culture » Joe Salvatore

Hurricane Sandy, October 29, 2012

Oct 292012

So this is my video from Hurricane Sandy. I went exploring this morning along the route where I run in the morning, along the East River. This was at the morning’s high tide mark, so things were not great. The storm itself was still quite a ways off.

I’m writing this around 6:45pm that evening, and we’re about to enter the evening high tide, which is supposed to be worse. The news is showing that the East River has breached the sea wall at South Street Seaport, which is not good. We’ll see what happens.

Thanks, Jennifer Livingston, for paying attention

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Oct 032012

Take a look at this news reporter’s response to a man who emailed her saying that her obesity sets a bad example for young girls. She makes some very eloquent statements about how bullying is a learned behavior.

Thanks, Jennifer Livingston for a gutsy, controlled call to arms in this battle against social combat. Thanks for paying attention.

Will you pay attention?

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Sep 232012

Project Pay Attention is an initiative that asks people to pay closer attention to their actions and the words they use, either verbally, in writing, or via social media. When you sign on for Project Pay Attention, you pledge to speak up for others, choose your words wisely, track your online behavior, inquire, challenge yourself, and spread the word. By educating people, Project Pay Attention proposes to change the way our society thinks about language and to ultimately reduce the negative effects of ignorance and intolerance.

In Fall 2010, when so many young people took their own lives, the media reported that bullying and social combat based on perceived sexual orientation and gender non-conformity had caused these individuals to kill themselves. Regardless of how the young people actually identified, they were often verbally and physically attacked at school and relentlessly tormented via social media on the internet.

The suicide of Tyler Clementi, a Rutgers University student who was spied on with a webcam by his roommate, Dharun Ravi, became a rallying cry for a number of movements, including Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” video project. Thousands of people have uploaded videos to testify that it does in fact get better, that the bullying stops, and the pain of youth can be overcome.

In February 2012, New Yorker writer Ian Parker wrote an article about the then pending Ravi trial, and it included Facebook posts, text messages, and tweets of Tyler Clementi and Dharun Ravi. These online communications provided a glimpse into how these two young men and their friends “talked” about one another via social media. The actual words used in those communications illustrated that today’s young people, and probably many adults as well, are woefully unprepared to navigate the multicultural and globalized society in which we live.

Project Pay Attentionresponds to that lack of preparation. By fostering an understanding that our language choices and our actions have power, Project Pay Attention asks people of all ages and backgrounds to think carefully about what we do, what we say, and how we say it. It recognizes that educating people about the power of language is an active way of shifting our daily lexicon so that disrespectful and hurtful language choices can be avoided. And it embraces the notion that people can shift their behavior and ultimately create a more respectful society for the future.

Bottomline: Young people learn behavior from adults. If adults can become more aware about their language choices and actions, the next generation of children may live happier and healthier.

Please take the pledge to Pay Attention at www.projectpayattn.com, and then spread the word! Change happens slowly, one person at a time. Please do your part!

Michelle Obama tells the story

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Sep 052012

So I’m embarrassed to admit that I went to bed last evening without watching any of the Democratic National Convention. I thought about turning it on, but then I got sucked into an email vortex instead. I woke up this morning to the tweets of Andrew Sullivan, Anderson Cooper, and others, proclaiming the strength of Michelle Obama’s address last evening, and proceeded to kick myself for missing it.

I just finished watching her speech, and I’m sold. She sold me. I wasn’t sure how I was feeling about anyone in this election. I watched Ryan and Romney last week and felt distanced from them and from their experiences. But Barack Obama generally doesn’t do it for me. The commentators like to talk about his aloofness now, more than anyone talks about his ability to speak. He’s gifted, but I’m very rarely sold. Too much smoke and mirrors and not enough action for me. Probably unfair, but that’s how I’ve been feeling for three years now.

Michelle Obama sold me. She convinced me that Obama has been trying, maybe harder than anyone else, and doing what he committed to do. I’m not sure why I believe her but I do. Maybe it’s because of lines like these:

Being President doesn’t change who you are, it reveals who you are.

It’s not how much money you make, it’s the difference you make in people’s lives.

[Barack] reminds me that we are playing the long game.

Doing the impossible is the history of this nation.

That is the story of this country.

We must work like never before.

I’ve learned that research is about telling the story, and of course, theatre is about telling stories. It’s evident that the Obama family understands the power of story, particularly how their personal narratives connect them to a large segment of the American population that still places stock and value in the American Dream. The ability to convey that story last evening illustrated the stark difference between Romney, Ryan, and the Obamas. I did not see Ann Romney speak, so I need to go back and watch her as well. But people want their stories to be told and heard. Michelle Obama achieved that by extension last evening. Commentators are calling her speech historic. We’ll see.

