Communitas Through Community Theatre
It came from home. It came from the tenderest crevices of my own heart. It came from the lips of my own father Mitchell Barker, and it changed my life. I was attending a performance of All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. My father, I knew, was taking this performance seriously. He respected the content of this play, and had a long monologue to recite that he had difficulty memorizing. He knew that I was in the audience and that my wife and children were watching also. “It” was a simple interrogatory: “Are there any questions?” (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten) . In the play this question is asked of a scholarly audience by a historical figure, Dr. Papaderos. Robert Fulgham, the author of the book on which this play is based, responded, “What is the meaning of life” (Fulgham, Are There Any Questions?) ? Papaderos’ response, acted out by my own father, was incredible:
When I was a small child, during the war, we were very poor and we lived in a remote village. One day, on the road, I found the broken pieces of a mirror. A German motorcycle had been wrecked in that place. I tried to find all the pieces and put them together, but it was not possible, so I kept only the largest piece. This one. And by scratching it on a stone I made it round. I began to play with it as a toy and became fascinated by the fact that I could reflect light into dark places where the sun would never shine – in deep holes and crevices and dark closets. It became a game for me to get light into the most inaccessible places I could find. I kept the little mirror, and as I went about my growing up, I would take it out in idle moments and continue the challenge of the game. As I became a man, I grew to understand that this was not just a child’s game but a metaphor for what I might do with my life. I came to understand that I am not the light or the source of light. But light – truth, understanding, knowledge – is there, and it will only shine in any dark places if I reflect it. I am a fragment of a mirror whose design and shape I do not know. Nevertheless, with what I have I can reflect light into the dark places of this world – into the black places in the hearts of men – and change some things in some people. Perhaps others may see and do likewise. This is what I am about. This is the meaning of my life” (qtd. in Fulgham, Are There Any Questions?).
So many things occurred to me at once during this recital. I was earnestly trying to convey strong feelings of encouragement to my father, to help him remember his lines. I was overwhelmed with gratitude that he delivered the important message flawlessly. The words impacted me deeply. Love for my father, for Robert Fulgham, for community theatre, and for my fellow man permeated my soul.
The beauty was not only in the emotional effectiveness of the writing. It was not in the logical soundness of the argument. It was not the authority and believability of the renowned author of the drama. These were all, of course, essential. The real pathos, however, came from knowing the actor who was expressing the relevant emotion, and having felt that with him. The logos came from seeing the argument within that play born out in the mutual experience of the audience and the cast. The ethos was inescapably evident. I knew that the actor could be believed, and that his experience could be trusted, because that actor was selected from my own peer group, my own family, by a director who also was a member of my own peer group. Community theatre is where communities come together to teach each other the dramatic wisdom of the arts throughout time. The rhetorical power of such a setting cannot be found anywhere else.
In a personal interview with Jan Davis, co-director with her husband Ed Davis of Starlight Mountain Theatre, she emphasized the importance of that interconnectivity between people. “Theatre is an intense microcosm of society,” she said, “compressed into a two hour time period during which you can explore social conundrums, historical conundrums, struggles with relationships and monumental personal decisions. These situations often resemble those that everyone involved in the performance is experiencing in their own lives. Watching the way that the protagonists and the antagonists encounter such obstacles can inspire you and reach out and touch your heart. It reaches into one’s soul and pulls out the humanity that is there” (Davis) . Through theatre an audience and a cast experience a fictionalized representation of realities identifiable in every human life. Everyone encounters love, loss, jealousy, death, joy, and sorrow. The production becomes a liminal event during which a cast and an audience proceed through a rite of passage in order to achieve a sense of communitas.
