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“That’s how a chilling effect works: It makes everyone terrified, resulting in self-censorship and preemptive punishments on teachers who transgress some imagined line of propriety.”

-Waldman and Sargent, Opinion | Teachers are under fire in increasingly bizarre ways: One Mississippi educator was fired for reading kids a silly book about butts.
The Washington Post, 3.11.2022

In today’s Washington Post opinion piece, Teachers Are Under Fire in Increasingly Bizarre Ways, authors Waldman and Sargent also write:

“In Idaho, the appropriately titled House Bill 666 would provide jail sentences for teachers or librarians who disseminate “material harmful to minors.”

How, the article wonders, and how (I ask) can librarians do their jobs? How can teachers possibly teach (or enjoy teaching) when the message is that they are probably up to no good? When they are surveilled and scrutinized? How can a teacher be playful, creative, spontaneous, joyful, loud, funny, confident, encouraging, or authentically engaged when she might be fired for the “wrong” expression of any of those qualities?

Claims of harm–and the extremely general denunciation of “harmful” acts — are specious, like calling someone a witch if they act in ways that you decide are disobedient. The proof of a “Witch!” allegation was found (or not) by strapping down and dunking the ostensible witch under water, where, if she drowned, she wasn’t a witch after all– and if she did not drown, she was obviously dangerous and must be burned at the stake. Unlucky was she who ran afoul of the local clique of “Christian” mean girls, who’d smile in smug satisfaction while enjoying the spectacle of their victims running out of air or writhing in the flames.

“Harmful” (the term now thrown at anyone bullies don’t like) is a charge that is used to justify self-righteous attacks against educators who have run afoul of some cabal. The term has no clear or useful definition. It relies upon hearsay. It privileges the accuser’s feelings, words, and perspective over the feelings, words, and perspective of the accused (and over any counter-narratives provided by witnesses, and over curiosity or reason). “You caused harm!” now excuses attacks. Pointing the finger at someone with the claim, “You caused harm!” is like crying out in the public square, “You murdered my child, you Devil!” The imputation is likely to get the accused set upon by an angry mob without any further evidence, much less dialogue.

“Harm” is subjective. In contexts where “harm” is used to fire someone (the teacher in the article reads a book to kids that includes butts and farts, and is out of a job in no time, having thus potentially harmed children) the term “harm” functions as an incontrovertible label. “You caused harm” is used to shut down lively discourse, criticisms of authority, nuanced thinking, and (gasp) humor or other forms of free expression.

Can harm actually be caused by a teacher? Of course, duh. I won’t go into sexual improprieties or assaults here, or patterns of obdurate abuse of power. Let’s just talk about offenses like reading a funny butt book to kids, or challenging college students to think beyond and outside their comfort zones and political scripts. We teachers can and do (all, I imagine) sometimes hurt others, inadvertently or on purpose. That’s the nature of being a person in a room with other people, or a living thing among other living things. Part of the courage needed to be a teacher– to stand, day after day, in front of a roomful of mixed learners (some perpetually mad; some eager; some smart; some not so smart; some hypercritical; some eternally bored)– involves finding ways to connect, to enliven interest, to spark change (for learning is change) while remaining, ourselves, engaged, and hopefully while being present in each moment, even sometimes forgetting ourselves as we enter into classroom conversations. When we forget ourselves– stop monitoring our behavior–we’re way more likely to make a quip, or to speak sharply about a topic we care about, or to accidentally step on a student’s emotional toe because we assumed we’re all on the same friendly page, but we’re not.

Most of the time, if we’re wrong, we say “Oops!” and “Sorry! Misspoke! Didn’t intend offense!” or “Here’s what I meant to say,” or “Won’t happen again.”

To productively deal with alleged harm, prosecutorial types as well as the prosecuted might be wisely advised to be curious and specific: What happened? What was said or done? By whom, to whom, with what effect, according to whom? Was there an error or misperception involved? Was there a physical assault? A verbal assault? Is a conversation in order? An apology? Should mutual understanding be sought, or perhaps not? Was the harm truly egregious? Or maybe were someone’s feelings hurt in a way that might heal after a few hours’ anger and a glass of wine with friends (or even with the purported “harmer” to mend the relationship?)

One remembers, with profound gratitude, being guided or sometimes just propelled through uncomfortable feelings and resistance, by great teachers and librarians… whose business it was to expose students to new ways of thinking; whose life’s calling was to wake students up to their own creative, intellectual and emotional capacities. Thank you, Miss Tyler! Thank you, Monte Henrie! Thank you, Joanie Evans, Casey Kizziah, Lisa Jacobson, Robert Perillo, Fay Simpson, Polina Klimovitskaya.

One remembers being helped to laugh at one’s own ignorance, weaknesses and fears. Thank you, Jimmy Tripp, Mario Siletti.

One remembers experiencing, in school, brilliant moments of insight and growth after having been surprised, even shocked, in transformative classrooms. Thank you, Barbara Dobos!

Gone are those days, thanks to the tyrannical Crusaders (not for anything truly good, only against what they deem bad) who– believing only in their own pumped-up feelings of perfection–cannot imagine how wrong they are, nor acknowledge the harm they, themselves, wreak.

Waldman, P., & Sargent, G. (2022, March 11). Opinion | teachers are under fire in increasingly bizarre ways. The Washington Post. Retrieved March 11, 2022, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/03/10/teachers-under-fire-censorship-books/

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Written with Michael Karson, Ph.D., J.D.

Beware of Tartuffe entering your family

We (MK & JG) were talking about the systemic therapy technique of treating the problem not as an idea or a conflict but as a separate character in the family drama. In this approach, depression, agoraphobia, anorexia, and alcoholism, for example, can all be considered as having their own presence and their own agenda.

We wondered if this might be a useful way of considering the role of the smartphone and social media in some families. Janna was thinking about the pull of the screen—the seductive, almost irresistible pull—that, like a manipulative narcissist at the dinner table, dominates the space, determines the course and limits the scope of conversation, demands attention, turns participants into consumers of his own message, distracts from the boredom of maintaining established relationships, and works to beguile in order to control the available emotional, social, and economic resources.

What character from literature would it be? Michael wondered.

After considering the daemons of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials—animal extensions of humans souls, or familiars—and Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula (who, once invited inside a home, can come and go at will; who craves human blood, and who transforms those upon whom he feeds into the undead—a later post, maybe) we came up with Moliere’s Tartuffe.

Tartuffe, a stranger, impresses bourgeois family man Orgon with his show of piety: Orgon sees him praying in a church and, moved by Tartuffe’s goodness and his poverty, invites him to live in his home. Orgon doesn’t suspect that the destitute Tartuffe knows he’s watching when Tartuffe gives some of the alms he has received. A certain emptiness in the lives of Orgon’s family now makes them susceptible to their new boarder’s claims of godliness. Orgon and his mother are both credulous if not infatuated, but others can see that Tartuffe is a hustler, all show, who merely pretends to be a moral guide. He is in fact greedy, gluttonous, and lustful, shrewd and conniving.

In such a way, your smartphone and the platforms it expresses (platforms designed only to operate upon your psyche and to empty your bank account) wheedles its way into your life with implicit claims of relevance and goodness, its admonitions towards self-improvement.

