Well, my last day at ATHE (I'm at Denver International Airport, waiting for a flight back to San Diego) was a treat. It began with a warm-up led by someone from the American Theater Movement Association, based on stretches he learned in Russia, a wonderful way to start a conference day - though it left me by turns super-limber and suddenly stiff for a while! Then I checked out of my hotel, took a last stroll through downtown Denver, and spent some time in an unshuttered Starbucks finalizing my remarks for the panel C and I were to lead. (It was across the street from a shuttered one, and put me in mind of the Starbucks I used to frequent in Melbourne, many of which are among the 61 of the chain's 84 Australian branches just closed.)
Next I attended a staged reading of Volver, Volver, Volver by Leonard Madrid (winner of the first Latino PlayWorks prize), a play so new it's still in process - and was impressed again at the candor and care with which creative artists respond to each other's work. The play was 50 minutes long and quite enjoyable, and the 40-minute "talkback" was even more enjoyable, as the crew who'd rehearsed the reading described their experience with their parts, and many members of the audience praised and discussed the work, suggested changes, etc. As the discussion went on, I found I had lots of suggestions, too, and filled the margins of the response sheet with leading questions we'd all received. It's entirely different from an academic presentation of work in progress, much more supportive and helpful, nobody trying to draw attention to themselves but all trying to understand the artist's project and help him make it better, fuller, truer.
The last two panels I went to were a wonderful way to wind up the conference for me, taking me deep into the issues around "religion and theater" which brought me here in the first place. The first, called "Quakers, Mormons, and Catholics, Oh My! Liberal Arts at Conservative Schools," was an eye-opener. Three panelists (the Catholic couldn't make it, but a Quaker teaching at a Southern Baptist college was there instead) discussed the difficulties of running a theater program in colleges suspicious of modern theater. It was absolutely fascinating to learn about the suspicions, the ways they were addressed, the opponents and the allies of these programs. The panelist from an Evangelical Quaker college described the situation all faced - parents, alumni and donors come to public performances, and want to see proof that the school is "Christ-centered," not evidence of critical thought - so lots of contemporary plays are off limits, but only for these public performances, in classes and unpublicized student showcases, there's more freedom. Each of our panelists described ways s/he had found to convince timid or suspicious administrators that theater built Christian character through deeper understanding of others, etc.
But another set of concerns was more interesting: students who've signed a "lifestyle pledge" forswearing profanity, sex, intoxicants, etc. are troubled (or jealous) at seeing their fellows engaging in these behaviors out on stage. Not acting, engaging in. In general it seemed that everyone worried that playing the part of a sinner could be bad for the soul of the actor; these worries (familiar to secular culture too, how numberless are the plays and films about actors consumed or possessed by characters they play) reflected interesting theological differences, and forced one member of our panel to forswear method acting for viewpoints instead - the actor's shamanistic channeling and transfiguration of which my friend C talks were seen as dangerous here, and contained by constant reminders that you never become the character, you are always still yourself. We were left with questions about whether one could train a successful actor in this way - but also with questions about whether there aren't in fact ways in which theater can be harmful for actors and spectators. It was amazing to be in a discussion where both of these kinds of questions could be raised.
And then it was time for "When hell's no fable: Fostering Dialogue Through a Meeting of Everyman, Doctor Faustus, and Hell House," the panel C and I put together (also sponsored by the Religion and Theater Focus Group). We opened with an acting exercise, a brief manifesto from me about the value of reading Everyman and as if it were Hell House and Hell House as if it were Everyman, and C's description of the explosive discussion the juxtaposition produced in our class. Next, a graduate student from the University of Maryland described a variety of Hell House-like productions she's studying for her dissertation, many dramatically much more interesting than Hell Houses: unlike anyone else who's worked on these plays, she's actually spent time with the communities which produce them - I think we provided the setting for the first public presentation of her research. And then a professor from a Catholic university in Los Angeles took us on a quick tour of laughable devils in theater from the English Renaissance (when laughing at the devil was the way of calling his bluff) to Hollywood (which oscillates anxiously between silly and really scary satans).
The ensuing discussion was great. We were a small group (it was late in the day) but everyone you'd want there was there: the author of the first article on Hell Houses, a grad student at UCSB writing his dissertation on it, and - thanks to C - Stephen Wangh, whose own work in trying to use theater to bridge the divide between conservative Christian and secular culture (Testimony: Scenes from an American apocalypse) I saw a few months ago. After various people compared notes on various Hell Houses they had seen, Wangh took the discussion in a really interesting direction: he'd found that his attempts to understand conservative Christians (he's a skeptic) would reach a point beyond which he could not go, and as he turned back from that point, he was filled with sadness. I was reminded of the "existential regret" Lee Yearley describes, and of the sadness missionaries must feel on not being able to convert their friends (I only mentioned the former), and then the grad student from Maryland told us she'd taken her husband to a Judgment House and he (an unbeliever) had felt a sadness at not being able to share the joy of the production, a sadness which lasted several days.
Wow. These are amazing people, these (religion and) theater folk. What a treat to get to know them! Ah, boarding's started, so adieu for now!