Liminality is an anthropological term that Serena Nanda, Doctor of Anthropology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, defines as, “objects, places, people, and statuses that are understood as existing in an indeterminate state, between clear-cut categories” (296) . In sacred rituals many religions use liminal objects like doorways, hair, animal or vegetable sacrifice, and money to represent a spiritual removal from the routine world to the sacred world. One example is the bread and wine served at Christian communion rituals. The bread and wine are liminal elements in that they exist between the physical realm – participants drink and eat them – and the spiritual realm as they are blessed to become symbols of a higher reality. At the theatre, especially in a community theatre setting, we utilize many liminal symbols to evoke a passage into another reality. The best example is the ticket. One’s ticket, and the act of displaying and having one’s ticket ripped, proves one’s worthiness to enter. Before one takes a seat there are several liminal passages through which to proceed. The doors must be opened and passed through, audience members must be shown to their seats, and the curtain must rise. All of this evokes a shedding of the outside world and admission to a new one. Patrons must abandon titles of Father, Son, Doctor, Waiter, Boss, Employee, Student, and Teacher. We assume, temporarily, the roles of Actor, Director, Audience Member, and Musician. Our own lives and worries are superseded by those of the characters in the play. During the performance, therefore, the audience and the cast enter a ritual state called communitas. Nanda defines this as an event during which, “the wealthy and the poor, the powerful and the powerless are, for a short time, all equals” (296). This is accomplished in a theatrical performance as the audience all sits in a common auditorium, observing a single stage on which a unified, unique, performance is occurring. It does not matter if one has a doctorate or is still in elementary school; during the performance the audience is united.
This unity happens in two more important ways. First the audience and cast are unified by a silent obeisance to the content of the play. Specific events and a static script rule the hour. This is especially true when that obeisance centers around a well known, revered, playwright like William Shakespeare. Isaac Asimov said of Shakespeare that he, “has said so many things so supremely well that we are forever finding ourselves thinking in his terms” (VII). So one cannot help but feel a sense of “solidarity, equality, and unity among people,” sharing in the experience of Hamlet (Nanda and Warms, 296). We are beholding the source of the words we use to express our own thoughts. Shakespeare’s words are so engrained into our collective psyche that we forget that they are original works of genius. The second important way in which an audience and cast gain a sense of unity or communitas is through role reversal, or antistructure, associated with community theatre exclusively.
Antistructure is “the socially sanctioned use of behavior that radically violates social norms” (Nanda and Warms 296) . In community theatre that antistructure plays out in several ways. The most common is the role reversal of parents and children. Most actors in community theatre are teenagers. As they perform and their parents sit and watch, the child becomes the parent. Life lessons are taught, through acting, to the parents by their children. What other context can provide such an opportnity? Role reversals are common within an auditorium during a performance of community theatre. I remember presenting a paper, written by Jan Davis, on the themes of race throughout the play Big River to an audience that included my own high school English teacher on one ocassion. The roles of student and teacher were reversed. This antistructure is tame and implicit, but absolute and unopposed. Thus Davis was right in her assertion that “theatre is an intense microcosm of society” (Davis) . This is because the plays themselves compress the human experience into a fictional rite of passage, but also because the act of attending a play is a literal rite of passage.
Rites of passage are “events that mark the transition of a person from one social status to another” (Nanda and Warms 297) . The experience of community theatre fits that definition through several applications of what Joseph Campbell calls “the hero’s journey.” This is an archetypal progression that persists throughout all cultures throughout the world. The hero receives and accepts a “call to adventure,” passes through “barriers and thresholds” enforced upon him or her by a former social status, experiences “challenges and temptations”, endures a journey through the “abyss” of failure, encounters “transformation,” “atonement,” and eventually experiences a “return” to his or her former condition to initiate a new order (qtd. in Hughes). One application of this is through the text of the plays themselves. For example in All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, Fulghum uses the song “The Itsy, Bitsy, Spider” to demonstrate the hero’s journey. Fulghum explains that at the beginning:
The small creature is alive and looks for adventure. Here’s the drainpipe – a long tunnel going up toward some light. The spider doesn’t even think about it – just goes. Disaster befalls it – rain, flood, powerful forces. And the spider is knocked down and out beyond where it started. Does the spider say, ‘To hell with that’? No. Sun comes out – clears things up – dries off the spider. And the small creature goes over the drainpipe and looks up and thinks it really wants to know what’s up there. It’s a little wiser now – checks the sky first, looks for better toeholds, says a spider prayer, and heads up through mystery toward the light and wherever (Fulgham, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, 18).