* * *

Consider the family’s complaints about Orgon’s obsession with Tartuffe:

                                                a sweetheart

  Could not, I think, be loved more tenderly;

  At table he must have the seat of honor.

Anyone offering actual human contact who has ever been brushed off—at dinner, say—in favor of a smartphone can understand the frustration. The smartphone’s centerpiece in family life is also echoed in these observations about Orgon’s behavior around Tartuffe:

  He’s lost in constant admiration, quotes him

  On all occasions, takes his trifling acts

  For wonders, and his words for oracles.

It is the nature of obsession to devalue whatever is not engrossing.

 Whoever does his [Tartuffe’s] will, knows perfect peace,

 And counts the whole world else, as so much dung.

* * *

The false fronts of social media were designed to keep us searching for approval, just as the religious front of Tartuffe was designed (by himself) to make Orgon and his mother feel righteous by following him. Ultimately, the problem with a false front is that it leads us to “pay the self-same honor both to masks and faces.” When we interact on social media, we can forget that (not counting real-time, face-to-face talk on screens) one can see only a mask. We can’t see the spaces between the thought and the post or text or “like,” so we tend to assume that things were spontaneous that were not.

* * *

The difference between the hypocrite and the truly devout is that

They [the truly devout] are not always judging all our actions,

They’d think such judgment savored of presumption.

But Tartuffe—and social media—judge everything they see.

* * *

Orgon agrees to marry off his daughter to Tartuffe, even though she is in love with someone else, someone suitable. The daughter is pretty sure she will kill herself as a result—ironic in light of recent concerns that the suicide rate among American kids has spiked since the invention of the smartphone.

Neither Tartuffe nor a smartphone can meet the real needs of a teenage girl.

* * *

Perhaps the height of tartuffery in social media is its use to generate charitable donations. Tartuffe constantly trumpets his own charity when in reality he is nothing but a sponge. The idea that a social media company generates ad revenue for each click on a charity page is pretty sobering.

* * *

Certain apparent self-reflections on the part of social media moguls—note The Social Dilemma (2020) —may seem to refute the analogy, but think again: when caught at duplicity, Tartuffe proclaims his own wickedness, which leads Orgon to defend him.

Orgon disinherits his son rather than hear any criticism of Tartuffe (even though Tartuffe admits the accusations were true). And when Tartuffe is seen to want too much, his patron offers even more. It’s a way of disproving that one is a slave to idolize one’s master, and that applies pretty clearly to some people’s attitude toward their phones.

During an undergraduate Communication class in which the topics were responsiveness, emotional resilience, and presence in relationships, Janna picked up a nearby i-phone—all the students had theirs on the table in front of them, as usual. This was pre-COVID, when touching someone’s device was not thought to be a health concern, but Janna might as well have grabbed the student by the buttons and ripped open her shirt, so shocked was the reaction.

She used the i-phone (gently and briefly) as a prop, to demonstrate what interpersonal communication can look and feel like when one party keeps glancing at their screen while the other party wants to create a live, present conversation. Within fifteen seconds of having touched it, she laid the device back down in front of the student—who (along with her classmates) were thereafter unable to focus upon the point of the demonstration. Several angrily defended their at-home, in-class, and everywhere use of their devices, using language and tone suggesting that Janna had rudely and personally insulted them. They needed to be reachable by parents, they insisted. They needed their devices in order to take notes. Their phones were not distractions, but tools. If Janna were not old (one student proposed) she would have a different relationship to smartphones and screens. She would understand their benign and beneficial uses, and she would not even playfully call into question their unassailable goodness.

* * *

Google and social media platforms rely upon algorithms that detect pretty much all of our proclivities, our desires, our fetishes. Tartuffe gets the upper hand at last because he knows the family’s secrets. He cons the father into deeding him the house. In pursuing an affair with the mistress of the house, he for once reveals the heart of his hypocrisy.

In any case, your scruple’s easily

Removed. With me you’re sure of secrecy,

And there’s no harm unless a thing is known.

The public scandal is what brings offence,

And secret sinning is not sin at all.

* * *

The play resolves with a deus ex machina—the king steps in and sets things right. Permit us to suggest that getting the deus out of the machine is just what’s needed.

We don’t have a host of suggestions, although an awareness of how media operate—how platforms are designed to both addict us and to commodify our attention—and a real grasp of the relational costs of phubbing (the actual term for snubbing present people in favor of whatever notification or unanswered need demands attention on one’s device) can help. Media literacy, which emphasizes messages and critical consumption, is a good idea—teach critical awareness of how messages are constructed and how we use media, and cultivate curiosity, not defensiveness, about our own media habits—that has gained considerable traction, at least in the Communication discipline and in primary education, over the past twenty years.

Perhaps the lesson is cultivating genuine presence: doing the work and making the investment of actually listening and responding to people in real time who are trying to distract you from your device.

Also, it might be useful to distinguish social screen time (such as playing video games with others or watching movies with others) from solo screen time, which leaves children at the mercy of tartuffery.

Moliere (1664) Tartuffe 1664) Curtis Hidden Page (translator)

Pullman, P. (1995-2000) His dark materials. Scholastic Children’s Books.

Stoker, B. (1897) Dracula. Constable and Co.

.

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I planned take up with a couple of folks’ Facebook pages but seems I have rather more to say than might be welcome on someobody else’s sovereign rhetorical space. At least here, I can go on and on, as I am wont to do, and I haven’t offended an original poster on his own page.

I refer to the tempest in the teacup that has come on the heels of an actual tempest in our streets in recent days. I just read J.K. Rowling’s essay. It is thoughtful and well-expressed, not the angry, hateful, ignorant screed I expected, based solely on the outraged response it has gotten in the press and especially on social media. What troubles me greatly, as a teacher of critical thinking and dialogue, is the idea that, according to some bandwagon thinkers, anyone not on the bandwagon should be disallowed to have their own, different experiences and narratives (about which, for Rowling’s own part and on her own behalf, she speaks eloquently–at least in the essay presently the subject of the ruckus). Rowling, I take it, according to her critics, is to be soundly and publicly spanked for daring to express her own thoughts on a subject that, she makes clear, is of deep personal interest to her and important to everyone, not only to those who identify as trans (and not just to those most activist, most vocal, and most angry). Rowling is rightly concerned about the chilling effects, upon critical thinking and public conversation, of any movement or discourse that brooks no dialogue and no nuance; that labels, as an enemy, anyone who doesn’t fall in line and walk the approved talk. Her reflections upon her own youth resonate powerfully with my own (disallowed, untold, marginalized) story) of coming to terms with, finally accepting and making a space for my biological sex and my experienced/performed/ascribed gender and sexuality (both of which varied fluidly along a spectrum) in a world that tolerated some, but not much, deviation. Claiming to be a proponent of freedom of expression while punishing a woman who speaks her truth is bewildering to me and strikes me as anti-feminist and even anti-woman: surely, Rowling’s right to dissent and to speak her mind was hard-fought and hard-won by feminists and by herself. It must have taken her, a public figure with a lot to lose, a great deal of courage, in this “I Hereby Cancel Thou!” era of social media, to challenge the emergent, master narrative of the self-righteous marginalized: to dare to tell her own story as if it were as legitimate as the stories of others, and to have her own perspective. She must have given her essay careful thought and sleepless nights, and ended up feeling that she had to take the risk. I don’t see anything in her essay that is, truly, “devastating” as at least one headline labeled it. (The number of women who are raped every year globally is devastating. The number of black men in prison, or the number of black victims of police violence is devastating. The scope of prescription drug dependance and abuse is devastating. Children kept in cages at our border– that is devastating. Rowling’s essay is not).

