Performance Activism: Precursors and Contemporary Pioneers

Chapter 1
By Way of Introduction
DRAFT

This is a book about a growing international movement that approaches performance as a means of social, political and cultural change. This movement, despite the fact that it has serious implications on the very nature of learning and knowing, has emerged primarily outside of the academy in the arenas of community education and development, critical psychology, civic engagement, and political activism.  It embraces the proposition/insight/discovery, arrived at primarily through on-the-ground, grassroots activity, that play and performance have the power to significantly impact, indeed even transform, individuals and communities and generate collective community creativity.

It has long been noted, and, since the emergence of the academic discipline of Performance Studies, emphasized in that arena (and beyond), that much of human activity can be approached/studied/understood as performance.  That approach/understanding is a perquisite for the discussion that follows.  That said, while much of Performance Studies research and writing looks at performance as a means of sustaining and/or restoring day-to-day behavior, that is, as the activity by which we construct and preserve social reality, what is specifically under investigation here is a movement that approaches performance as an activity self-consciously entered into as a means of engaging social issues and conflicts, that is, as an ensemble activity by which we re-construct/transform social reality. 

This book is about that movement’s discovery of itself. 

A movement, in usual political and cultural parlance, refers to a group of people working together, on a mass scale, to advance their shared political, social or artistic ideas and concerns.  The movement documented and explored here didn’t start with a group of people working together.  It started/is starting with individuals and small groups of people working primarily in isolation and obscurity—on the train platforms of India, the prisons of South Africa, the war-ravaged villages of Colombia, the favelas of Brazil and the poor communities of New York City.  While there is considerable overlap in values and concerns, this movement doesn’t have a unified ideology, program or specific set of goals.  What the individuals and small groups that make up this movement-in-the-making do have in common is that they are seeking new ways, through play and performance, to be helpful to the poor and oppressed, to build community, to address local and international social and political issues, to bring antagonistic forces and communities together, to heal, to educate, to free the imaginations of those who have had their imaginations beaten or bombed or starved out of them. 

These diverse individuals and small groups—consisting of theatre, dance and performance artists, political and social activists, community and youth organizers, progressive and critical educators and therapists, social workers, doctors and nurses, organizational consultants, and others—at first had (and many still have) little or no idea that others in far flung corners of the planet were experimenting with and developing approaches similar to theirs, using play and performance outside the confines of the institution of the theatre to impact on daily-life-as-lived.  The motion, flux, development being documented and explored is the transition in contemporary societies of performance from primarily an aesthetic activity practiced by trained specialists (actors) to a social/political activity practiced by ordinary people.  Put another way, this book is the story of performance’s ongoing journey from the stage into daily life.  

The process of self-discovery in which this movement is now engaged by necessity involves a grappling with the nature of performance, for it is performance as an activity/tactic/method that distinguishes this movement from those of the past as well as those with which it co-exists in the world today. Thus, the question of the nature of performance at this point in history might also be viewed as the overarching frame of this book. In tracing the movement’s self-discovery, we must ask where it came from and why it is emerging at this point in history.  For millennium in both Western and Eastern cultures, performance was something that took place in the theatre, whatever its physical or social space looked like in a particular time, place, culture.  Trained actors performed (“acted”) while audience members stood or sat and watched them do it.  Performance was, for the most part, the province of trained specialists who functioned within clearly recognized cultural and institutional frames. Looking at the cultural, intellectual and political contexts in which this began to change over the last century—what we might call the pre-history of performance activism—is the concern of Part 1.

Over the last four decades the practice and understanding of performance has begun to change on a mass scale both in rural traditional societies and urban modern ones—and, of course, it’s not unrelated that the line dividing the two has become increasing porous. The globalization or internationalization of an interdependent common economy—capitalism—and its concurrent cultural and ethical perspectives has advanced rapidly over the last half century and is the historical context in which performance activism is emerging.  I find it helpful to look at the coming-into-being performance movement in relation to “movement” as it’s used in musical composition. In music, a movement is a principal division of a longer musical work connected in terms of key, tempo and structure.  This book, among other things, is an exploration of how diverse performance activists and activities are emerging in response to cultural, social and political developments in particular cultures and nation states.  What these keys, tempos, and structures sound, look and feel like, and how they resonate with each other, is focus of Part 2. 

The coming-into-being movement being documented and explored here is both political and cultural, though not in the conventional or popular meaning of either.  Cultural is not here interchangeable with aesthetic, that is, this movement is not primarily an artistic movement.  The aesthetic and artistic approaches to performance included in this coming-into-being movement vary tremendously; what unites its practitioners is the framing of performance outside of the theatre and inside the continuum of social change tactics. If culture is understood in the anthropological and sociological sense as the sets of values, customs, traditions, and norms of social behavior evolved by human societies over the course of their histories, then a movement challenging the accepted uses and meaning(s) of performance in a society is self-evidently cultural in nature.  What is less obvious, perhaps, is how the coming-into-being movement being documented and explored in this book is political.  Indeed, how, or in what sense, it is political is a matter of some dispute to those involved with it.  My working premise for this exploration is that the line between the cultural and the political is everywhere a porous one.  If, indeed, culture is approached as the complex of values, customs, traditions, and norms of social behavior evolved by human societies over the course of their histories then all culture is political and all politics is cultural. Power relations—and the economic and social structures they are related to—are a part of, indeed, embody, the larger frame of a society’s values, customs, traditions and norms of social behavior.  Perhaps a clearer way of saying this is: politics is a subdivision of culture. 