Clearly Fulghum wrote this passage with Joseph Campbell in mind. He shows that the spider accepted the call to adventure, passed the liminal boundary or entrance to the drainpipe, encounted and succumbed to the temptation of hubris, endured the abyss of failure, underwent a transformation, experienced atonement and returned to initate a new order in this case a new location. Countless protagonists in the plays we attend go through this ritual. Hamlet from Hamlet, Jean ValJean from Les Miserables, Annie from Annie, Sir Percy Blakeney from The Scarlett Pimpernel, and Adam from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers all adhere to the hero’s journey archetype. Here we have that theme of interconnectivity emerging once again. It is astounding that one can experience new and unique entertainment and intrigue when hearing the story of both Odysseus from The Odyssey and Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. It is even more astounding that both Homer and George Lucas sent their protagonists on essentially the same exact journey. There is something infinitely constant about the human condition that the hero’s journey summarizes. Campbell described the hero’s journey as “the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestations” (Campbell 3) . The greatest storytellers throughout time and throughout all cultures use this archetype to teach us what it means to be a human, and how best to thrive. It is because of this archetypal hero’s journey that, “watching the way that the protagonists and the antagonists encounter such obstacles can inspire you and reach out and touch your heart” (Davis) . We recognize and understand that journey, we embark on it ourselves.
The experience of the actors in a community theatre is especially like the hero’s journey. When I asked several community theatre actors why their experience was important, they invariably stated that it changed them for the better. Victor Thorn reflecting on 12 years of experience with community theatre said, “it makes me less shy than I used to be” (Thorn) . My father said, “it keeps me sane” (Barker) . Tiffany Fitting said “it expanded my worldview. It gave me exposure to different ideas and different kinds of people. I encountered minds as an actor and as an audience member from long ago, sometimes thousands of years ago, and it still rings true as a relevant part of the human experience today” (Fitting) . Davis explained exactly how this journey plays out:
I cannot even begin to tell you . . . how many times I have had parents bring their kids to auditions who are shy or backward. The parents stress their concerns that they think that this is something that their little Johnny wants to do, but they are worried that they won’t be able to handle the stress. I always respond: Give me your child for one day. Leave the room, and give me your child for one day. At the end of the day, if they think it is too much, they are free to go. I have never yet had a child that wanted to leave. That same shy child, by the time we put on a production, will have their parents approach me in tears saying that they can’t believe the change that has occurred. They tell me that they are singing and dancing and are so much happier around the house (Davis) .
Did you notice Davis’ call to adventure? Did you notice the child leaving the boundary of their parent’s protection and encountering the doubt and trials of independent effort? Most of all, did you notice the glorious return? Participation in community theatre can help to change a lost or stagnant child into a thriving person with a purpose, and delight evident in their countenance. Communitas is more, you see, than a temporary meeting of minds on equal ground. Communitas is an essential element of progression.
Community theatre is not the only source of such an experience. Organized sports are another example. One of my friends Kyrie Vickers, who currently resides in New York as an actress looking to perform on Broadway, said that community theatre “is kind of like athletics. It gives you confidence, and exposes you to difficulty over which you have the opportunity to triumph. It gives you something to look forward to. I always had something going for me, something to be happy about. It was a source of hope” (Vickers) . Which begs the question: If we can get that benefit from sports, why not just have sports? Sports are not for everyone. Many need a creative outlet instead of a physical one. With characteristic profundity Jan Davis summarizes this problem as well:
Because of budget cuts in schools the arts are the first thing to be cut. Well what are we supposed to do with these wonderful, creative and artistic children? Where are they supposed to express what is in their hearts if not community theatre? When there is no safe place for them to act upon that energy within them, they start drinking and acting out. They become promiscuous and experiment with drugs, because they have no other way to deal with those emotions. Community theatre gives them a safe place to do that. Instead of having kids on the street, you have kids on the stage, giving back to the community (Davis) .
