the playwright in residence: a community's storyteller

The Playwright in Residence A Community's Storyteller

Fisher, Amanda Stuart.

TDR: The Drama Review, Volume 48, Number 3 (T 183), Fall2004, pp. 135-149 (Article)

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The Drama Review 48, 3 (T183), Fall 2004. � 2004New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Playwright in Residence

A Community’s Storyteller

Amanda Stuart Fisher

Telling stories is as basic to human beings as eating. More so, in fact, forwhile food makes us live, stories are what make our lives worth living.

—Richard Kearney (2002:3)

In his book On Stories Richard Kearney argues that the art of storytelling isnot only a definitively human activity but also one that helps us to make senseof the lives we lead. He proposes that story or narrative enables us to give shapeto the disparate components of existence; our memories, experiences, and en-counters are made comprehensible and therefore, perhaps, “communicable”through our ability to organize and galvanize them into a narration. He says,“In this way, storytelling may be said to humanise time by transforming it froman impersonal passing of fragmented moments into a pattern, a plot, a mythos”(2002:4).

What are the ways that collective storytelling becomes a community-forming activity, where individual and communal identity is negotiated andexplored? What are the interactive exchanges between the storyteller andcommunity? The structure of this relationship discloses the basis of an ethicsof practice for the playwright in residence. Traditionally, storytelling is an in-teractive event; a community’s concerns, values, and problems are representedand enacted through a narrative. Lived experience is thus given meaning andtransformed into a source of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. Thetransformation of lived experience into “story” requires a process of interpre-tation and it is through this interpretation that experiences are brought to con-sciousness, enabling people to develop a more critical understanding of theirlives.

The process of mimesis, an enactment and transformation of actuality intonarrative form, was traditionally a communal activity. Together the commu-nity participated in a shared exchange of experience and collective interpre-tation, becoming the scribes and therefore the agents of history. Kearney says:

It is, in short, only when haphazard happenings are transformed intostory, and thus made memorable over time, that we become full agents of

136 Amanda Stuart Fisher

our history. This becoming historical involves a transition from the fluxof events into a meaningful social or political community—what Aris-totle and the Greeks called a polis. (2002:3)

This process of collective meaning-making, exchange, and story-weaving isan action that enables the community to forge a coherent understanding of col-lective identity and intersubjective agency. In effect, people know who they arewhen they become “full agents of our history” (3) and have a conscious andcritical comprehension of the events that have formed and shaped that history.Kearney argues that this process of (hi)story-making and its role in the for-mation of identity is shared by the individual and the community:

What works at the level of communal history works also at the level ofindividual history. When someone asks you who you are, you tell yourstory. That is, you recount your present condition in the light of pastmemories and future anticipations. You interpret where you are now interms of where you have come from and where you are going to. And sodoing you give a sense of yourself as a narrative identity that perdures andcoheres over a lifetime. (2002:4)

This suggests that storytelling and narrative enables individuals to consider andcritique their own subjective relationships to the community of which theyare part. This is particularly relevant when negotiating contemporary com-munities, which are often no longer homogenous sites of organic “common-ality” but a constellation of self-determined symbolic identifications withothers. I will explore the challenges that this presents to communal storytellinglater in this article.

While on an individual level we remain accustomed to offering narrativesto articulate our own place in the world, the role of storytelling within com-munity contexts is increasingly less assured. In 1936, in his essay “The Story-teller,” Walter Benjamin warns that “the art of storytelling is coming to anend” ([1936] 1999:83). He attributes this demise to the new conditions of mo-dernity, the rapid development in information technology, and changes inconditions of production, all of which, he says, “benefit” the mass dissemina-tion of “information” that “lays claim to prompt verifiability [appearing] un-derstandable in itself ” (88) and does nothing for the “story” that explores the“miraculous” or unexplainable.