Rowling’s reflections might be welcomed as adding yet more depth, breadth and understanding to a complex subject that is relevant to all humans–in which case, she and everyone else has an equal stake in it. Or, perhaps, this ought to be an insider movement, no concern of Rowling’s or anybody else who is not vociferously identified with the rhetoric (in which case, why ought anybody to care what an irrelevant, “insider-only” movement says or wants?) This is what I hear Rowling saying: she is concerned, as are many (gay, lesbian, bi, straight, female, male, trans) people–scholars, health professionals, social philosophers, feminists– about how women and girls are impacted by a return to binary thinking that underpins some versions of trans performance; concerned about the serious implications of messages we send to developing children, adolescents and young adults who necessarily face questions of who they are, how they “fit in” or don’t, and how to deal with powerful, often conflicted feelings of emerging sexuality and identity–and she is also concerned that we have entered (yet) a(nother) time in our society when women who voice a reflection, story or opinion that doesn’t fall into political line with approved activist rhetoric are vilified, put back in their places and told to shut up.

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My home town paper from Casper, Wyoming came out, yesterday, with an article on the Aunt Jemima brand change. The post was followed by a spate of disgusted or enraged comments ranging from “Unbelievable!’ to “THIS IS SO IGNORANT ITS (sic) BEYOND BELIEF” to “I hope their sales plummet” to “What is becoming of the greatest country ever the political left and snow flakes (sic) will be its undoing.” Here are more:

“Silly people. No problem with Uncle Ben’s.”

“Sad. People should stop being so peddy (sic).”

“As an old, fat woman I am offended by Mrs. Butterworth products.”

“More knee-jerk stupidity.”

Interested in these responses, which number over 200 and counting as of this writing, I made a reply. What I did not address in my comments (that’s for a longer essay) is what I find most compelling, which is how, through a process Ernest Bormann called symbolic convergence, people respond to threats to values–to what must feel like threats to their very existence–by quickly dismissing and ridiculing an idea and then piling on, reaffirming belonging to one group by disaffirming belonging to a different group.

Anyway, what I focused on instead was this:

“I trust,” I wrote, “that most commenters here are intelligent, curious people– some, Christians, perhaps?– who are not interested in just blowing off steam, dismissing an Oil City headline with a contemptuous snort of self-righteousness. Thus, I’ve found and shared some interesting history of the AJ brand below. To that, I add a few thoughts. If one is a black American who has grown up in a white-dominated culture –with our nation’s history of enslavement of and violence against human beings with brown and black skin (and the legacy: generations-long, terrible familial, social and economic effects and ongoing repression, by force, of entire communities) then icons like Aunt Jemima (see the history of the brand below) are insulting and demeaning. They perpetuate the myth that America has been equally good to everybody, which may feel true to some of us but certainly is demonstrably untrue for many.

Yet, do not all citizens deserve the dignifying respect of an American company’s public recognition that its icon has a racist history? Aren’t we all better off acknowledging Jemima’s meanings? What exactly is lost, to any of us, in the Pepsi corporation’s move to update a line of pancake and syrup product with a new name, one that does not remind black Americans, among other things, that black people were once routinely depicted as being jolly in spite of their enslavement?

Point taken that significant change threatens the status quo and challenges our comforting sense of what we claim as our own history and identity. But, our collective history/histories (no matter how familiar and comforting to those who were not excluded from comfort) also hide sins (or wrongdoings, if you prefer) that are possible to redress with simple acknowledgments and responsiveness. Culture, by its nature, learns and evolves. That’s good, because cultural symbols can be toxic to entire groups of people. The time came, in the male-dominated marketing, advertising and entertainment industries, to stop representing women as only capable of being housewives, manipulative shrews or brainless bimbos. The time came to stop representing all men as handsome, hard-muscled heroes, good only for fighting, killing and seduction, or as fat slobs. The time came to stop representing all Native Americans as bad guys or loyal sidekicks; all Jews as greedy and all people of color as lazy. We live among others not exactly like ourselves; we have different stories, but we share empathy. If you cannot empathize, think of it this way. If I use an image of you, laughing and dancing while I call the tune, to sell my product, you’d be right to expect me to stop when I finally understand that it’s humiliating, not harmless. https://www.businessinsider.com/aunt-jemima-history-logo…

I am pretty sure that this will be unread by most people, will receive an angry face or two in response, perhaps a couple of thumbs-up and conceivably a death threat.

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As I plan my courses for spring (one is a conversation-based core course; the other, a performance course) I brace for what has become normal: face-to-face, interpersonal behavior that undermines collective focus, presence and wholehearted intellectual participation. It is more common than not for interlocutors, regardless of how it comes across to others (who have put their own devices away, and who are trying to be fully present) to indulge in the perpetual entertainment on the screen in their hands AND to defiantly excuse their constant checking: “You just don’t understand! I MUST read this text! I HAVE TO respond to this post! I can’t POSSIBLY sit here without my phone at arm’s length, its screen ready to distract me, just in case something happens somewhere ELSE.”
 
It is acceptable to opt-out of even the most basic prosocial exercise of granting full attention to what a friend, teacher, parent or child is saying in the actual, physical space we share. It’s discourteous, yes, but apparently fine anyway, to avert one’s eyes to the little personal distractor; to openly read texts and to respond, even while the other, present party may be valiantly attempting to develop a topic or co-create a good conversation.
 
It’s usual, now, to eschew the awkward, human discomfort of our own feelings of social embarrassment, to avoid trying to bridge the weirdness of our differences: differences in background, culture, attitudes, values, even differences in communicative styles.
 
Phubbing—for so compulsive phone-checking is called—is not healthy, but it’s apparently the standard way that we’re now “together”. My students increasingly react with barely-concealed rage and defensiveness if I suggest that having their phones out, competing with the present, physical human exchanges, isn’t productive under some circumstances, in some settings, in some contexts. “You can’t make me put away my phone” has become the outraged cry. *
 
Argue as one may about how one, personally, can multitask out the yingyang—fine, whatever, aren’t you something—doesn’t it depend upon the tasks? Working on a project with a friend, both of you on computers, chit-chatting and murmuring responses to one another while looking at something online, is very different from trying to talk through a personal issue; different from listening when someone is telling a story, and very different from meeting the demands of contributing to a difficult, nuanced conversation in which thinking of and posing thoughtful questions depends upon having followed the thread.
 
In fact, even if one could, miraculously, pay full attention while actually only paying partial attention, one cannot have a committed, thoughtful, connected conversation about many subjects when one is simultaneously signaling, nonverbally, to the other person or persons that one is not exactly fully-engrossed in the moment being shared. That’s because, one is not really sharing it. One is also on alert for something more interesting and entertaining to come across the transom at any moment.
 
