Collaborating to Cross Cultural Boundaries: Theatre’s Healing Role
"Theatre folks are theatre folks, wherever in the world you go. We understand about the human condition, about its joys and its agonies, and we can feel them, enact them, when we take the time to think outside our own limited experience."
–Virginia
Tech associate professor David Johnson (Theatre Arts),
co-director and co-founder, International
Theatre Laboratory of Crete
Some may think of theatre as merely entertainment, but the proximity of ancient Greece’s theatres to its shrines to Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine, suggests that the Greeks viewed drama as a healing process. Virginia Tech associate professor David Johnson, co-founder of the International Theatre Laboratory of Crete and co-director of the lab last summer, always stresses these roots when teaching drama at Virginia Tech. "Drama isn’t about life and death," he said, "It is life and death."
This was a central idea when 10 students and two professors from Virginia Tech joined a student from Northwestern University, an artist from San Francisco, a Greek director and several Greek actors, a principal in the Royal Shakespeare Company, and a Bosnian acting troupe called the Mostar Youth Theatre in Crete last summer to explore catharsis, the primal healing aspect of theatre, and to collaborate on various exercises and productions that would continue well into Virginia Tech’s fall semester.
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Virginia Tech theatre arts students enjoying a moment of camaraderie with Alexis Papaderos (Director of the Orthodox Academy of Crete) and Tech Associate Professor David Johnson. Photo courtesy of David Johnson |
Johnson had recruited the Mostar Youth Theatre to perform their Pax Bosnia at Virginia Tech last April, impressed with how the troupe’s actors have used drama to cope with the horrors of war. When Croats bombed the old bridge (mostar or stari most in Bosnian) that troupe members had crossed to practice, they never considered stopping their productions. They boated across the river to continue their work, while continuing to use the bridge as their symbol.
After the troupe performed at Virginia Tech, Johnson and others decided to invite the Bosnian actors to join the international theatre experience already planned for Crete. The results of the international collaboration were renewed again in October, when Virgnia Tech professor Ed Falco’s The Cretans, written and performed at the Crete theatre lab, and a piece by student participant Kelly Hayes, were presented at Virginia Tech’s Studio Theatre.
"There are not many opportunities, like the one we had in Crete, for artists from various nations to come together and take the time to explore different ideas and ways of approaching issues like cultural understanding," said one Virginia Tech student. By bringing together participants with such different life experiences and nationalities–Bosnian, American, British, and Greek–the lab helped participants see beyond the borders that nationalism can create between people.
Collaborating with the Bosnian actors allowed students to get a more concrete glimpse of the reality of the Bosnians. In the words of one Virginia Tech student, "It brought us closer to the ugliness of their experience with the war than we sometimes felt comfortable with." But comfort wasn’t what the group was seeking. "We didn’t shy away from our differences," said Johnson, "but used them to come to a new way to use catharsis as a healing process in the 21st century." Johnson said it is fitting to stage international theatre collaborations: "It is important to remember that Greek tragedy tried to tell the story from as many sides as possible, with the emphasis on telling the story instead of having a propagandistic agenda."
Stories told through exercises and performances at the laboratory drew on all participants’ languages. One piece used English, Greek, and Bosnian, while another based on a Greek play was improvised in Bosnian, written in English, and performed in English and Greek. In fact, Johnson would like to see the program advocate an international theatrical language.
Participants in the workshop worked with myths and ancient plays that had allowed the early Greeks to maintain a protective distance from life while dealing with its dilemmas. The actors’ daily exercises enabled them to enter a cathartic state in which they could work through personal emotions and empathize with global concerns.
In order to facilitate the intense and personal journey into catharsis, the experimental nature of the laboratory–as suggested by its name–was emphasized, and process was valued over product. The participants practiced Tai Chi, yoga, running, hiking, and Suzuki actor-training methods, in order to prepare themselves for performing. A "sharing" event took place on the final night of the program in Crete, with an audience and all participants in attendance.
Funded in part by Virginia Tech’s Office of International Programs, the program took place at a Cretan youth center in Kolimbari owned by the Orthodox Academy of Crete, a center for peace and reconciliation. The academy’s commitment to healing tensions between Germans and Cretans after WWII has expanded to embrace other international tensions–with this laboratory program, those between the Bosnians and Serbs.
Johnson fears that theatre is increasingly viewed as irrelevant and would like the laboratory to recall theatre’s original importance. According to one Virginia Tech student, the laboratory is already achieving that goal: "The one director we worked with in Crete who affected me the most, the founder and director of the Mostar Youth Theatre, did not speak a drop of English, and I had never seen his language. We spoke through our eyes and listened through our bodies. Nothing is stronger that. If you listen and love and you truly communicate, you can find the core of the human soul."
Christina French
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