Clearly, the speech was strategic, but it was also deeply sincere. I study actors when I teach acting. Sounds exit from the mouth, but feelings exit from other parts of the body. The combination of those two exiting forces, voice and feeling, is what moves audiences to action. Michelle Obama exited through her mouth and her chest last evening, allowing us to see that her speech came from the heart.

Applied theatre pedigree with Chrissie Poulter

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Aug 112012

The final week of the Ireland applied theatre course began on Monday with some input from Chrissie Poulter. Chrissie has served as an academic tutor and a devising facilitator for the program in years past, and after a three-year career break, she is back as a faculty member at Trinity College. She offered to share some of her thoughts about the longer history of applied theatre and community arts in Ireland, and I thought that her experience and expertise could provide valuable insights for students as they began to consider their final project for the course: a prospectus for an applied theatre project partnering with an organization in the United States.

Chrissie met with the students on Monday morning, a bank holiday in Ireland, and I was most appreciative of her willingness to come in and speak with the students. Chrissie spent her time introducing some of her past projects as a way to illuminate the history of community arts and the development of applied theatre practice in Ireland on both sides of the border. She then transitioned into a discussion of how the prospectus for a new project needed to contain enough information and background for a potential partner without becoming too academic. This point really grounded the expectation for the prospectus assignment, as students will need to make sure that their projects are nested within the larger field of applied theatre without alienating the prospective partner by using too much “insider,” academic terminology. Chrissie summed it up by suggesting that students think about representing the body of applied theatre work in their own proposals and communicating their pedigree to the prospective partner. This language helps to clarify that the facilitator need not be a full-on expert in the given area that the prospectus suggests to address, but that s/he needs to understand the ancestry of the practice. By illustrating this understanding, even an early career applied theatre facilitator/practitioner can gain the confidence and support of a potential partner. Chrissie made the distinction between being an academic and a well-informed practitioner. The two do not necessarily need to be mutually exclusive, but it sometimes it can be useful to isolate the strengths and nuances of each identity, particularly when the practitioner is working in an academic environment.

As I’ve said on this blog before, Chrissie Poulter is one of the strongest and most nuanced facilitators that I’ve seen at work. I’m grateful for her time and presence on the course, and I know the students felt the same. I look forward to seeing how her input influences the final prospectus assignments that I receive on August 22.

Devising in a natural context: the Giant’s Causeway

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Aug 052012

The second day in and around Belfast featured a trip to the Giant’s Causeway, a UNESCO World Heritage site composed of 40,000 interlocking basalt columns that have been formed over 60 million years of volcanic and geological activity. It’s a scenic ride up the coast from Belfast to the causeway, and after the work that we’ve been doing in urban landscapes, it was fantastic to spend the day in a natural setting. We worried about the weather, but Mother Nature was kind to us with lots of sunshine.

As stated above there are clear scientific explanations for the development of the causeway, but there are also myths and legends that explain the formations as well. Irish giant Finn McCool and Scottish giant Benandonner apparently had some disagreements. Finn tricked Benandonner into believing he was bigger than he actually was, and Benandonner fled back to Scotland, tearing up the causeway as he ran away. This is one version of the story.

Working on an applied theatre project in a new location requires that we get to know the culture of that place. When I talked with Jonathan about the Belfast leg of this course, I knew that I wanted the students to have the opportunity to work on some site-specific work outside of an urban environment. Given the richness of the stories of the causeway, I thought this would be the ideal opportunity to engage in some original creation.

Students were given about 90 minutes to walk around the causeway, and then the group reconvened. I then broke them into four groups of four and gave them devising parameters to create a short, site-specific piece somewhere on the causeway. The piece had to be presented in a way that established an intimacy for our group, so as not to infringe on the experiences of others at the causeway. However, that did not mean that other people might not begin to watch and take in what the performers were doing. The devising parameters were as follows:

1. Choose a specific location on or around the causeway for the performance of the piece. Allow that location to inspire the creation of the piece as well.

2. The piece must have a clear beginning, middle, and end.

3. Use the number 12, 6, or 4 in the piece in some way.

4. Include a moment of discovery.

5. Conjure something from the myth/legend of the causeway.

6. Use the following text from Othello, Act II, scene i:

The great contention of the sea and skies parted our fellowship.