Imagine kissing someone you really like, for the first time, and having them glance at their phone mid-kiss. Why are other acts of social communion that demand our full engrossment any different? Classroom teaching and learning are similar to that kiss in this respect: they have the potential to transform; to be challenging if not mind-blowing, intimate and profoundly satisfying, but only if mutual. A meaningful relationship is one in which the physical and intellectual presence of the other–and all the vulnerability and trust that presence implies–costs something: it costs attention. And often, not always, it fully repays and rewards.
 
There are many sides to be admitted. Not all human exchanges, in fact, probably most, are worth the hopes and efforts we may put into them. Some parents go on and on, repeating themselves or just filling the air with sound, if you grant them your undivided ear; some friends are only capable of holding court and never return the favor of curiosity or interest; some teens prattle, rant, criticize and exhaust patience; some teachers abuse the power of the podium and deliver boredom; some of us just suck at face-to-face communication, don’t care, expect others to carry the burden of liveliness, and over time become the problem. Granted, all that.
 
Finally: I’m not without resources, and this post isn’t a request for advice or explanation. I see, think about and understand the issues; I get the complexities. I read the studies, and I try interventions all the time: I have various approaches that work, more or less, or don’t. I have the conversation with students; I balance dialogue with a combination of suggestions, policies and in some cases (never beneficial to the learning process, but only to keeping things easy for myself) lots of tolerance. I’m not posting this in exasperation– I’m beyond exasperation; I’m reflective now– and I’m not asking “So, what do you do?” The topic is proposed as food for thought: here we are, all connected, constantly, addicted consumers, consuming the entertainment of connection like it’s pure heroin. To me, this present condition is alarming, perhaps even more an impoverishment than it can be a boon, and with every passing year, our device-based social behavior contributes to fewer and fewer collectively-focused, mutually-engaged and engaging exchanges in the classroom. We’re less brave, face-to-face. Less likely to create connections across difficult divides. Less tolerant of conversations that might start slowly and need encouragement. Less inventive in our interplay. Kind of… well, less interesting to be around, what with all the zombielike glazed eyes, fixed anxiously upon our glowy, beepy, demanding little objects.
 
Oh, well.
 
* Which creeps me out, and ought to creep all of us out. What have we become?
 

Phubbing and Why It’s Bad for Us | Newport Academy

Heard the word “phubbing” recently, and wondered what it means? “Phubbing” is a combination of two words: “phone” and “snubbing.” Thus, phubbing is the act of snubbing someone in a social situation by looking at your phone instead of paying attention to them.

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Denver Mudman performance, Greg and me, Central Park, NYC
Me (R) with another Urban Mudman. Taken in Central Park: one of several NYC/Bronx/Brooklyn

Urban Mudmen performances in the late ’80s.

Performance scholar Marvin Carlson (1996) says that “performance” is a term that’s so often encountered in such a variety of contexts that not much common ground exists. It’s hard to provide a good definition. For example, one sense of “performance” implies the public demonstration of particular skills. Another definition involves the general success of an activity in light of some standard of achievement that may not be precisely articulated—like a student’s performance in school, or an athlete’s performance in the heat of the game.

Erving Goffman (1959) sees performance as ritual interaction that strengthens social bonds. Goffman says, “To the degree that a performance highlights the common official values of the society in which it occurs, we may look upon it as a ceremony— an expressive rejuvenation and reaffirmation of the moral values of the community.”

Recognizing that our lives are structured according to repeated and socially sanctioned modes of behavior raises the possibility that all human activity, at least all activity that’s done with a consciousness of itself, could be considered “performance.

The difference between doing and performing, according to this way of thinking, doesn’t lie in the frame of “theatre-versus-real life” but in an attitude: we may do actions unthinkingly, but when we think about them, this introduces a consciousness that gives them the quality of performance.  (Carlson, 1996, p. 4).

But, if every human act is (or might legitimately be considered) “performance”… then, of what use is the term “performance?”

An ethnographer of human communication, Dell Hymes, has attempted to sort out an answer—because he believes that “performance” is a useful conceptual lens— by contrasting performance with behavior and conduct. He says, “Behavior is anything and everything that happens.”

“Conduct” is behavior under the aegis of social constraints and rules of interpretation. “Performance,” a subset of behavior (and probably of conduct) is “conduct in which an actor assumes a responsibility to an audience and to tradition.”

But, that mandate of “responsibility to an audience” is the topic of a lot of debate among social theorists. What does it mean, exactly—“responsibility to an audience?”

And, “responsibility to tradition” is equally problematic. But—maybe not so much. Plenty of theorists and scholars agree that performance is based on some preexisting script or pattern of action, which we could call “tradition.”  For instance, Richard Schechner, one of the principal voices in the study of performance, says calls performance “restored behavior.”

Others have likewise claimed there is no per-formance without pre-formance. That suggests that performance is all behavior that’s replicated and which is responsive to or grounded in social roles and structures—or to put it another way, whatever in the human repertoire has a precedent that it reproduces, thereby becomes performance. SO, performance is how society replicates itself. It’s how norms are established and set: through repetition and reinforcement: Ta da! There we have tradition.

In my performance studies class, I pose a question on the first day: “What does a good person do?” Whatever we do—emphasis on DO—when we’re trying to feel good about ourselves (this obviously excludes sneezing, which might feel good, but it’s not something we do in order to feel “good about our selves”) is based on some preexisting script or pattern of action that was, in the past, somehow rewarding.

When we see someone doing what we understand to be good, we see someone who, most probably, is doing something that resonates with our preexisting ideas of goodness: whatever words we give it.

I don’t mean goody-goodness; I mean what everyone likes to feel: good, not bad. What’s the nature of THAT good?

We use the terms good and bad all the time. Only, we may think of them as states of being (which is, in performance, an error). We might wonder, for example, “What is a good mom?” or “What is a good teacher?”

Let’s ask, instead, “What does a good mother do? What does a bad teacher do? What does a good sister do?” This leads us to performance thinking (and to complexity, because a good mother might step on a bug, or kick the dog, or curse, or even kill someone and still perform good mother competently).

Obviously, we need more context in which to answer a question like, “What does a good mother do?” “What does a good sister do?” (social roles)…”What does a good grocer do?” “What does a good President do?” (professional roles). If the context is simply our society, one might still come up with some answers that most people will agree with: “A good mother makes her child feel loved and safe and important.” “A good sister refrains from criticizing her brother, implicitly or explicitly.” “A good grocer makes sure his store is well-stocked and open convenient hours; she keeps the store clean, the prices as low as possible and the food on the shelves fresh.” “A good President represents the majority and the minority of the people, puts country before self-interest, seeks to unite and strengthen, speaks to inspire, follows and upholds the law, acts as a role model for children…” (etc.)

Why is that? Why would so many of us agree with those statements? It’s because good describes the way people ought to (are expected or morally beholden) behave in relationship to others, to their roles, and to their society. How people should perform.

And, performance is also a way that individuals and societies break things up, or shake things up. Janet Jackson exposes her nipple in front of millions of people, and somehow her performance galvanizes the media and consumes the nation’s discourse for a day or two— and results in all kinds of changes about what can and cannot be done by performers in certain regulated, mediated contexts.

Martin Luther King performs a speech at the nation’s capital and changes history. Al Quaida crashes airplanes into an American city and that performance changes the way the world works.