Benjamin’s warning in 1936 seems startlingly prescient. Our contemporaryage of postmodernism and new technologies has established a radically newrelationship with the communication of lived experience. Today a sophisticatedmedia swiftly transforms local and global “events” into easy-to-consume infor-mation “bites.” Drawn to the spectacle, live footage instantly captures events,which appear to unfold before our eyes. Instantly we are presented with a me-diated historical account of what has occurred; images are edited together tosupport the claim that this information is true and verifiable.

There is no doubt that the age of storytelling, authenticated by the wisdomof tradition or the authority of “intelligence that came from afar” (Benjamin[1936] 1999:88) has disappeared, as Kearney says:

We can hardly deny that the notion of continuous experience, associ-ated with traditional linear narrative, has been fundamentally challengedby current technologies of the computer and Internet. [...] Our inher-ited notions of rooted space and time are being profoundly altered bythe emerging megapolis of expanding velocity and immediacy—giving

Playwright in Residence 137

rise to what some regard as an increasingly deterritorialised world.(2002:126)

Yet while we may acknowledge that storytelling in its traditional context hasvanished, it is worth engaging further with Benjamin in order to understandthe significance of this loss. For what lies at the heart of his warning is perhapssomething even bleaker, he tells us: “One reason for this phenomenon is ob-vious: experience has fallen in value. And it looks as if it is continuing to fallinto bottomlessness” (81). Now that our “ability to exchange experiences” hasall but disappeared, we depend on external and highly mediated cultural forcesto shape our experience of life and forge our history. Alienated from story-making processes, we have perhaps begun to doubt the validity of lived ex-perience itself. We are no longer the agents of our own history but areincreasingly subject to a number of story-spinning and meaning-making in-dustries that are now rarely local but rather global enterprises.

I propose that the playwright in residence can provide an interventionwithin this postmodern context of atomization, fragmentation, and disconti-nuity. On a microlevel the residency can re-create the conditions wherebycommunal interaction and communication is revalued, establishing a resis-tance to the reification of lived experience. While orthodox playwriting privi-leges the voice of the individual over the collective, the residency requires thatthe playwright construct a relationship that does not appropriate or reify thestories of the community but instead facilitates an exchange of experience andcollective storytelling that “[combines] the lore of faraway places [through theplaywright] with the lore of the past, as it best reveals itself to natives of a place[through the host community]” (Benjamin [1936] 1999:85).

The playwright in residence is required to step out of her own subjectivesphere and use her craft as a storyteller to draw out and express the lived ex-periences of the host community through the facilitation of collective story-making. However, significantly, unlike Benjamin’s storyteller, the playwrightin residence is not a member of the community but rather a visitor, a conjurerwho is invited to play a temporary shamanistic role in order to transform thecommunity’s lived experience into a story that is meaningful and owned bythose who created it.

But storytelling requires a process of meaning-making; it is not simply aprocess of verbatim narration. This presents the playwright with a distinctivechallenge: How can the playwright facilitate a collective storytelling processwithout shaping the tale through subjective interpretation? Furthermore, tobring a playwright into a community context is to implicitly acknowledge hisor her particular know-how or craft. How then is it possible to forge a rela-tionship in practice that is not only reciprocal and able to preserve the inter-subjective essence of the exchange, but also permits the artistic input of theplaywright, the craft of the storyteller?

The relationship between the playwright and the host community is a com-plex one. Contrary to the context to which Benjamin was referring, where thestoryteller emerged from the community itself, the playwright in residenceconstitutes an intervention and as such is likely to be proposed (and funded)by a body that is outside the community. Furthermore the playwright is un-likely to be working within a community on the basis of continuity and tra-dition (as described by Benjamin). Not only is the playwright an outsider, thecommunity itself is often one of contested membership where symbols ofcommonality “transform the reality of difference into an appearance of simi-larity” (Cohen [1985] 2000:21). This postmodern community is characterizedby choice and intentionality rather than being founded on location; one can


no longer assume a homogenous sense of communal identity. This presents uswith a challenge if we consider collective storytelling in the Freirian sense of“naming the world” in order to transform it (Freire [1970] 1993:69). While aresidency might ignite a process of community formation, it is more likely toreveal a “community” constituted on polyphony and difference rather thancoherence.