7. Make an offering of some kind to the place.

The groups worked for 45 minutes, and then we promenaded to each location to view the short performances. I felt a great sense of pride watching the work that the students created in this devising exercise, as they truly found ways to engage with the site as an artistic home, albeit for a short time, while using their own creativity to re-tell the story of the causeway, often with some very different twists from the “accepted” myths and legends. This raised some questions about other audience members potentially overhearing these stories and thinking they were “true.” However, myths and legends, in their re-telling, shift and change from one teller to the next. And the students’ creations really drove that point home.

Reminder: We have to think carefully about authenticity and responsibility to the place that we are working in. It’s why one of the devising parameters involved making an offering to the causeway itself. We can’t take the stories of a place or a community only for our own benefit or purpose. Hopefully, the work that we create can also give something back to that location or group of people that we’ve worked with as an artist in that community. Again, the notion of insider/outsider came to the forefront of the work, and students continued to make those connections for the remainder of the day.

Giant’s Causeway should be on any trip to Ireland, particularly Northern Ireland. It’s not necessarily as majestic as the Cliffs of Moher or some other sites, but there’s something quite magical about it. It inspired some memorable performances for me, and I feel that I know the location better than I did after my first time, because the students immersed me in the world through their creative engagement with place.

Below you can see some pictures of Giant’s Causeway and the students’ devised work, and click here for an almost 360 view from out on the causeway itself.

Arriving to Belfast

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Aug 042012

I had to suspend my blogging over the past few days, as we were on the road in and around Belfast, and our accommodations did not have wireless internet access. My iPad does not plug into ethernet connections, so I had to go silent for a time.

On Tuesday evening Jonathan Harden joined the team in Dublin to provide an orientation to Northern Ireland and Belfast. Jonathan has taught on the applied theatre course since 2008, and this year he once again curated our experience in Northern Ireland. In his session Jonathan asked students to share what they felt they knew about Belfast and Northern Ireland and what questions they had. He shared some of his own thoughts, perceptions and experiences, but emphasized that this was only one story. I had asked Jonathan to focus the work in Belfast on the notion of being an insider or an outsider to a particular community and how that might affect the way an individual becomes familiar with a new place that s/he might be hired to work in. Even though Jonathan was born and raised in Belfast and spent much of his adult life there, his recent relocation to London has changed his own experiences of the place that he called home for many years.

We made the two-hour bus journey to Belfast on Wednesday morning, and Jonathan met us at Queen’s University. After a lunch break, we got back on the bus, and Jonathan conducted a tour of the city, pointing out various sites and locations, including the shipyards where the Titanic was built, and eventually taking us to the end of his street in West Belfast. This would have been a largely Catholic, republican neighborhood, meaning that the residents would have wanted independence from the United Kingdom. East Belfast would be largely, Protestant, unionists, people who were happy remaining under British rule. Throughout his tour Jonathan emphasized that these terms are only so useful in the contemporary discussion of Belfast, yet it was compelling to see the reminder of the divide in the various flags, banners, and murals on display in each of these neighborhoods. Jonathan also took us to a peace wall that had been erected to cut down on violence at the height of the Troubles. Throughout our tour I was reminded of the moments in my childhood when Peter Jennings of ABC News would report on IRA bombings in London and the hunger striking of Bobby Sands. Re-visiting this history just reminded me how important the visit to Belfast is for this course, as it allows us to gain a deeper understand of the entire Island of Ireland. The tour concluded with a visit to Ulster Museum and an exhibition on The Troubles that was informative and seemingly quite fair in its depictions of both sides of the conflict.

Following the tour and a quick check in to our rooms at Queen’s, students and staff had a chance to experience the excellent restaurants of Belfast, as Jonathan had booked a number of fantastic options. After dinner, Jonathan conducted an unofficial tour of some of Belfast’s best pubs, and the walking from place to place immediately allowed us to gain a better understanding of being “on the ground” in this compelling city. Pubs included the The Crown Liquor Salon (1826), Kelly’s Cellars (1720), and The Duke of York (1710).

See images below from our first day in Belfast, and click here to see a video of our stop at the peace wall separating East and West Belfast.

Reconnecting with Irish history through two different theatre experiences: Dalkey Castle and Sean O’Casey

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Jul 312012

Monday marked the beginning of academic week #2 on the applied theatre course. Students and staff had a chance to rest on Sunday, and students submitted their first academic journals to their tutors on Monday morning.