According to Victor Turner, these disruptions, or tears, or ruptures can ultimately serve to tighten and reinforce social norms…that is, if they don’t instead end up permanently dividing factions into intractable sides, which an outcome of social drama that he would call a permanent schism. That’s a whole other lecture. What I’m saying is that even as performance maintains and strengthens, it also disrupts and upsets, and sometimes, by doing both, helps to transform.

Performance scholars agree that one important characteristic of performance is that it involves a consciousness of doubleness in which the actual execution of an action is compared mentally with a potential, an ideal, or a remembered original model of that action.

The essence of this is the sense of an action carried out for someone: for a present audience, an invisible watcher, an imagined internal parent, for God, or for some observing part of ourselves that evaluates the action to be good, or beneficial, or rewarding (or not).

Doubleness, or awareness, can be seamless in performances that are sincere—that is, we believe our own performance—or can divide us into performer and observer, as in what Goffman calls “cynical” performance. Please: take a look at Philip Seymour Hoffman’s performance of Truman Capote, and especially pay attention to Capote’s performance for others at the dinner table in the scene Charming the Deweys.

Furthering the idea of doubleness and bringing it into the realm of how we learn and change, Jane Gallop (1995) draws attention to the dramatic or performative taking-on of others’ voices, or as she puts it, im-personation (hyphen included, presumably to draw attention to the “personation” part). The power of im-personation, for Gallop, is its doubleness: it must be taken playfully and seriously by both the performer and the audience.  She writes about impersonating a teacher when she was just learning to teach, for example, and the doubleness of that experience that eventually taught her to teach.

I once auditioned for a college chorus. The conductor asked me to sing the part of the soprano; I insisted that I could not. I had always associated soprano singing with girly-girls and weakness and showing off, and because that was not how I saw myself, I was convinced that I was, in no way, a soprano but firmly a first alto. The conductor looked disappointed and asked me to give it a try. Embarrassed, I said, “Okay, I can fake a soprano voice! I can sound just like a soprano–but it won’t be real.” As she played piano, I proceded to hit every note above high C powerfully and rotundly, as if I were Maria Grazia-Schiavo, surprising both of us. “But, that’s not really singing soprano,” I insisted. “Because, I can’t.”

Like Erving Goffman, Gallop sees the personal as a mask. She argues that when the personal appears, it is always as a result of a process of im-personation. Personhood is always a process of performing the personal for a public. Im-personation, whether it means appearing as a female, or appearing as a male, or appearing as a cool, disaffected athlete, or appearing as a quiet Christian man or an energetic and loving friend… it simply means “appearing as a person.”  Im-personation: the taking on of the mask of personhood.

The notion of this sort of performance, which has been written about extensively by Judith But­ler and other postmodern theorists, has been consistently misunderstood as meaning that we can be whatever we want.  That is obviously not the case. We can’t be whatever we want. But, we can play at be­ing whatever or whoever, or however we desire.

And, through play, we learn something. We can learn, deeply, in our bodies, in our movements, in our bones, something of what it might be to be different than we now are, to perform something or someone else. If we are used to describing ourselves as shy, and habitually play out shyness when we are with others, rehearsing it every time we do it—and even if we are totally convinced that we ARE shy (a stable characteristic of an unchanging self—whatever that might be!) performance, especially impersonation, lets us play at being bold. And then we learn, “Oh, if I can play at being bold, I can be bold.” What’s the difference, if it’s all performance?

As Butler (1988) points out, “to say that I ‘play’ at being one is not to say that I am not one ‘really,’ but rather, how and where I play at being one is the way in which that ‘being’ gets established, insti­tuted, circulated, and confirmed. This is not a performance from which I take radical distance, for this is deep-seated play, psychically entrenched play.”

In many of the above notions (ritual social interplay… doing with a sense of being noted or observed; pretending to be other than what/who/where one thinks of real… or half-seriously and half-passing as another) we can find a common sense in the notion of performance: that of play (or “a play”) of a deep nature, capable of recreating, sustaining, making visible, challenging, and recreating participants’ experience of self, of social sameness/difference, and of possibility.

Thus, in the idea of performance, there are deep implications for us, in terms of our ability to learn, change, and grow and to become different from what—or how—we “are” in the ways we want to be different.

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Here we are, in the thick of Mile High MFA summer season (and, here I am, in the thick of searching for a literary agent and—one is allowed to hope—a great editor and an enthusiastic publisher, all willing to take on my flawed work and help to make it stronger). Thus, writing, criticism, editing, revision and publishing are all on my mind. I came across a 2017 New Yorker article (click, or see below this post) and wondered if others might find the subject as thought-provoking as I do.

The blog post you’re reading now is an example of how easily one can hit a button and find an audience today. But, what we write about and post or publish—what we choose to spend time on and to put before readers in these extremely challenging times (and for what reasons) —seems worth considering. I’d argue it amounts to a matter of conscience. Do we just think, “If I have a feeling, I ought to share it?” Do we assume that our own emotions, encounters and adversities make experts of us in certain domains—or, do we make writing a process of inquiry, researching and reflecting upon subjects whose complexities we might not, at the outset, wholly grasp?

Or, do we respond—with curiosity and commitment, in fresh ways—to, say, questions of race and racism, crises of migration and immigration, drug cartels and other indomitable peddlers of misery? The plight of refugees, land use, injustice, poverty, democracy, women’s health and education? Do we interrogate our own entitlements, privileges, personal and social responsibilities, proposing new ways of thinking and telling (our own and others’) stories in ways that illuminate something otherwise hidden in these often tired or frustrating, yet vitally important, discourses?

Ought we investigate and profile innovative and/or courageous figures? Do we research and expose bullies and sociopaths who dominate the halls of corporate and political power? Do we help readers to better understand the nuances of a given local or national challenge, trend or issue?

Ought we raise topics for mutual consideration and open up spaces in which different opinions and values can truly exist? Create fiction that reveals the invisible, gives voice to the unspoken or the unspeakable? Make poetry that, like music, resonates in the bones and expands the soul? Write with self-awareness, humor, generosity and respect for our readers (those who bother, in spite of having their own lives and troubles,  to engage with our work?) Do we seek to understand (or even to acknowledge the lived humanity of) our readers at all?

Ought we gaze into a mirror, see only ourselves, and sob, “Now, there’s someone worth writing about! Especially the sad and unfair parts! The world needs to know how I suffer!”

Ever since Holly Hughes first made me uncomfortable, blew my mind, and opened my pores back in the early ’90s (World Without End), I’ve reacted to personal narrative performances and personal essays in two ways.

First, NO: not if I’m supposed to understand the author as a special case, to applaud the self-appointed, plucky-but-tragic hero, whose condition cannot be matched by my own negligible aches and pains (of which the author knows nothing and about which he cares not at all). He hasn’t earned the right to foist confidences upon me (rapport is a two-way street) and hasn’t considered that I might also have a rich, full set of my own experiences that range from excruciating to ecstatic to terrifying.

But YES—IF (like Hughes) the writer introduces me to a story or subject both intimate and universally relevant—something she expects that I will recognize and relate to (and, through which she treats me, her voluntary audience, with plenty of respect and empathy, not as a punching bag or as a clueless naif who needs educating).

YES—IF he has worked with a savvy friend, a seasoned editor or a skilled director (to help him understand how he’s actually coming across; that is, IF he’s opened his autobiographical writing to criticism and revision before expecting me to take it in).

