Writing Workshop: P.O.V. & Voice

P.O.V. and Voice (90-120 minutes)

Workshop Description: Using ethnocultural myths & folktales, family secrets & stories and Art & theatre techniques, we will craft scenes/narrators with unique voices.

The workshop uses rhythm, punctuation and grammar; objects, environment and weather to elicit character and narrative voice.

This is a general description. It is easily adapted to group needs.

Contact: thomvernon@sympatico.ca or evan@coachhousebooks.ca

All writing forms are welcome: fiction, dramatic, poetry, memoir, creative non-fiction, journalism.

We went to a "Wig" Party...I wore my novel! It turned out to be a popular read for the party goers!

Participants provide writing utensils and paper.

Pre-requisite: a willingness to explore.

THOM VERNON is a queer refugee and artist from Michigan and Los Angeles. He has shown up in film, television, and lots of theatre (The Fugitive, Seinfeld and so on). Aside from his writing and acting work, for most of his career he has helped to create safe spaces where youth and adults can stretch the limits of their creativity. Thom is interested in a visceral, crisis literature & theatre. He thinks that a piece should begin at one minute to midnight; midnight being the hour when the axe falls, so to speak. Having degrees in Philosophy and Gender Studies, Thom has studied with Hubert Selby, Jr. (Last Exit to Brooklyn, Requiem for a Dream, etc.)and playwright provocateur Donald Freed (American Illiad, Circe & Bravo, etc.), among others.

He continues to explore how Gender, History and Memory collude to shape everyday life. His short stories have been presented on stage to blushing reviews and he has published both scholarly work and short fiction. His screenplays have placed in several national competitions. His novel, The Drifts, will be published in Spring 2010 by Coach House Books (Canada) & Northwestern University Press (U.S). He and his partner live in Toronto.

Thom is available for a variety of workshops and consultations.  He maintains two blogs: American Refugee and Notes on Arts Education.

Portraits, Interrupted

I didn’t learn how to play until I was an adult. That is slightly disingenuous. Play flummoxed me like theorems would later. I wanted to be a part of the world where play was free and uninterrupted but I didn’t know how to get there. An exercise, Portraits, got me there.

I was constantly faced with the glorious neighborhood kids who jumped bushes, threw broom handles for spears and seemed to make up games by the minute. They are ‘glorious’ now; that’s not how I wouldv’e described them then. Being chosen meant possible failure. Peanut, my best friend, had my back always but when he wasn’t around I was terrified that I wouldn’t be picked for these exercises and terrified that I would be picked.

It got worse the older we became and it seemed odd that I was very jealous and hurt when Peanut walked to school with another friend. Hello!? I was gay! I was a little gay kid. But neither me nor my family had the experience or the language to know what to do with a kid who wore his grandmother’s wigs, listened to Abba’s Dancing Queen like a broken record and read the entire set of Little House books thirteen times! And, my god, failure filtered through the floorboards of our house clutching at our ankles and filling our spirits with lead. We couldn’t fail at our house – well, my poor brother did – or we would have been murdered.

With my mother’s increasing madness, and rage, it became imperative that the mistakes my brothers and sisters made had to be hidden. Little known fact – and who would know except my siblings – but I used to volunteer to take the blame for missing chocolate chips, the kitchen floor not being mopped or the dogs not taken out. Masochism. That’s all that was. That is slightly disingenuous.

Finding It In The Real World

Recently several colleagues have wanted their sessions to generate creative material for presentation. Often there are disparate topics/themes/threads to explore. There are many, many ways to do this. Here’s one which introduces and uses the principle of Elliot’s Objective Correlative.

It expands the power of observation and connects craft to art in an adventurous and fun way. I’ve used this many times and have been thankful for the old man’s contribution.

In particular I’ve used the principles involved in Elliot’s Objective Correlative to explore seemingly unconnected themes, events, situations, things or narratives.

I first explored Elliot’s idea in grad school but realized that, as a theatre creator, I’d been using the concept for a long time. In fact, I’m not sure how theatre – or any other art – could be done without finding an equivalent in the physical world for emotional states. That’s our whole business. Elliot writes, ““the only way of expressing emotion in the form or art is by finding an ‘objective correlative’; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula for that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in a sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked” (Selected Essays, [London: Faber and Faber, 1951], pp. 144-5).