We made our fourth site visit of the course to Dalkey Castle and Heritage Centre. We’ve included this site on the course since 2004, and we’re always greeted with hospitality and enthusiasm by Margaret Dunne, the manager of the centre. Dalkey has a reputation as being a very wealthy suburb of Dublin. It’s been described to me as the equivalent of Beverly Hills. Several Irish artists of international fame make their homes there including Maeve Binchy, Bono, the Edge, Van Morrison, Enya, and Neil Jordan. Dalkey also has a great literary tradition, including serving as the location for chapter two of Joyce’s Ulysses.

Dalkey Castle is largely intact, and when Margaret took over as the manager of the heritage centre attached to the castle, she recognized the rich history of the castle and the town itself. Margaret talked with the group about identifying what already exists in a place where one is working. What are the raw materials? What can the artist-manager build from? In Margaret’s case, her background in theatre played a major role in how she moved forward with the centre. She successfully created the Deilg Inis Living History Theatre Company, a professional company of actors charged with animating the historical sites at the centre, which include the castle and a church to St. Begnet, the patron saint of Dalkey. We had a great experience with the actors on our tour of the sites, and it was exciting to see how theatre could be used to truly engaging an audience in the detailed history of a location. The actors engaged with us at a very high level, and I appreciated their ability to pitch their performances and their improvised interactions to a group of adults. We then had a tour of the town of Dalkey, including some of the beautiful homes and views of Dalkey Island. Once again, Margaret Dunne and Dalkey did not disappoint, as I heard several positive comments from students about how inspiring it was to meet Margaret and engage with all of the great programming she has created at the heritage site.

Students then spent their first session in the devising process with Jenny Macdonald and Declan Gorman. Over the course of six working sessions, students will now create two original works with Jenny and Declan, as a way to explore methodologies that can be used in community-engaged theatre creation processes. More details will emerge over the coming days, and I’m hoping to sneak in and see what’s happening in each of these rehearsals.

We ended the day with a performance of O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars presented by the Abbey Theatre in a production directed by Wayne Jordan. This production is a remount from two summers ago that will eventually go on tour, so I had seen it back when I was here in 2010. It is an Irish classic, exploring the experiences of men and women living in a Dublin tenement leading up to and during the Easter Rising of April 1916. At three hours, the play is long, but the work of the actors and the production team kept me fully engaged from start to finish. I had mentally prepared myself for a bit of a struggle, as I thought that my focus might wander a bit since I had seen it before. Not the case, as I found myself fully immersed in the world of the play via the excellent acting, the innovative staging, and the design elements. We saw the show in previews, so I sensed a few tempo issues that are still coming into alignment. However, those moments didn’t detract from my overall experience of the story. O’Casey’s play has an epic feel, and his characters are quite Shakespearean in their plights and their verbal expression of their feelings. The production locates the comedy interspersed with all of the pathos of a play about suffering during a revolution, and I was appreciative of this reality that Wayne Jordan achieves through his direction of the play. It’s a beautiful and painful production that left me with questions about history, choice, love, dedication, devotion. What’s the difference between dedication and devotion? Seems like Jack and Nora wrestle with that question whenever they’re on stage together. And their wrestling, particularly in the first act, is quite memorable.

Both of the above experiences allow audiences to invest in the details of specific human experiences at important historical moments in the history of Ireland. Margaret Dunne expressed an importance in staying as true to possible to the facts of a given situation, whereas O’Casey clearly created a fictional group of people living in a fictional tenement at the time of an actual event in an actual city. While somewhat different in their approaches, both experiences are unified in their unique way of exploring history through theatre.

See below for images from the trip to Dalkey.

An Irish Day of Rest . . . and Hill Climbing

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Jul 292012

Today I had lunch with my friend Andrea Ainsworth. I’ve known Andrea since 2004 when she first taught on the Ireland study abroad course. We have continued to stay in touch over the years, and we meet for lunch or dinner each time I come to Dublin. Andrea works as the Voice Director for the Abbey Theatre, so we’ll get to see her work on Monday evening via the Abbey’s production of The Plough and the Stars.

Joanna Parkes then picked me up, and we drove to a destination that has become a ritual for both of us each time I’m in Ireland for the summer. In 2006, I taught two weeks of the summer abroad course, while my then partner, the late Craig Hamrick, was back in NYC. Craig was too ill to come to Ireland that summer, and it was difficult to be away from him. Toward the end of the program, just as I was about to head back home to re-enter the care-taking role for Craig, Joanna and our friend and colleague Sharon Murphy brought me to the top of a hill in just outside of Dublin. It was a lovely hike through the woods, and at the top of the hill, I could see out into the Irish Sea and all around the city. When Craig passed away in September of that year, Joanna, Sharon, and Declan Gorman returned to the hill and made a short film and sent it to me for Craig’s memorial. Ever since 2006, whenever I return to Ireland in the summer, Joanna and I make this trek, along with other important people in my life who may be visiting. Anyone who has come there remarks how special it is. It has a name, which always escapes me, but Joanna and I like to call it “Our Mountain.” We had hoped to bring her son Dualta this time, but he elected to stay in town and rest after his long night in Bray with the fish and chips.