YES—IF they are a good (articulate, bighearted, larger-context-oriented) communicator… then, by all means, bring it on: the private, the regretful, the insightful, the comical, the heartbreaking.

Hughes, Spalding Gray, Annie Sprinkle, Julia Sweeney (among many others, all of them performers of deeply personal work) accomplished all that and more. David Sedaris, and Mike Birbiglia (among many others) have made us laugh until we wept at the sorry, awful, wonderful condition of being mortal. J.D. Vance, Jeannette Walls and Tara Westover (among many others) have written with benevolence and empathy about their lives, making the story about the people around them, and about the world, eliciting love for the complicated characters that inhabit their thoughtful autobiographies.

I’m not sure that, truly, the personal essay boom (or personal narrative explosion) is over, as the author of this 2017 New Yorker article proposes. If not, let’s hope more personal essayists follow in the footsteps of those who have made the personal not only about themselves, but about us.

The Personal-Essay Boom Is Over

There’s a certain kind of personal essay that, for a long time, everybody seemed to hate. These essays were mostly written by women. They came off as unseemly, the writer’s judgment as flawed. They were too personal: the topics seemed insignificant, or else too important to be aired for an audience of strangers.

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A (2012) lecture

Regis University

Re-imagining theatre as “a way in which we come together transformatively” is an activity central to performance studies, and reflects a couple of important disciplinary shifts that have happened in the past 40 years. One of these was a shift inward, which turned heirarchical models for the production of popular entertainment towards a more deliberate, collaborative artistic inquiry and experimentation. The other was a shift outward—towards the world—where performance becomes a way of seeing and understanding; a way to critique, resist, rupture and heal.

Those shifts are not what I’m going to focus on today—but, they tell you a little bit about where I’m coming from, and what I believe to be not only possible, but desirable: A situated theatre… critical, conscientious and artistically demanding (as it looks inward)—and curious, courageous, invitational and responsive (as it looks outward, to communities and audiences). To cite British director Peter Brook: a holy, immediate and especially, a lively theatre—one that matters.

* * *

In my Public Speaking class a couple of weeks ago, I heard myself telling my students—they were starting their persuasives— I said, “I want you to keep asking five questions (while you’re busy “inventing”— )

  • Why this particular subject?
  • For this particular audience?
  • On this occasion—why now?
  • In this place—why here?
  • And, who are you, to make this gesture, statement, argument?

It occurred to me that, not only do I need to ask myself the same things, as a reminder to take into account the contexts in which I am appearing but, also: those questions underpin my approach to theatre: “Why this project? For this audience? Why here and now, and why are we the ones to put it on a stage and light it up?”

I just used the word “appearing.” I said, “I need to take into account the contexts in which I am appearing.” In that idea, “appearance,” there is so much about the nature of performance: what it is and what it does, that… let’s linger on it for a minute: to become visible—or to appear—whether accidentally or on purpose—is a consequential act. The range of possible consequences is why we have a corresponding range of human social behavior, from you hide under the covers in your bedroom … to you wear a bright orange and blue Broncos t-shirt or a cross around your neck to signal your affiliation…  to  you raise your hand a lot, sing solos and run for office: you don’t just appear; you hog the spotlight: Good evening, everybody! Welcome to ME.

Our friend Erving Goffman’s interests famously include the presentation of self in everyday life.  His subject is how we manage the impression we make. When we are aware that we have appeared, he says—that is, the moment we imagine or know for sure that we are observed, or “recognized” —we perform.  If nothing else, when we’re alert to being an object of interest, our bodies signal relational status, mostly in spite of ourselves: eyes go down, shoulders go back, stomach in, chin goes up, that kind of thing.  The fact that when we are being watched, we put on an act no doubt has something to do with survival in a group.

Peter Brook has observed that theatre, “makes the invisible visible.”  With that, Goffman would agree, but he reminds us that our performances function strategically not only to reveal some things…but also, to hide others.  In this sense, performance may be more about agency and assertion than survival: we perform in order to promote preferred traits and identities, and to conceal undesirable ones; to establish or reinforce our roles… and to maintain the status quo, or to change it.

Promoting identities, establishing roles, communicating experiences of injustice and challenging the status quo—are what diversity discourses and multicultural initiatives are all about. As I’ve become very interested in these intersections of performance, diversity and dialogue, that’s what I’m going to be on about today.

* * *

As you know, Regis College is a Jesuit institution in Northwest Denver.

The Diversity Office at Regis produces an annual conference, and a variety of dialogue series on topics like sexual orientation, class differences, race, and “The R Word.”  In past years, attendance was obedient when required, and otherwise low—25 was a good turnout, which is less than half a percent of the total undergraduate student body.

There was one big, exciting spike in attendance, though. In 2007, a firestorm developed on campus. The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered student organization, the LGBT, invited an openly-gay professional athlete—a motivational speaker—onto campus. The Jesuits insisted on introducing the guest with a pious preamble stating the position of the Catholic Church on the subject of homosexuality. This move alarmed and alienated a lot of students and faculty. But, others stood with the Church, and shook their heads over the Hell to which we the rest of us were surely going in a handbasket.

Alana Shaw was an out lesbian senior and an activist. She was a member of the LGBT—so, she was highly visible in the debate over the religious disclaimer. One day she found anti-gay slurs spray-painted all over her car. A Gay Pride poster was torn from the door of her dorm room. An exhibit of her artwork that was on display in the library was vandalized. Two young male students were identified as the perpetrators and admitted their guilt.

The crimes against Shaw were bad enough, but it was the administration’s tepid response that got people riled up. The President’s Office almost seemed to back the perpetrators, along the lines of “Oh, well—boys will be boys.”

One afternoon, a vocal crowd gathered on the library steps for a Speak Out. That same week, after a heated exchange, a physical altercation broke out between “gay-friendly” and “hard-core Catholic” faculty members. It wasn’t a fight, but there was chest-poking involved.

Capitalizing on this surge in feeling, the Diversity Office produced some very lively, standing-room-only dialogues. But then, it all blew over—and without another scandal to bring people together into the room, the dialogue events petered out again. Whatever had emerged was, once again, submerged. It was as if nothing had happened. And now, you couldn’t even get 15 people to show up.

Why? Surely, diversity is a topic of great importance to all of us, and telling our stories together towards mutual understanding is devoutly to be wished. Right?

The truth is: institutional diversity dialogues can misfire in many ways to lose the buy-in of community members. For one thing, scheduled campus dialogues—when they play out in an orderly way in the absence of open conflict—tend to be predictable. Unless we have a personal reason, we go not because we feel an overwhelming need to communicate or listen, but because attendance is expected or required.

Predictability is a way to create an illusion of safety and to control things, but it can impart a feeling of reverent ritual—which is the opposite of spontaneity—and contrary to the intention, tends to prevent upsetting things from appearing.

Trepidation prevails: I might say something wrong. I might appear to be racist, sexist, classist, homophobic… or I might out myself as poor, or rich, or ignorant, or gender-dysphoric or conservative—and have to live with whatever stigma redounds from that regrettable loss of face. Also, diversity dialogues often categorically incriminate and disqualify straight, white men who, understandably, find that experience aversive.

