Community Notebook

Play It Back, Sam

Imagine a roomful of people hanging on your every word as you tell a true story from your life. You could hear a pin drop as your tale unfolds, happy or sad, funny or fragmented. Then by some magic, the curtains go back, the stage lights up and actors stand quietly, awaiting your direction. The tall blonde with the kind eyes, you decide, will play you.

The silver-haired woman will be your grandmother. The bald guy will play the monkey. Yes, a monkey, if you are telling that funny story from the time you went to Costa Rica. Or perhaps, if it is a night where some healing is needed, and you will ask him to interpret the inexorable specter of cancer in a sadder tale instead.

This is the experience of Playback Theater, a kind of improvisational theater based on audience members’ personal stories. In Playback Theater, you tell a story in front of an audience and a troupe of actors “plays it back.”

photo by Elissa Davidson

It can be a profoundly validating experience for the person telling, to be seen and heard in a public forum. The audience too, gets the vicarious message that their stories are worthy. They engage in a type of witnessing that creates an age-old sense of community. Since people have sat in a circle around a fire, they have practiced story-telling and story-listening.
Perhaps that is what gives the potent ritualistic feeling to a Playback performance. It taps the ancient archetypes of both Storyteller and Theater. But in spite of the tribal feelings it inspires, it is modern. Playback Theater was developed right here in the Hudson Valley in 1975.

One of the founders, Jonathan Fox, inspired by an array of influences from psychodrama to the work of Brazilian empowerment guru Paulo Freire, had a vision of a new kind of theater that would involve stories from people’s everyday lives. Along with his wife, Jo Salas, and a small group of other performers, work began on the best way to structure it.
This is how this small group found themselves, on their second gig, in the pediatrics ward of Vassar Hospital, performing stories told by wide-eyed children. This modest but poignant beginning was followed by years of hard work promoting Playback Theater, years when everyone involved needed day jobs. Gradually the innovative new form gathered a following. Troupes were founded in different places as Jonathan and Jo traveled widely to teach how to make Playback Theater happen. The community-building nature of the work has created bridges to many unforeseen places.

Playback Theater has proven to be something of an international phenomenon. There are Playback Theater troupes in 40 different countries.
Jo Salas, when asked what has changed from the early days of Playback, thoughtfully replies that performers used to be in search of “juicy” stories that were compellingly dramatic. But over time they noticed that odd little snippets of stories, amorphous feelings and fragments of dreams had their own innate power. Now, Jo says, “We can make memorable theater out of anything people tell us.”

Playback Theater continues to evolve. Jonathan and Jo are now developing a structure for Playback that lends itself to conflict resolution in troubled places. They attended an international conference called “Search for Common Ground” last December. There they played back stories told by people from Sierra Leone, Macedonia and Burundi, people who have been living with civil war, acts of unspeakable violence, and long-standing feuds. And now, sadly, we have joined that list on a national scale. In facing conflict situations, Playback Theater can help both sides to recognize each other’s basic humanity.
Such work demonstrates the flexibility of Playback Theater. It can help ease conflict, it can forge a sense of community, it can help put forth very different points of view, and it can even celebrate people’s lives. We need work such as this as never before, to understand the conflict in our own hearts, and to find creative ways to work with it.

Recently, Jo’s troupe, Hudson River Playback Theater, performed at an awards ceremony for teen moms. These young women got to tell their stories and see them played back, honoring their courage, perseverance and specialness.

So you don’t have to be Erin Brockovich to see yourself portrayed by an actor. You don’t even have to wear a killer push-up bra. All you need to do is show up and tell your story in a Playback Theater setting. Then the combined magic of careful listening and theater reveals the heroes and heroines, the great romances, tragedies, and comedies of the people who live right next door. And as we have seen in these last weeks, heroes and heroines are right next door. It is important to remember the value of our personal stories in these times, and to come together to honor them, when the larger stories we face are so overwhelming. As Jo says, “Any story, if it comes from a sincere place, can be exquisite. A small story can be as exciting as a large story.”

—Trish Malone

For more information about Playback Theater and Hudson River Playback call (845) 255-8163 or visit their Web site at playbacknet.org/school or hudsonriverplayback.org.

Community Playback Theater performs every first Friday of the month at Boughton Place in Highland. For more information contact Judy Swallow at (845) 691-4118.