Therefore rather than perceiving the residency as a means to inspire collec-tive and unified action, it should be seen as a step towards the “explanation andexplication” (Turner 1982:13) of what it means to become a community con-structed on ethical interactions. What is meant here by the term “ethical” isnot only an acknowledgement of the multitude of differences but a move to-ward “recognizing the Same” (Badiou 2002:25).1 The playwright must estab-lish an interaction that grounds the residency in a commonality while alsoacknowledging difference and conflict within the community itself.

This article grew out of a practical research project that began in 1999 at theCamden Young People’s Theatre (CYPT),2 a company based at the CentralSchool of Speech and Drama, London. Artistic director Janette Smith pro-posed that rather than seeking out an “appropriate” play for the young peopleto perform, she would commission three playwrights—Dona Daley, CourttiaNewland, and Paul Seller—to be in residence at CYPT. The theme for eachplaywright was to be “Camden,” the area of London in which the young peo-ple lived or went to school. In practice, each playwright forged a differentrelationship with the young people. One playwright encouraged the partici-pants to write scenes themselves, the second observed improvisations and thenwent away and wrote scenes and monologues that were inspired by what hesaw, and the third transcribed some of the young people’s improvisations,wrote new sections, and then wove all the different extracts together into acoherent play. Ultimately, this playwright crafted the final performed piecefrom all the materials gathered.

In 2000, Amy Baskin, the new artistic director, decided to draw on this ex-perience and to commission one playwright to work with the young people.In the early stages of the residency the artistic director and I met with the play-wright, Dawn Garrigan, to discuss the way in which the interaction betweenthe writer and the young participants would be negotiated. Our discussionimmediately revealed some of the contradictions of the previous residency,namely, how should we negotiate the role of the playwright and young peoplein the creative process? Our decision to commission a playwright was an ex-plicit commitment to the role of a writer; it was a conscious turning away froma devised project where the creative process may have been led by a directoror facilitator. We wanted to draw on the storytelling know-how of a writer.Yet, negotiating the creative ownership of the project revealed the complexityof establishing a reciprocal interaction between the host community and theplaywright.

Playwright Lin Coghlan, at that time the Workshop Coordinator at SohoTheatre, London, suggests this difficulty is widely felt:

I’ve been in a lot of different types of writer-in-residence situations as awriter but I’m [now] also responsible for setting up the writer’s attach-ment program. [...]

For many writers [...] you feel like officially you’re meant to be insome way in residence [...] but you don’t feel that you’re resident any-where and you don’t feel that you’re attached to anything. I think yourbasic questions are: “What is this relationship?” and “What’s it meant tobe?” and “Does it work?” [...] We get a lot of approaches here [at Soho


Theatre] from foreign theatres, literary managers abroad saying: What isyour methodology when you come to create a residency, and how doyou make residencies work? What are the key do’s and don’ts? (2000)

My research revealed a number of different roles for the playwright in resi-dence, each disclosing a different kind of interaction with the host community.These can broadly be defined as: facilitator, interpreter, or mediator. By takingon the role of facilitator, the playwright enables the community to narrate itsexperiences directly through its own voices and writing. The facilitator assiststhe community in the writing of its own play. In this context, the playwright’screative contribution is that of writing tutor or possibly dramaturge. Con-versely, the role of interpreter places the playwright closer to the creative cen-ter of the writing process. The interpreter playwright takes the stories of thecommunity and knits them together into a play. In this model, both the play-wright and the community are contributing to the telling of the tale. Negoti-ating ownership of this creative process is a complex task. In order to avoid anappropriation of the community’s stories, a crass plundering of lived experi-ence, the playwright must find a way to develop a reciprocal working relation-ship where shared ownership is sustained by both parties. Without carefulethical negotiation, this arrangement can easily become one where the com-munity contributes “material” and the playwright contributes “creativity.”But for this to be a truly ethical transaction between playwright and host com-munity, both parties must be perceived as artists contributing in different waysto the weaving of the tale. The third role, that of mediator, is more pragmatic.Here the playwright records observed improvised dialogue and extracts writ-ten by the community. Then she structures and writes these into a play. Ac-cording to this model, the playwr ight shapes the final text, with thecommunity actively involved throughout the process.