After our trek up, we had some tea and sweets in the little town of Enniskerry, another part of the ritual. It was a great afternoon, in spite of the weather, as we managed to dodge the rain, wind, and hail. Yes, hail. That was a first for me in Ireland.

Below you’ll find some images from the day. Click here for a 360 view from the top of the hill. The body of water is the Irish Sea, and I’m looking towards Wales. “Our Mountain” is one of my favorite places in the world. Thanks to Joanna for always being a willing and able participant!

Art is discursive: a day with Upstate Theatre

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Jul 262012

Today we worked with Upstate Theatre in Drogheda, a city of about 37,000 people in County Louth. This is our eighth summer program working with Upstate, and the company has rolled out an amazing welcome and an inspiring input each and every year. Today was no exception.

We were greeted by Upstate board member Irene White and Director Declan Mallon, and Declan proceeded to walk us through the history and ethos of Upstate Theatre. This was followed by two panel discussions with artists talking about the creation of new work with members of the Drogheda community. Feidlim Cannon and some of his company members talked about a new work called The Far Side that will premiere in November of this year, and Paul Hayes and actors from his project talked about the very successful Ship Street Revisited, a site-specific work that has its audience travel to five different houses to explore the people and history of Ship Street in Drogheda. We were also welcomed by the Mayor of Drogheda, Paul Bell, and he presented me with the coat of arms of the city (see below).

After a wonderful lunch, we walked through town to the Barbican Centre for a three-hour movement workshop with Zara Starr, a choreographer working with Upstate on a new piece about the idea of home in Ireland. Zara took the group through an intense physical process that pushed the groups’ collaboration skills to the max. She followed this with some great work to create movement phrases, what she called strings. She set the group off in pairs, and asked the partners to create 12 points where they moved around, by, and/or through each other. Once these strings were set, she then asked the performers to take the work one step further by adding various dynamics to the phrases. Following a break, Zara then split the students into four groups and gave them 20 minutes to create an original piece about home. Each of the groups shared their work, and Zara recorded the material, with the intention that it may actually find its way into Upstate’s new work.

Upstate ended the day with sandwiches and drinks at a pub in town, complete with a trio of Irish musicians. As usual, the group left with a lot to ponder based on the inspiring work that we saw and participated in throughout the day. Our work with Upstate is always a highlight for this course, as students really see the range of possibilities that exists when a company fully embraces what it means to be engaged with the community. Upstate has been doing that from its beginnings, and it is evident in the depth and scope of the work that the company creates and produces.

Here are some additional notes, thoughts, and quotations, that I took from the day’s events. I think they are worth consideration for anyone working in an applied or community-engaged way.

From Declan Mallon’s presentation:

“Cultural inclusion is an equal right to participate in the nation’s artistic and cultural life . . . a fundamental democratic right.”

“Civic aesthetic space belongs in the psychological space that we all share.”

Sometimes the methodologies we use don’t work for the communities we’re creating with. We have to change the approach so that we build trust with those participants.

“Art is discursive.”

The terms “citizen artist” and “artist citizen”

Reminder: The belief that all people are creative

In community work, people may be the most comfortable with their own stories.

“There’s no one way to skin this cat called art.”

“We are multicultural within our own communities.”

From Feidlim Cannon:

Hand over the workshop to the participants. Make it about them instead of about the artist.

“Trying to make the screen dance” as it relates to the use of video in performance.

Because the lead artist is not from Drogheda, it may be easier for him to make choices about what stories and materials stay in the play and what parts come out.

Concise steps for interviewing participants for stories: “Interview, take the testimony, go off and investigate it.”

From Paul Hayes:

Paul mentioned the “rules of dramaturgy” for his project, and it made me think of the importance of aesthetic. Being rigorous about consistency in performance is part of that.

A paraphrase: Paul is aiming his shows at people who don’t come into formal theatres.
How can we all think more intentionally about this idea? Not everyone feels comfortable coming into a traditional theatre. How can we tell stories in places other than traditional theatre? It’s happening, but it needs to happen more. It’s a new challenge for myself.

From Zara Starr:

Create a string of movement with a partner:
Around someone
By someone
Through someone

“Hold on tightly; let go lightly.”
Practice this when creating new material for a work in progress.