{"id":3082,"date":"2014-01-05T13:04:36","date_gmt":"2014-01-05T13:04:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/?p=1195"},"modified":"2016-09-26T12:22:31","modified_gmt":"2016-09-26T12:22:31","slug":"de-la-povestire-personala-la-act-politic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/2014\/01\/05\/de-la-povestire-personala-la-act-politic\/","title":{"rendered":"From Personal Storytelling to Political Act"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Jan Cohen-Cruz[1]<\/b><\/a><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

The very act of speaking one\u2019s story publicly is a move toward subjecthood, toward agency, with political implications.<\/p>\n

The story circle is one of the most pervasive forms of workshopping and playbuilding in community-based performance. Although there are many variations, circles typically involve from five to twenty-five people who choose a theme and then, one by one, tell a tale. Each story is welcome no matter what its style. In accordance with the Appalachia-based Roadside Theater for example, stories might recount family history, local history, folklore, ghost lore, a personal experience, or even riddles or jokes passed down through the generations. Participants in story circles typically focus on listening to the other stories and they then decide what to tell in response to what they have heard. Telling personal stories in this sense is a way to have a public conversation, to be in relationship to others. Such stories do not necessarily address oppression; they are as likely to be about cultural celebration and individual affirmation.<\/p>\n

Stories of both celebration and oppression move toward the political but differently. Telling stories of cultural celebration is a way that members of marginalized groups express their own values and is an example of assets-based community organizing, emphasizing a group\u2019s strengths. To the degree that the teller has a strong sense of identity with an under- or misrepresented culture, the story is personal and <\/i>political; attention to the story is attention to that culture as represented from within. Such stories often serve as counter-histories which make public points of view that were previously \u201chidden from history\u201d (Rowbotham, cited in Perks and Thomson 1998: ix). Through stories that emphasize oppression, people see such occurrences as struggles in social context rather than as personal limitations: the larger inequities that underlie their personal experiences rise to the surface. Stories in TO (Theater of the Oppressed) are unresolved, because that is the opening through which spect-actors intervene with potential solutions. Participants find others with experiences of the same oppression and are both affirmed in the reality of their struggle and joined with potential allies to fight against it.<\/p>\n

Storytelling literally makes knowledge through group interaction around hitherto private experiences. Such was the role of personal storytelling in the context of grass-roots consciousness-raising (CR) groups, one of the seminal processes of the 1970s\u2019 women\u2019s movement. In my own experience, a group of six or seven women would meet every two weeks in one of our apartments and talk about gender concerns from our everyday lives. We told personal stories to unearth their political implications. We\u2019d hesitate; it seemed so petty to talk about our little relationships. But like women telling such stories in kitchens all across the country, we were discovering that many of our personal peeves were in fact socially structured to keep women in their place. Such knowledge emboldened us to change our everyday arrangements.<\/p>\n

[\u2026]<\/p>\n

Collective identification with personal story<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

In Forum Theatre, when the story is enacted, it is no longer just that person\u2019s tale. Each person\u2019s story is but the raw material from which the scene, with which everyone in the group must identify, is created. In testimony about social oppressions, the teller is speaking on behalf of not just himself but a whole class of people struggling against similar unjust treatment. Under what conditions are people with no social cachet individually not only listened to but treated as catalysts, their experience deemed important, and their authority to speak for a group recognized?<\/p>\n

As Shoshana Felman writes, to testify is \u201cto produce one\u2019s own speech as material evidence\u00a0for truth\u2014to accomplish a speech act rather than formulate a statement\u201d (1992: 5). Testimony\u00a0in a legal context refers to serious statements made under oath that may hold life and\u00a0death consequences; the term also means a public declaration of religious experience. In both\u00a0cases, testimony contains the notion of answering to a higher power, be it the nation state in\u00a0whose realm the court is situated or the spiritual force in whose realm institutions of faith are\u00a0located. One puts one\u2019s hand on the Bible and swears to tell the whole truth. The act of giving\u00a0testimony unites the teller with the listeners by evoking shared values. The context of an\u00a0institution whose authority is accepted renders the individual\u2019s voice within that context\u00a0authoritative as well.<\/p>\n