As neat as this division is, my research indicates that in most projects the roleof the playwright is not so clearly defined. Many residencies use an amalga-mation of these three relationships. While it is not the intention of this articleto promote an overly formalized approach to the residency process, it is im-portant to consider the implications of confusing one role with another. Ablurring of the boundaries of facilitator, interpreter, and mediator can resultin confusion, frustration, and even a sense of betrayal for both the host com-munity and the playwright.

Benjamin evokes a storyteller rooted in the community. He “takes what hetells from experience—his own or that reported by others. And he in turnmakes it the experience of those who are listening to his tale” ([1936]1999:87). The storyteller is not facilitating the community, nor is he or sheasking the community to enact or improvise dramatic scenarios. Rather thestoryteller establishes a fluid and reciprocal dialogue where all participants areactively involved and contributing to the story event. As we have seen, thisforms an almost shamanic or trickster-like relationship for the storyteller, whoacts as a conduit for the consciousness of the community, transforming theirlived experiences into story. Community members actively participate in thisprocess. For the “magic” to work they must willingly let the playwright be themaster story-weaver. The sharing of stories and lived experiences establishes asymbolic exchange, which engenders new social bonds and a shared under-standing of community. All participants contribute to the creative process,sharing authorship of the play that is produced at the conclusion of the resi-dency. Although this model resonates with the practice of the playwright asinterpreter, there are some important differences. Because the storyteller isrooted in the community, the stories that emerge are subject to the collective


interpretation of that community. There is therefore no outside perspectiveauthorizing what should or shouldn’t be included. For the playwright in resi-dence however, the concept of collective communal interpretation can be dif-ficult to establish. A number of outside voices will want to shape the residency.Funders, the wardens of the community, and even the playwright’s artisticdrive are influences coming from outside the community. The playwright cancease to be a storyteller and become an appropriator, even if unintentionally.

At the end of the day, the play that is produced as a result of the residencyoften reveals another major divergence from Benjamin’s storyteller. For an ex-change of experience to take place, the playwright must tell the story back tothe community from whence it emerged. If the performance is the finale tothe experience, then the community must be the primary audience for the en-actment of their story. However, in many residency projects, the final play isnot only for the community but is also aimed at a general theatregoing public.In theory, this may not be a contradiction; in reality, serving two audiencesdiscloses a number of tensions that require careful negotiation.

Presenting a residency play to a wider theatregoing public could be per-ceived as an opportunity to shed light on a segment of society that has beenoverlooked by mainstream theatre. The play could provide audiences with an“insider” view of a community that would challenge preconceptions and con-tradict prejudices. In this way, the production could fulfil a political function.While this might seem to be beneficial for the community, it comes at a cost.To construct a play that will deliver a coherent political message often requiresthe manipulation of the stories provided by the community, compromising thevery basis of the community’s experiences.