That progress is not only essential for individuals. It is essential for a community. The purpose of a play is not to simply be a play. It is, as Horace points out in his Purposes of Literature, “to instruct and to delight” (qtd. in Stacy). In times like these, who could not use a little instruction and delight? John Lithgow identified that as the highest purpose of acting in his recently published memoir. In it he discusses his experience with caring for his terminally ill eighty-five years old father. Lithgow moved in with his father and mother to help organize his father’s affairs before he passed away. It was a difficult and ugly experience for him. His father’s “impish humor and his boisterous laugh, fell silent” (VII) . His and his father’s mutual bitterness about the situation intensified until it occurred to Lithgow that he might try performing a reading of some short stories that his father loved. He related what happened next:
My father started to laugh. It was a helpless, gurgly laugh, almost in spite of himself. It was like the engine of an old car, starting up after years of disuse. I kept reading and he kept laughing, harder and harder, until he was almost out of breath. It was the most wonderful sound I’d ever heard (Lithgow, XII).
You have to appreciate that story to appreciate the tender moment I had with my father when I attended his performance of All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. I was not in a happy mood when I walked into that theatre. My wife and I were going through financial hardships. We had two very hyperactive toddlers in tow. I had received some devastating and stressful news at work earlier that day. Neither myself nor my wife were in the mood to sit through a play about which we had heard nothing and which we expected to be kitschy and annoying. Rooting for my father and being blown away by his performance and the beautiful content of the play redeemed me. During that two hours I embarked upon a hero’s journey. I crashed through the liminal barriers between my stressful situation and a world in which I could observe and receive the blessed wisdom of a profound author. I returned from that experience back into the same conditions, but with a brighter outlook and a more amiable countenance. Oh how those conditions have improved! I believe that Papderos was right about the purpose of life. It is to concede that there is, “light – truth, understanding, knowledge,” out there in the universe, and to, “reflect it” into the dark crevices of our fellow man (Fulgham, Are There Any Questions?) . My father fulfilled that purpose in his performance that night. That is why community theatre is so essential. It helps us to discover and enact the purpose of life.
Works Cited
All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. By Robert Fulgham. Dir. Johnathan Perry. Perf. Mitchell Barker. Nampa Civic Center, Nampa. 27 October 2012. Live Performance. 27 October 2012.
Asimov, Isaac. "Introduction." Asimov, Isaac. Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare. Avenel. New York: Avenel Books, 1978. VII-X. Print. 30 October 2012.
Barker, Mitchell. Personal Interview Mitchell Barker. Nampa, 30 October 2012. Recording. 30 October 2012.
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero With a Thousand Faces. Bollingen Paperback. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972. Print. 13 November 2012.
Davis, Jan. Personal Interview Tanner Barker. Nampa, 30 October 2012. Recording. 30 October 2012.
Fitting, Tiffany. Personal Interview Tanner Barker. Nampa, 30 October 2012. Recording. 30 October 2012.
Fulgham, Robert. "Are There Any Questions?" 26 October 2012. Before It's News. Web. 30 October 2012.
Fulghum, Robert. All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things. New York: Villard Books, 1988. Print. 2012 30 October.
Hughes, Collin. "Heroic Cycle." Boise: Boise State University, 3 September 2012. Online Lecture. 31 October 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puB5H5-rqYk>.
Lithgow, John. "Preface." Lithgow, John. Drama. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2011. VII-XIII. Print. 30 October 2012.
Nanda, Serena and Richard L Warms. "Religion." Cultural Anthropology. Tenth. New York: Wadworth Cengage Learning, 2011. 289-316. Print. 9 October 2012.
Stacy, Rob. "Terms and Concepts." English 277 Course Syllabus. Boise: Boise State University, September 2012. Class Lecture. 31 October 2012.
Thorn, Victor. Personal Interview Tanner Barker. Nampa, 30 October 2012. Recording. 30 October 2012.
Vickers, Kyrie. Personal Interview Tanner Barker. Nampa, 30 October 2012. Recording. 30 October 2012.
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