Where the purpose of hosting diversity dialogues is to publicly demonstrate that an organization is doing its due diligence with regard to social issues in the community, then maybe simply having them on the calendar is enough, and it doesn’t matter how they go or who attends.

But where the purpose is to reveal privilege and to recognize prejudice and discrimination in a community—then to succeed, you’ve got to have a critical mass of community members who feel invested. How do you get that? What do we like? What stirs us to participate and moves us to feel and to act? I mean, besides free pizza? Well, as suggested by the story of the LGBT, Alana Shaw and the Regis administration—even more than pizza: social drama does.

 * * *

Social drama—just as a quick review, Victor Turner, anthropology, Performance Studies 101—is a ritual social process that functions to ultimately strengthen communities by reinforcing norms and values.

It is a lived, narrative framework that makes the social order visible, and organizes our understanding of membership, or belonging around “what happens if you ignore or challenge that social order.”

Here’s what it looks like. Somebody—an individual or a group makes a status move to a higher position. Turner calls this a breach. The move is blocked. A crisis comes about as people react. Some proceed under the banner of emotion, and others stand upon reason and the law.

Immediate stakeholders and observers alike want to have a say and to affect the outcome.

We see this as the LGBT (at Regis) breaches Catholic values—and again as the administration breaches community norms of inclusion by insisting on their disclaimer, and later, by failing to denounce the bullies. We know a breach has occurred by observing what happens afterwards. If you see two sides forming and characterizing each other as ignorant or immoral, you may be looking at a social drama.

In the third stage, which Turner calls “redressive action” (this makes it all sound like it progresses neatly from point A to point B to point C, but it’s actually a lot messier) –anyway, there are some prescribed actions available for people to take to try and rectify the situation. Here’s where excuses and apologies and trials and punishments, or forgiveness, occur. And then—everybody comes back together, shares a meal and has a common story to tell—reintegration—or else, the social fabric is rent in two. Sides remain irrevocably opposed across what Turner calls a “permanent schism.”

* * *

Before I continue with my Regis story–I need to go back in time, to the year 2000, to look at a social drama that was provoked by theatre. It was springtime in Poughkeepsie. LaughingStock, a student sketch comedy group at Vassar College, had—for a decade—been fighting the imposition of politically-correct speech. While their M.O. was to poke fun at hypocrisy and posturing, no one was safe, and nothing was sacred.

LaughingStock’s sketches were over-the top-rude. The letters OMG did not exist yet, and so lacking adequate expression, people’s heads would just explode.

Not everyone was equally amused, of course—and LaughingStock was no stranger to controversy. The ‘99-2000 year had already brought about angry letters to the editor written by officers of the Multicultural Student Alliance and campus feminist groups.

Let me just describe a couple of LaughingStock’s sketches that I remember. One of them featured a foul-mouthed, enraged, disabled 7-year old boy named William, who has no arms or legs. William insists on joining the school marching band as a Glockenspiel player.  He demands to be treated just like everybody else, even as he verbally demolishes the other kids in the band to the point that they’re all sobbing. William is a despicable character—but against that, his disability and his right to participate make it really hard, as an audience member, to be comfortable with the scene—which is the point.

And then, there’s the unfortunate, pregnant character, Lisa, who agrees to let a pushy male guest at a dinner party feel her unborn baby kicking—he’s like, “Oh, please??” until she just gives in and says “Okay,”—but, instead of putting his hand on her belly, which is what she expects, the guy lies on the floor between her legs and reaches his whole arm up her skirt.  Because she doesn’t want to come across as overly sensitive, she just stands there with a polite smile on her face while the guy gropes around, commenting on the baby’s position, its gender and how cute it’s going to be.

LaughingStock’s work was like that. It was about social awkwardness, political correctness, stigma and micro-aggression… and all of the hard truths that policed discourse can become complicit in hiding. They put sex, conflict and injustice onstage all the time, and they might have effectively adopted the goal of raising issues into view for dialogue.

But, they weren’t in the social change business—they were college juniors and seniors who wanted to make people laugh. And, as long as they kept packing their houses for every performance—which they did—there was no upside for them in over-explaining or defending their work.

In early March, they produced the first of two Spring shows. One of the sketches was Lenny Bruce-like, in that it deployed a racial epithet in a way that was meant to subvert its meaning and its potency. The  Multicultural Student Alliance and the Campus Feminists said LaughingStock had crossed a line. A crisis ensued.

Now, it’s no secret that comedy is capable of stirring vehement responses. It can generate an urgent desire, in audience members, to reciprocate, even to contest.  The classic heckler is one obvious example of this impulse—someone so moved to retort that they subvert the frame of public (or, one-way) communication, and attempt to take control of the show.

What heckling exchanges generally make visible is status play: I tell a joke. You call out a put-down from your seat. I try to shut you up with an amplified insult. You save face by telling me I’m not funny.

And so it goes, until I deliver a blow so hilarious that it establishes my comic superiority. Or, not. In any case, what I shouldn’t do is  allow the heckler define the kind of exchange we are having or to make it personal—because then, I forget that I’m performing; that I need to control the frame!

I can’t lose sight of the fact that—by standing on a stage with a microphone saying things most people don’t dare to say—I am inviting a reaction.

In 2006, when a heckler in Michael Richards’ audience commented on his act, Richards called him the “N” word. What appeared, then—visible to everybody—was Richards’ racism.  Protesters at Vassar thought something like that had happened at LaughingStock’s March show—where the racial epithet in question was also the “N” word.

The MSA and the feminists imagined that their past criticisms of the group had— like heckling— provoked a pissing match: that LaughingStock had lost control of it’s message, gone too far and exposed their true colors. The Offended now meant to put LaughingStock in its place once and for all. Editorials appeared in the campus paper. Rallys were held. And, guess what?

Attendance at the protests—and also, at the next LaughingStock show—was moblike.  Please remember that—it’s going to be on the test. What brings people out? Social drama.

As a former improv comedian myself, and a graduate student at Umass Amherst at the time, I was fascinated by what was playing out over in Poughkeepsie. In my opinion, LaughingStock missed a great chance to harness the power of public sentiment, and to help channel it productively.

To be clear—I’m not saying theatre has to explain itself, or that we need to provide space and time for emotional processing: that’s what the local pub is for.  I mean that Vassar was a context…in which more context—not less—was indicated.

The moment was right for dialogues that could have encouraged personal narratives: What everyday experiences, unacknowledged privileges and injustices—formed the basis for both the outrageousness of the humor and the passion of the protests?

We will never know. All that remains are newspaper accounts… and, those describe what happened in terms of whose feelings were hurt and what positions and actions were taken by various groups in opposition.

The accounts don’t illuminate people or their stories. That’s partly because nobody ever helped it to become about people or their stories; it was just “whose discourse will prevail?” and who’s gonna win?

In the end, the Vassar Student Association de-recognized LaughingStock as an official student club, which effectively shut ‘em down completely, forever. Apparently, the VSA felt that LaughingStock’s humor was no laughing matter.

Let’s move now from social drama to comedy.

The word “laughingstock” has a number of meanings (e.g. “You are the butt of the joke;” or “We are the butt of the joke” or in the case of the Vassar group, “We are of a stock—or of a lineage, or ancestry—that laughs”). The undecidability of that title reflects a slipperiness of meaning that characterizes comedy and laughter, in general.