So, the other day, when a colleague presented me with two emerging narratives and themes, she had questions as to how to proceed in her class’ exploration. Being an old hand at Collective Creation, perhaps my exercise below can help. Part of her goal is to generate original materials while exploring the themes of man-made social constructions (as reflected in our dependence upon technology) and our more authentic, wild selves as represented by the Forest of Arden in As You Like It.

Pantea Karimi: As T.S. Elliot Imagined

Exercise – Finding it in the Real World
created by thom vernon
Point of Concentration: to explore the emerging themes by finding real world counterparts (things, events, sequences, sounds, etc.) which evoke a sensory experience informed by emotion.
Uses & Applications: Exploration of Themes, Generating Original Material, Improving Observational Skills, Critical-thinking

Directions:
1. Have a brief discussion about the themes/topics to be explored. Let’s say ours is: Techology vs. Authenticity. Have the discussion through an exercise (such as creating a collage around the theme or a relay improv scene). Get the topic introduced but don’t overtalk it.
2. Send your class out as individuals or pairs to notice technology (or whatever your theme is) in the world. They are to make lists of their observations. Additionally, they might go further and notice where/how technology influences interpersonal relationships. Participants could create a list of at least 5 technological referents (two lamps twisted around each other, a person texting, a power outage, a car slamming on its breaks, etc.).
3. The next step is to do the same with the Natural world. Find trees with large knots, a sprout pushing through snow, a rotten apple, etc. Go futher and notice the Natural human world: a hand on an arm, intimidation, no eye contact between two people, a peck on the cheek.
Remind participants that they are specifically looking for objects/events/situations, etc. which could elicit a particular emotion and probably evoke an emotional response. Encourage your explorers to be as specific as possible.
4. When the participants return, ask them to brainstorm emotions/themes etc. that could be attached to their observations.
5. Finally, ask participants to test their objective correlatives by creating tableaux, portraits, monologues, short scenes, newsarticles, short stories, poems and so on including at least four of their observations. They can work individually, in pairs, or in small groups. I’d suggest using at least two or so opposing observations (e.g. Technological & Natural) from one or two participant lists.
6. Participants can present their works and then after reflect, as a group, upon their experience.

I highly recommend using the material generated in your collective creation or as a basis for further exploration.

Round Robin

So, more about story-telling. There’re a million versions of this but the principles of the exercise can be applied broadly to introduce story and physicalization. This version comes from Joyce & Byrne Piven, two of my teachers, of the Piven Theatre Workshop.

Round Robin
via Joyce Piven, The Piven Theatre Workshop

Point of Concentration: to build a story together; to run a story out in a way that makes sense; to bring stories to their feet

Directions: Round 1
1. Sit/stand in a circle.
2. S1 begins a story: “Once upon a time….”, “In a deep forest….”, “By a babbling brook under the yo-yo tree….”, etc. S1 speaks one sentence and a half of the story without ending on a conjunction (and, but, etc.).
3. S2 continues the story on impulse right where S1 left off. S2 speaks one sentence and a half of the story. S3 picks the story up…and so on.
4. After all of the players have added to the story in this way, continue story-telling until a logical – but sound – end emerges.
5. Continue with another round of story but this time ask the players to end in the middle of sentence (not on a conjunction). The player next to them picks up spontaneously.

Calls: No thinking! No planning! Pass the energy of the story to the next player! Keep the ball in the air!

Directions: Round 2
Point of Concentration: same as above but to add more story and raise the stakes; to physicalize storytelling; to create environment using empty space.

1. Same as above.
2. As players tell the story they may get to their feet or leave the circle to bring the story to life. They may become the babbling brook, the yo-yo tree or a ticking clock. They may become the characters in the story and when they stop, the next player picks up the story – on impulse – and continues its telling.

NOTE: most teachers and players will allow the story to be dropped (e.g. “…and he fell down a well and died.”). But if the story was worth taking time to tell, it is worth the respect of ending consciously. ‘Consciously’ means because the story is over not that we have given up on it. Not only will this encourage respect for the stories within us but it will nurture self-respect.

Tell Me the Story – And Your Own

Who speaks? Who listens?  And why?  Caring about whether all students fulfill their responsibility to contribute to learning in the classroom is not a common approach….

