Peter Brook\u2019s foundational book The Empty Space (New
\nYork: Touchstone Press, 1992). His book proposes that the theatre is an empty
\nspace to be filled by the actor and director\u2019s imagination. Here, I suggest that
\nPeter Brook\u2019s \u201cempty space\u201d could be opened to include cultures and communities outside of his imagined Eurocentric experiences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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