Clean Break Theatre’s annual residency provides a clear example of the

1. Maria Charles, SallyMortemore, and Irma Innisin Clean Break Theatre’sApache Tears. The firstdraft of the play, written byLin Coghlan and directedby Nancy Diuguid, focusedon the humanity of thewomen prisoners; the finalplay showed more of thehardships of prison. Batter-sea Arts Centre, London,6–24 September 2000.(Photo by Sarah Ainslie;courtesy of Clean BreakTheatre Company)


complexity of the negotiation between two different kinds of audiences.Founded in 1979 by two women prisoners at Askham Grange Prison in York,North Yorkshire, Clean Break is committed to working with women whohave experienced the criminal justice or mental health system. Annually thecompany commissions a new play by a professional woman playwright whoundertakes research during a residency at a women’s prison. The playwrightruns writing groups for the women prisoners and ultimately writes a play thatactively represents the experiences of the inmates. In this version of the inter-preter model, the playwright is not only responsible for telling the women’sstories but is also expected to be responsive to the ethos and views of the or-ganization that commissioned her. Lin Coghlan, who was playwright in resi-dence for Clean Break at Holloway prison in 2000, describes the process:

Beat one is three months working in a prison, the second beat [...] isworking with ex-offenders at Clean Break, running a writing group,then you write a series of drafts all of which are exposed internally inthe company to a mixture of advisors, board members, fellow membersof the theatre company, and ex-offenders and they all contribute.[...Y]ou are obliged to seriously think about that feedback [...]. Soyou’re striving to make a very close link with the community you’rewriting for. (2000)

Clean Break’s annual professional production normally tours both UKprison communities and professional theatre venues. Although it is carefullystructured and negotiated to ensure that it is ethical and responsible, the dualnature of the intended audience presented Coghlan with a contradiction.There was a clear difference between the play that the women ex-offenderswanted to see performed in the prison and the version of the play that spokewith a clear political voice against the prison system and its treatment ofwomen. Coghlan told me, “I ended up at one point writing two completelydifferent drafts” (2000). The first draft of Apache Tears focused on the humanityof the women prisoners and the support that the women provide for one an-other:

2. Maria Charles, SallyMortemore, and Irma Innisin Clean Break Theatre’sApache Tears. The play-wright, Lin Coghlan, wasnot only responsible for tell-ing the prisoners’ stories butalso expected to be respon-sive to the ethos and viewsof the organization thatcommissioned her. Directedby Nancy Diuguid at Bat-tersea Arts Centre, London,6–24 September 2000.(Photo by Sarah Ainslie;courtesy of Clean BreakTheatre Company)


There were three strong, interesting, compassionate women who sup-ported each other and one of them ends up getting out of there and suc-cessfully moving on in her life because of the support of the other two.(Coghlan 2000)

This version of the play represented the story that the women ex-offenderswanted to tell. However, other advisors on the project did not think it was the“right kind of story” to describe the prison experience:

[W]hen we exposed it to a white, middle-class audience, the responsewas: “I don’t believe that story, I don’t see the pain, I don’t see what’shard about prison, it looks like prison is great, the women have a fantas-tic time, they all look after each other and then go on and get a greatjob, nothing goes wrong. It looks like they go to prison and they havethis lovely friendship.” (Coghlan 2000)

This presented Coghlan with a difficult dilemma. She felt a strong alle-giance to the perspective of the ex-offenders advising on the project. She alsowanted her play to demonstrate “that prison doesn’t work, that in fact it’s partof the problem” (2000). She finally decided to rework the script so that moreof the actual hardship of prison was shown onstage. The final version of ApacheTears shows the bright and once sparky Merle reduced to an appalling, shud-dering state, having been given the drug Largactol for depression after losingher child to foster care.

Coghlan told me that for this scene she drew directly from the experiencesof the women she was working with. The scene clearly reveals the problems ofthe prison system: “[T]he people who had not been to prison were immenselymoved and said ‘This is awful, we can’t go on doing this to women.’ ” How-ever the women ex-offenders were less than happy about including the story.They told Coghlan: “We know about the pain, we don’t need to see that”(Coghlan 2000). In reality, unlike Benjamin’s storyteller, the playwright inresidence is often caught between different agendas and points of view. In or-der to purse an ethics of practice that is both responsive and responsible, theplaywright must find a path that leads to all these different agendas.