It has been my experience that one way to build community in the classroom is to recognize the value of each voice.

-bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress

My work is done in a variety of settings.  As is my colleagues’ work.  I see hear and feel their frustration with program participants who “don’t get it” or whom they suspect they cannot reach.  Like students,  leaders/teachers/facilitators themselves, approach topics of inquiry with a template in place. This template filters out new learnings by maintaining a story.  And the ‘story’ is that which maintains ego, confidence, solid ground, body and mind, and so on.  The story is not created in one instant.

A careful analysis of the teacher-student relationship at any level, inside or outside the school, reveals its fundamentally narrative character. This relationship involves a narrating Subject (the teacher) and patient listening objects (the students). The contents, whether values or empirical dimensions of reality, tend in the process of being narrated to become lifeless and petrified. Education is suffering from narration sickness.

–Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Because we leaders are rarely conscious of the ideas informing our sessions, we struggle instead to convince, cajol and persuade (a topic for another entry).  Because pedagogy is a dirty word in arts education our sessions can only blossom so far. Most often, the learning time, then, becomes an unspoken, titanic wresting of the templates.  To some degree this is an organic learning process. To another it is simply a waste of time.

Everyone enters the room with expertise.  This idea informs every creative or other session I lead.  I’ve made it to 45 and have never met a person sans expertise.  As a leader it is my role to guide that expertise towards the group goal or toward new learnings – for the participants and myself.  Not to manipulate, but guide.  The challenge is to enter with your wisdom and make room AND SUPPORT the other wisdoms being offered.

A word about the integrity of artistic practice in creative sessions.  I am an artist and an educator.  I have worked and trained for many, many years in my arts and pedagogical practices.  In my creative sessions the art form and what it demands is honored.  Perhaps, it is practiced; it is never perfected.  By me or anyone else.  So, yes, while everyone’s voice needs to be heard, ‘voice’ can be released in a million ways.  Perhaps in a movement sequence, perhaps in a rap, perhaps in a scene.  As hooks suggests above, what matters is getting heard and aiming high.  I ought to leave my sessions surprised at my capacity and that of the participants I’m leading.

So how to get the voices heard?  For background, all arts educators could be familiar with Paolo Freire and Howard Gardner.  Freire wrote the Pedagogy of the Oppressed articulating traditional education as actually a banking system of teaching which reflected its capitalist context.  When you read Freire you discover that everyone who enters a teaching environment has expertise and, as a teacher/facilitator, you’re a fool if you don’t recognize that.

On the other hand, you’re the one with experience and expertise on a particular subject, right?  As a leader, as a teacher, it is your job to guide the inquiry so that all voices are heard, all expertise is honored but that the acquisition of knowledge by yourself and the participants might occur.

One way that I’ve often solved this is to use Gardner’s theories around multiple intelligences.  I don’t know about you but I’m always looking for different ways in (strategies).  Gardner encourages me to think broadly about the different forms in which expertise presents itself: as spatial intelligence, musical or rhythmic, inter/intra-personal, visual, kinesthetic, etc.

We can use this information to devise exercises that allow students to approach material using their interest and expertise which leaves them open to the integration of your own expertise.  For example, let’s say our topic is power dynamics.  We’ll pretend we haven’t read Boal.   Now, Phenomenology of the Spirit might be a bit to slog through – or not.  You can use

Tell Me the Story – And Your Own

created by thom vernon

Directions:

1. Give each students a piece of the text or a piece of the topic of inquiry.  They are responsible for this piece.  Send them off with it and ask them to use their interest and intelligence (music, movement, writing, improvisation, technology, etc.) to guide the class’ learning about that section of the text – with your guidance.  In the past, I’ve had students come back with collages from newspapers and magazines, chalk drawings, raps, dubs, monologues, photo essays, etc.

2.Ask them to share what they have understood or learned of the text in their way.  This could be the presentation of a movement piece, a dub, a rap, a painting, etc.

3.Guide the class in interrogating the piece critically.  Review respectful rule of engagement.  Keep it about the learning: what is received? what else would help to make the story clearer? who else needs to be involved? etc.

4. then, ask the student to guide the class as we come up with a collage, a chalk drawing, a rap, a dub, a monologue, etc.

Now, students have taken responsibility for their learning, exercised their expertise and their capacity and yours – in their voice.