Political action and personal therapy are intertwined in testimony, given its \u201cdouble\u00a0function\u201d of \u201cproducing social discourse and initiating individual recovery\u201d (Miller and\u00a0Tougaw 2002: 13). There is, however, a danger of relegating the individual to a secondary\u00a0position in the interest of furthering the social goal. Orly Lubin describes an example of\u00a0imbalance between the value for the individual and for the collective in the uses of the testimony\u00a0of Zivia Lubetkin.<\/p>\n

One of the leaders of the Warsaw ghetto uprising of April 1943, Lubetkin immigrated to\u00a0Palestine and gave her testimony twice. The first time she told her story privately to two\u00a0Zionist leaders, one of whom writes: \u201cShe told us\u2014in tears, with pauses, in Yiddish, in\u00a0Hebrew, in silences\u2014what was in her heart. The story was unimaginably tragic. There was\u00a0nothing in it of heroism, no glory, but it was as if she herself was bearing the entire six\u00a0million\u201d (Rabinowitz, cited in Lubin 2002: 133). The second time, two days later, she gave\u00a0her testimony publicly: \u201cRelinquishing the first-person grammatical form, she translated her\u00a0personal experience into a collective narrative,\u201d embodying the \u201cnew Jew\u201d that fought\u00a0Nazism and \u201cthus answered a collective need\u201d to know that some Jews did not go to their\u00a0slaughter like sheep (Rabinowitz, cited in Lubin 2002: 133). Lubin analyzes the expanded\u00a0role of the witnesses to Lubetkin\u2019s testimony: \u201cLubetkin allows her listeners to do more than\u00a0enable the testimony; she allows them to mold it, to determine its narrative form and its\u00a0symbolic use. Making herself subservient to the group, she tells a story that they need to hear\u201d (Lubin 2002: 134). Lubetkin\u2019s personal trauma was resituated at an alarming speed,\u00a0from her own experience to a collectively sustaining image. I wonder if and how such a\u00a0radical reinterpretation of the story helped her through her own despair even as I can\u00a0imagine relief at having the story be so meaningful to her new community.<\/p>\n

Despite personal costs, the teller can absolutely galvanize a community that identifies\u00a0with her. Such was the case of Rosa Parks, whose story was chosen by civil rights leaders to\u00a0be the symbol of bus desegregation for a large, public audience. In December 1955, when\u00a0Parks transgressed Jim Crow-era laws segregating people of color to the back of the bus, she\u00a0was not the first. The previous March, \u201ca feisty high school student named Claudette Colvin. . . defended her right to the seat in language that brought words of disapproval from passengers\u00a0of both races\u201d (Branch 1988: 120). In October, Mary Louise Smith likewise refused to\u00a0give up her seat for a white woman. Yet civil rights leaders decided that Smith\u2019s alcoholic\u00a0father and substandard living conditions\u2014\u201cone of those see-through clapboard shacks\u201d\u2014\u00a0made her \u201cno better suited to stand at the rally point than was Claudette Colvin\u201d (Branch\u00a01988: 127). Parks, on the other hand, was considered so beyond reproach by people of color\u00a0and whites alike that her personal story of injustice was selected for courtroom dramatization.\u00a0The timing was so ripe that the Montgomery Bus Boycott was organized to protest her\u00a0arrest. Parks\u2019 story became the <\/i>story through which the community organized and drew a\u00a0line: no more arresting Negroes for not giving up their seats to white people in public buses.\u00a0As the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. articulated when rallying the community to join\u00a0the boycott,<\/p>\n

[N]obody can doubt the boundless outreach of [Parks\u2019] integrity. Nobody can doubt the\u00a0height of her character, nobody can doubt the depth of her Christian commitment . . .\u00a0And you know, my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled\u00a0over by the iron feet of oppression.<\/em> (King, cited in Branch 1988: 138)<\/p>\n

And yes, the crowd responded, yes, their voices rose up, yes.<\/p>\n

A play, too, can resituate personal stories as the expression of a particular group. Boalexperienced such a dynamic with a play he staged in 1962. It was based on personal stories\u00a0about a metal workers\u2019 strike in Santo Andr\u00e9 and was written by one of the workers. At a\u00a0performance in Santo Andr\u00e9, the man on whom the villain was based protested vigorously,\u00a0leading to interaction with other audience members upon whom other characters were\u00a0based. What followed spontaneously anticipated Forum Theatre in the active audience\u00a0involvement elicited: \u201cThe real people other characters were modeled upon got up on stage\u00a0and each incarnated themselves in front of their actors, the scene fragmenting into explosive\u00a0simultaneous dialogues with worker-models of characters pitted against actors and their\u00a0characters\u201d (Boal 2001: 203). In the ensuing mayhem, Boal tried to convince angry spectators\u00a0that it was just a play, a fiction, not them. They would have none of Boal\u2019s explanation,\u00a0feeling grievously misrepresented. Finally they agreed that the actors could continue to\u00a0speak the script but they would correct them as necessary. This performance intrigued Boal\u00a0in its interaction of the image and the reality of the same character. He also recognized the\u00a0dynamizing effect on the people on whom the play was based and the level of interaction\u00a0precipitated when not just an individual but a whole community gets to see performed what\u00a0they themselves presumably said or did.<\/p>\n