Jeanie O’Hare, literary manager of Hampstead Theatre, London, links dra-matic structure and “responsibility” (O’Hare 2001). She believes that an effec-tive dramatic structure enables the emotions that are stirred up in a play to be“processed” thus ensuring that at the end of the project, the community is“left” responsibly. She says:

[C]ontrolling the dramatic structure is so important to the way the pieceis created. [...] The form has to be absolutely integral to the materialthat you’re using and that has to have a relationship with the audience, ithas to have an honesty. [...] But I don’t, for instance, think that it is dan-gerous to go into a prison with a dark play, if that play is perfectlyformed and so there is a chance in that cathartic relationship to that playwhen you’re watching it, to actually process all that emotion that it stirsup in you [...]. If the dramatic structure is broken or malformed andyou’re left with this stuff stirred up inside you that you can’t deal with,then that is irresponsible. (O’Hare 2001)

For O’Hare the “perfectly formed” play is closely connected with an “hon-esty” and a recognition of the “truth” of the community.

But does the perfectly formed play leave the audience unable to act? Is Au-


gusto Boal right when he argues that Aristotelian dramaturgy actually re-presses what oppresses people, “purging the audience of all ideas or tendenciescapable of modifying society” ([1979] 2000:56)?

Boal proposes a participatory approach to theatre that prevents the audiencefrom passively accepting the spectacle presented. Like Friere, Boal aims toenable the “spect-actor” to name and thereby transform the social-politicalsituation. “With their hearts and minds the audience must rehearse battleplans—ways of freeing themselves from all oppressions” (xx). But isn’t thekind of action Boal proposes possible only in a homogenous society or polis?His ideas don’t work well within today’s fragmented communities. Boal’smodel proposes a false unity or illusionary sense of integration which over-looks difference and conflict within the community itself. Furthermore ifcommunity is no longer formed around a sense of commonality nor definedby a unified resistance to a common oppressor (such as is found within a total-itarian state or where there is a domineering employer) then attempting to re-hearse a “battle plan” against such a coherent set of enemies is drasticallyoversimplified.

Thus it is clear that relying on dramatic catharsis can lead us toward a struc-ture that inhibits critical reflection. Yet there are ways of developing a storythat awaken consciousness without leaving audiences unable to process stirredup emotion. For Coghlan, dramatic structure takes on a particular significancewhen working with vulnerable groups, such as the prisoners she worked with.A prison audience is likely to have little choice about leaving the performanceif, for example, it becomes too difficult to watch. Furthermore, such an audi-ence is likely to remain in the setting represented in the play well after the per-formance has ended. Coghlan:

3. Maria Charles, SallyMortemore, and Irma Innisin Clean Break Theatre’sApache Tears by LinCoghlan. Directed byNancy Diuguid, BatterseaArts Centre, London, 6–24September 2000. (Photo bySarah Ainslie; courtesy ofClean Break Theatre Com-pany)


I think writers have a responsibility to think about the impact of theirwork on very vulnerable groups if they are commissioned specifically towork for that group. I don’t think that needs to interfere with the truth-fulness of the writing but I think it has to be a delicate negotiation be-tween company and writer because it does come up frequently. It’s anissue I’ve seen come up again and again. Can we leave them here at thispoint? Can we allow the play to leave them at this moment? (2000)

Coghlan raises the issue of the relationship between the “truth” of lived ex-perience and “good” dramatic structure. In devising a means by which a com-munity is able to process the emotions stirred up in the drama, playwrightsmight create conclusions that betray the complexities and truths at the heartof the original story.