That said, there are many unanswered questions and different points-of-view about the political nature of the coming-into-being movement being documented and explored here.  Among them: In what ways can play and performance impact on communities and their social and power dynamics?  Can small groups working separately impact the large frameworks of tradition and custom?  Can cultural activity be transferred/transformed into political activity?  If so, how? What are the dynamics between local projects (for all live performance is by its nature local) and initiatives connecting such projects across political and cultural barriers?  Is there a relationship (and if so what is its nature) between the power generated by groups of people involved in collective creative activity and political power?  Are there connections (and, if so, what kinds of connections) between those using performance toward various ends, for example between those performing to heal, to educate, to bridge antagonisms, to build community, and to imagine new possibilities?  What is the impact of short-lived projects as distinct from long-term institutions? In short: how do all these aspects of performance as a form of activism relate to the question of power and authority?  For me, part of the value of documenting and exploring the movement’s self-discovery is tracing/unpacking/discovering its various approaches to power and politics and the interaction and mutual influence these various approaches are having on each other. 

Overarching all these questions about political impact is the question of the nature of performance itself.  Perspectives within the movement range from viewing performance as a tool-for-result, that is, for example, as a tool for teaching, or for building bridges between antagonistic communities, or for healing trauma, or for stimulating social action, etc., to those who approach performance as simultaneously a tool-and-result, that is, who understand performing as not simply a tool for change but also as the change itself.  This view approaches performance as an activity of qualitative human development, as an activity through which we human beings simultaneously shape ourselves and the larger world.  Put another way, this perspective sees performance itself is a form of power.  While these questions are, in many ways, my frame of reference and weave their way throughout the book, they are examined in depth in Part 3.

*

Before you, hopefully, plunge into the depths of this book, I want to acknowledge its limitations—at least the ones I’m conscious of at this point.

First, movement, as I use here, implies a large (and expanding) number of people engaging in similar activity—in this case, the activity of performance to impact on daily life.  An activity, as distinct from a thing, is in constant motion, flux, transition, and development.  This book, therefore, can only capture a particular moment in the activity’s evolution (movement).   It is, at best, a snapshot.  This movement is also remarkably wide-spread. It is, therefore, impossible to document it in all of its diversity or to give all the contemporary pioneers of performance activism the attention they deserve.  In researching for this book, I interviewed at least twice as many performance activists as I have been able to include in these pages.  This is not a reflection on the importance, influence or vitality of their work.  My decisions about who and what to include were always difficult and sometimes painful to make.  They have been motivated by an attempt to make the study as diverse as possible geographically and culturally, while also bringing attention to projects and people who have had little international exposure.  

In this regard, I would like to note that this study does not give Theatre of the Oppressed—by far the largest trend within the performance activist movement—the attention its influence deserves. While I do touch on its origins and trace, at least to some extent, its influence on subsequent trends and forms of performance activism, I don’t attempt a thorough examination of Theatre of the Oppressed per se.  This is a conscious and conflicted decision based how much literature, documentation and dialogue already exist relative to Theatre of the Oppressed.  My attempt is not to denigrate Theatre of the Oppressed but provide as wide a lens as possible to the varieties of performance activism emerging around the world.

On the other hand, I give a lot of attention to performance activism that is rooted in social therapeutics.  In fact, I dedicate all of Part 3 to it. There are three reasons for this attention.  First, its on-the-ground influence far outweighs its recognition in academic circles. While known and respected in certain areas of psychology and education, there is a notable gap relative to social therapeutic performance activism in Theatre, Performance Studies, and Sociological/Political Science research.  I am hopeful that my unpacking of its history, practice and potential may begin to reverse this neglect.  Second, social therapeutic performance activism is very broad, touching on all aspects of people’s lives (e.g., their work, family, health and mental health, etc.) rather than being confined to a particular project (or population or location) or two. Its roots in a broad politically-motivated mass organizing effort to engage and transform social reality has meant a continuous experimentation with creating new activities and organizations capable of utilizing the power that performance activism generates. Third, social therapeutic performance activism is the trend I am most intimate with, as I have been part of bringing it into being, along with thousands of others, for forty years.  For these reasons, I am eager to share the discoveries of social therapeutic performance activism with the larger movement and with readers around the world. 

As an active player in the performance activism movement, I make no claim to objective scholarship (In fact, I don’t think there is such a thing.)  As part of this emerging movement, I view this book as a contribution to the movement’s ongoing process of self-discovery. To use Donovan’s words, I humbly offer this book as, “gift from a flower to a garden.” [Epic Records, LSN 6071, 1967]  

The garden I write for is not only those currently engaged in this performance-based social change work, but also the second and third generations of such activists coming down the line. It’s also meant for all of you who have never encountered or heard of performance activism before picking up this book. There is something new and, I believe, positive and important, in the world and you should know about it.  My active role in helping to bring performance activism into existence also means, of course, that I bring my own experiences, my history, my influences, my politics and my (albeit unintended) biases to the creation of this book.  While I apologize for none of them, you should be aware that they are, for better or worse, part of the warp and weave of the text you are about to read.

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