This production also raises the issue of intimacy and distance\u2014i.e., the degree of close-people who identify with it. While a play is always a representation, even when based on an\u00a0actual event, such recognition is difficult for an audience watching a play of and about themselves,\u00a0using their very words. For the Santo Andr\u00e9 audience, this play was <\/i>their story. That\u00a0intimacy caused a problematic but ultimately productive level of engagement, resituating\u00a0the play at the intersection between an aesthetic event and a documentary of their very\u00a0lives.<\/p>\n

\"Lauren\u021biu<\/a>

Lauren\u021biu Ridichie. No title, 2012.<\/p><\/div>\n

Critical storytelling in theatrical practice: O\u2019Neal, Lacy, Boal<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Not all storytelling is liberating. One might use personal stories to come to any conclusions.\u00a0Personal story risks merely reproducing dominant ideology, as with a rape narrative through\u00a0which the victim blames herself: \u201cI shouldn\u2019t have been there . . . The way I dressed was\u00a0asking for it.\u201d In this section, I discuss exemplary practices of three artists whose work with\u00a0story does have a liberating component.<\/p>\n

In 1963, artist\/activist John O\u2019Neal co-founded the Free Southern Theatre as a cultural\u00a0wing of the civil rights movement that used stories to promote agency in people who were at\u00a0once the least powerful and most affected. Rather than telling them what to do or think, the\u00a0company\u2019s performances were intended to stimulate post-show discussion. The exchange of\u00a0stories proved a better way of having dialogue than argument because, explains O\u2019Neal,<\/p>\n

Adversarial debates reward people who are trained in their techniques. Those tend to\u00a0be people who have the largest vocabularies and largest egos and most willingness to\u00a0claim ground and hold it. Which merely affirms the problem you\u2019re starting with in the\u00a0first place. So instead of standing on stage and answering questions, I moved off the\u00a0stage and sat in the audience and said, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you tell me a story that the experience\u00a0of the theatre evoked in you?\u201d<\/em> (O\u2019Neal 2002)<\/p>\n

In O\u2019Neal\u2019s current initiative, The Color Line<\/i>, story gathering is part of an assets-based\u00a0approach to dismantling racism. One artist, one educator, and one activist in each of several\u00a0towns collaborate around the local legacy of civil rights. The artist gathers personal stories\u00a0on the subject that are used in some way thereafter with the help of the educator and the\u00a0activist. The idea is that people may have limited material resources but are rich in experience.\u00a0The stories are vessels for what people have learned and what they find meaningful\u00a0that can be translated into educational and activist projects.<\/p>\n

Suzanne Lacy, who creates large scale, visually-compelling performances with nonactors\u00a0about issues that concern them, is cautious in her use of personal story. While she weaves\u00a0consciousness-raising processes into performative pieces, she finds that personal stories tend\u00a0to distort perspective, especially when they do not move to a larger level:<\/p>\n

Everyone operates within a personal narrative history and present that centralizes them\u00a0within a very vast world. One of the problems with race relations today [Lacy has worked intensively in cross-racial contexts] is how white people centralize the narrative. Like, \u201cI hurt so much because you are oppressed.\u201d As a director I remove myself from any given single representative narrative, and focus on creating mass or political perspective through the commonality of multiple narratives\u2014the spaces between the people.<\/em> (Lacy 2002)<\/p>\n