What’s funny, and to whom, and under what circumstances is complicated. Laugh at the wrong thing and you embarrass yourself. Fail to laugh when others do, and you lack a sense of humor. Sometimes, the joke threatens our face or cuts too close to a situation in our own lives that hurts.

In general, we tend to laugh when something strikes us as unexpected. We even laugh at what’s shocking or unspeakable—especially when there’s some recognizeable truth to be perceived.

* * *

When she most needed to make visible a disease that terrified, stigmatized and potentially isolated her—BJ Goodwin used comedy to tell her story and to invite others to tell theirs.  She helped audiences to laugh with her at our shared human condition. Through performance, she made it possible for audience members to openly acknowledge the unspeakable.

BJ was an immensely appealing and talented physical theatre artist—a dancer, a trained clown and a good writer—who, in 1999, was diagnosed with breast cancer. Not wanting to undergo invasive treatment, and mistrustful of what she called “Western Medicine,” BJ explored a number of alternative approaches. After a year of bee stings, tar poultices, chanting and visualization, the cancer was gone. She was cured.

She wanted to share her experience, so she wrote a very funny, one-person piece, Keeping a Breast, about her journey back to health—all the weird stuff she’d tried and the strange practitioners she’d met.

I directed the show. We booked it at Women’s Health centers and Breast Cancer Awareness events around Western Massachusetts, where we both lived, and it was really popular. Nobody ever left when the performance was over. People stayed and told their own stories, sometimes standing around for hours.

After a few months of feeling lucky if not triumphant, BJ learned that the cancer had come back, with a vengeance. So, she created second act to acknowledge this awful truth: that she was standing before us, filled with hope and gusto and humor, quite, quite riddled with Stage IV cancer. But, even the startling, new ending did not change the fact that Keeping a Breast remained fundamentally and importantly comedic.

Attentive to the reciprocity her story invited, BJ and I decided to build in a facilitated postshow dialogue as a kind of third act.

When the full-length show premiered at the Ko Festival of Performance, Keeping A Breast and the postshow conversation were met with such enthusiasm and acclaim that she was booked solid into venues from Boston to New York.

Why this story? Why for this audience? Why now, why here, and why BJ? Because she was a writer and a consummate performer. Because she felt an urgency to tell her story, and because she knew audience members did, too. Because breast cancer was on the rise, and making such narratives visible felt like a deeply meaningful social act.

Why comedy? BJ was a clown. Not only by nature; not just metaphorically but literally: in addition to being a dancer, a writer and choreographer, she was trained as an actual clown.

She loved to laugh, and to make others laugh. She knew what research has repeatedly shown: that laughter can powerfully reinforce social bonds… and that there is a correlation between social bonds and health. BJ was contributing not only to her own health, but to the health of others in the community. And, I don’t have time now, but I could offer many instances of how (and for whom) this was true.

Why a facilitated dialogue? Because audiences had amply demonstrated the desire to tell their own stories after hearing hers—and while still together in that liminal space. They wouldn’t leave the theatre! So, we’d decided to encourage and channel that desire to communicate.

Why a clear format for the dialogue? Well, because people weren’t hanging out to discuss a fictional character and her fictional fight to stay alive. Inviting audiences to respond to an intimate, personal narrative performance— especially one like this—required some attention to purpose and methods.

So, what I designed was not a typical talkback. I wanted to create conditions under which the talk in the room would tend towards storytelling, and not be about complimenting (or trying to comfort) BJ—which she really, really hated.

I also hoped to (gently but firmly) curtail the extent to which eager over-sharing (and the occasional extra-extra long speech act) could dominate. Which meant I had to think of ways to intervene in—and redirect—conversation, to establish a kind of conversational ethos that might help us all talk together about really hard stuff.

* * *

BJ’s postshow became a model that I ended up developing and using again and again over the years—not only in theatre, but in my classrooms and—now, to bring us back to Regis—in service to difficult dialogues about differences. I was collaborating with the  Diversity Office and contemplating low attendance. It had been a couple of years since the LGBT/Alana Shaw saga. Nothing had erupted lately. Nobody seemed to want to come to the dialogues.

I recalled LaughingStock—and how their work stimulated powerful feelings and a desire to communicate. I remembered Keeping A Breast— and how the warmth, laughter and the courage of BJs performance had made it possible for people to talk openly about what we are all least inclined to consider: our fear, and our own mortality.

And, I had an idea.

 

The whole mission of Diversity Offices (and programs and initiatives and trainings—in higher education) is to make differences more, not less, apparent . They work to bring attention to privilege and injustice. Given this commitment—to make the invisible visible, one might think theatre—perhaps most of all, irreverent comedy—has a place in discourses involving difference and diversity.

Along with five undergraduates, I wrote a bunch of sketches dealing with how race and racism are experienced in classrooms and in the dorms on campus. Our script was grounded in real experiences and observations—but we blew them way out of proportion for maximum comic effect. Since most of us we were female, white and straight, we collaborated with affinity groups. We named the ensemble OutRegis! (get it?—because we were outrageous, at Regis?) and the students titled the show, I Can’t Believe They Said That! to bring in the desired throngs of curious onlookers.

We planned a postshow dialogue that, we hoped, would be as engaging as the show was provocative, and structured the whole event to ensure that everyone present felt invited and included. Around 75 students, faculty and staff came—there was no place left to sit or stand—and pretty much everybody stayed after the performance for the hour-long dialogue. When people finally left, they left in groups, still talking animatedly.

Today (2013) OutRegis! has more than 18 members. Last year was the first time students devised, wrote and directed every sketch without me. The show was called You’re Gay—and was created with members of the campus Gay Straight Alliance. The GSA is an evolved version of that same LGBT that brought the speaker to campus a few years back. On this occasion—maybe because student performances don’t garnar much attention from Main Hall, or maybe things have changed—there was no preamble imposed on the production.  You’re Gay brought together an audience of 80 or more—not to engage in fistfights or protests, but to laugh together and to stay to talk about the show.

Disagreement was allowed and given plenty of space. The dialogue was even… not contentious, but tense… at one point. But—nobody left the room, and the tension was resolved as people asked questions of one another, told about personal experiences, listened and responded.

Comedy—at its best—shows us human behavior without blinking. While jokes and laughter can operate to sanction hegemony and conceal truth—to amuse the privileged majority at the expense of the marginal and stigmatized—comedy also has the capacity to trouble and to change us… dragging into the light, confronting and mocking power structures, social strata, assumptions and attitudes.

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I don’t want to leave you with the impression I think Hamlet, or The Chairs, or My Fair Lady or The Book of Mormon can’t be lively, immediate and relevant. I’ve been fortunate to see all four in brilliant productions. I don’t think all theatre must be derived from participants’ experiences…touch on local concerns… make me laugh—and, I don’t propose that a facilitated audience postshow ought to follow everything I perform, direct or attend.

I am suggesting that—just as there is an important place for the traditional drama and for new, devised and community-based work—so are there excellent reasons, audiences, times and places for comedy—especially transgressive comedy—together with dialogue.

Why this topic, why here, why today? Given our occasion, I thought it made sense to bring some ideas I’m really interested in— that have fed my curiosity and imagination for many years—to make something of myself visible, and hopefully to inspire a good conversation. Thank you.