Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Towards a Participatory Public: The Meeting of Theater and Community Amrita Ramanan
HowlRound: When I was seven years old, my mother signed me up to audition for a community theater production of The Pied Piper of Hamlin at our local recreation center. After a relatively painless audition process in which all of the kids within my age group were gathered in a room and asked to say a few lines from the script, I received the role of a rat. Not just any rat, but the “head rat” that would ultimately lead the other rats to their watery grave. After receiving news of the role, I left the room with mixed feelings. There was something energizing about the opportunity to be part of this new experience, but the tediousness of the long rehearsal hours and the additional work I needed to contribute in addition to everything else I felt I was balancing in my overextended seven-year-old lifestyle felt overwhelming (can you tell that I was dramatic?).
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This is a great article, full of fantastic examples of the importance of community theater. I think that we often forget that the audience is an integral and essential part of theater, and that engaging them in what we do is a great way to promote the arts. I believe that by reaching out to the community and possibly transcending the traditional performer/technician/artist to audience relationship, we can change not just the community but also the way that theater is created and performed.
I wonder, however, if community outreach really does bring more people and attention to the theater. It seems that the people who would be interested about following a production process, as in the "Theater 101" example, would be people who are ALREADY interested in the arts. But then again, Ramanan's experience at Double Edge Theater working with individuals from the neighboring farming community shows that sometimes, this kind of effort really does reach out to people who have no previous interest or experience in the arts. I think that what she says at the end about adapting the model to different communities is very true, and a great outreach program in one place might be a complete failure in another area.
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