Over the past decade, shifting her focus from women to teenagers, Lacy has continued to\u00a0problematize personal story. She is interested in what the young people\u2019s stories reveal about\u00a0young people as a group. She helps young people analyze the social conditions that result in\u00a0their collective behavior. The stories have become source material for performances and also\u00a0for a curriculum that builds from a focus on themselves, to their personal relationships, to\u00a0their institutional and familial alliances, and then to their public position: \u201cWe\u2019d ask, \u2018How\u00a0do people treat you on the bus?\u2019 and they began to make the links. The kids operate as\u00a0beings in terms of their own personal narrative but they also operate as symbols for a culture,\u00a0with a political impact\u201d (Lacy 2002). Personal stories raise awareness of the kids as both\u00a0\u201cbeings\u201d and \u201csymbols,\u201d real individuals who are often treated generically as representatives\u00a0of a (maligned) group.<\/p>\n

The movement of Lacy\u2019s work with young people, from their individual experience to the\u00a0social implications, resonates with Boal\u2019s concept of ascesis. As Adrian Jackson describes,<\/p>\n

[W]e work on the case of an individual, and from that individual case we extrapolate\u00a0into the group present, and then, sometimes, from that group into the larger society of\u00a0which it is a microcosm or a fragment. This process Boal calls \u201cascesis,\u201d the movement\u00a0from the phenomenon to the law which regulates phenomena of that kind; and his\u00a0concept of \u201cosmosis\u201d enables this free play from one arena to the other, suggesting as it\u00a0does that no individual consciousness can remain unmarked by societal values.<\/em> (Jackson, cited in Boal 1995: xx)<\/p>\n

With ascesis as an underpinning, personal stories in the Forum Theatre process are combined,\u00a0and invented elements inserted to get to the scenario that the actors will perform.\u00a0Boal writes, \u201cAll the singular elements of the individual story must acquire a symbolic <\/i>character,\u00a0and shed the constraints of singularity, uniqueness\u201d (1995: 40). Boal identifies\u00a0singularity as the domain of the psychotherapist, and generalization as the terrain of the\u00a0theatre artist. He emphasizes that TO \u201cis the theatre of the first person plural. It is absolutely\u00a0vital to begin with an individual account, but if it does not pluralize of its own accord we\u00a0must go beyond it by means of analogical induction\u201d\u2014that is, proceeding by analogy rather\u00a0than identification (1995: 45). I have by and large been astounded by the significant discoveries\u00a0people have made through this process. Although Boal counsels participants to make\u00a0sure they feel represented in the story brought to forum, given the degree of self-assertion\u00a0required, it is questionable if people necessarily do so. And does the collectivization of the\u00a0story inadvertently take it away from the teller? Attention must be paid to balancing the\u00a0usefulness of stories for both the identifying group and the individual teller.<\/p>\n

Boal, O\u2019Neal, and Lacy all fulfill what Benhabib […]\u00a0calls redefining the \u201cprivate, non-public, and non-political\u201d as \u201cmatters of public concern,\u00a0issues of justice, and sites of power\u201d, but they do so in different ways. Boal proposes a structured\u00a0approach to illuminating the political realities embedded in personal stories. The\u00a0subject of these embryonic stories always encounters, struggles with, but does not overcome\u00a0oppression. Thus an opening is provided for public problem-solving. The structure of\u00a0O\u2019Neal\u2019s story circles is looser than the structures of TO, inviting any kind of story rather than one focused on oppression. O\u2019Neal sees dialoguing through story rather than arguing as\u00a0providing an accessible point of entry into a liberatory practice. Whereas Boal\u2019s Forum\u00a0Theatre typically begins by people identifying an oppression and then bringing specifics of\u00a0people\u2019s lives to illustrate it, Lacy begins with personal stories to lead to political revelations.\u00a0For example, as long as rape was considered a private matter, it was beyond the ken of political\u00a0guidelines. The very act of speaking about it publicly helped move it into a domain\u00a0where regulations could be set.<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n

[1]<\/a> Fragments from Jan Cohen-Cruz, Mady Schutzman (eds.), A Boal Companion. Dialogues on theatre and cultural politics<\/strong>, New York: Routledge, 2006.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Jan Cohen-Cruz[1] The very act of speaking one\u2019s story publicly is a move toward subjecthood, toward agency, with political implications. The story circle is one of the most pervasive forms of workshopping and playbuilding in community-based performance. Although there are many variations, circles typically involve from five to twenty-five people who choose a theme and then, one by one, tell a tale. Each story is welcome no matter what its style. In accordance with the Appalachia-based Roadside Theater for example, stories might recount family history, local history, folklore, ghost lore, a personal experience, or even riddles or jokes passed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[80],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3082"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3082"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3441,"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3082\/revisions\/3441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}