Responding to these contradictions, Coghlan uses a “redemptive” narrativestructure. She sees this particular structure as enabling a degree of optimism topermeate the stories she represents:

[A]s a writer I feel some level of redemption is important in a piece oftheatre. It doesn’t have to go as far as the happy ending, but I think thattheatre’s a very powerful tool and if you tell people that life is hopelessyou have to take responsibility for that. [...] I’m interested in us alwayssensing in [the characters of the play] and in ourselves the potential wehave to survive, to grow, to triumph over adversity. [...] That’s quite adifficult line to tread, especially with very very explosive and difficultsubject matter. Because there are no easy answers for women in prisons.(2000)

Attempting to ensure that a community is not left in despair returns us to theissue of collective authorship. For if the playwright attempts to resolve theproblems raised in the community’s stories then he or she is in danger of mov-ing out of the role of storyteller and into that of “teacher” or “therapist.”

There is no simple way to achieve a perfectly reciprocal and ethical practice.All residencies require ongoing negotiation and relationship-building amonga number of different parties. Each host community will bring a unique set ofcircumstances to the residency process and in order to establish an appropriatemethodology, these need careful consideration, tact, and understanding on thepart of the playwright. While the dramatic pull of the story will inevitably in-fluence the shape of the residency, the playwright’s primary ethical responsi-bility must remain with the community in which he or she is based. Everyresidency is a temporal event that can establish the foundations for enhancinga new level of communication and self-confidence, developed from a renewedcommunal concept of shared experience.

The residency at CYPT that initiated this research uncovered a number ofdifficulties in negotiating both community and story. The artistic director andI worked hard to ensure that the young people and the playwright were activeparticipants in the creative process of making the play. However, in retrospectit would seem that we were unable to effectively pinpoint the identity of thecommunity of CYPT. Early on in the process the young people participatedin a discussion about who should be commissioned to be “in residence.”While we were able ask what qualities a potential playwright in residenceshould posses, we failed to recognize that the community of CYPT was in per-manent flux. It was not a community based on the location of Camden nor wasit based on a coherent manifestation of “youth culture.” Research revealed


that many members had different expectations of the project and that CYPTfulfilled a range of different functions in the lives of these young people. Theyall strongly supported the project and were happy to take part in workshopswith the playwright. But in practice they did not feel any real shared desire tocreate a piece of theatre that represented their own lives.

Despite the average age of participants (14–15), the characters that werecreated during the workshops were all in their 20s or 30s and the storylines didnot seem directly representative of their own experiences. For example, theparticipants created a 40-something rich businessman who has an affair withan artist commissioned to paint his portrait.

This put the playwright in a difficult position. She worked hard to encour-age the young people to lead the creative process, but she found the play wasdeveloping into one that had little resonance with the lives of the young peo-ple who had created it. Garrigan:

Last week I noticed that a lot of the characters they had created were intheir 20s and 30s [...] and I said, “What do you want this piece to beabout? Do you want this piece to be about young people and youngpeople’s lives?” And they said, “No.” [...] I am hearing that they wantthis piece to be about a diversity of characters, but I do feel that in orderfor them to feel connected to what they’re doing there does somehowneed to be a presence of young people’s issues within the piece. (2000)

As the residency progressed it became apparent that rather than representingtheir own lives, the young people had chosen to create characters that theyfound “exciting” or whom they wanted to be like. Anna (CYPT participantaged 15) created “Jemima”:

She was an art student and she’s just bought a house that she was sharingwith a fellow art student and she was a mature student, about 22, andwas basically into all that art and decorating her house with all her paint-ings and stuff.

Serena (aged 14) created “Sarah”:

She is very confident and has lots of friends although she doesn’t reallylike being with lots of people, she prefers being on her own. She’s notthat interested in boys, but she’s attractive, she could have a boyfriend ifshe wanted one.

By misunderstanding the constituent identity of the CYPT community wehad, it seems, also overlooked the reasons why the young people came to-gether to create theatre. We had presumed that CYPT shared a coherent iden-tity and expected the young people to create a production that reflected this.However the play that emerged revealed a shifting and fluctuating relationshipto theatre-making and lived experience. In retrospect it seems that each youngperson negotiated a self-defined level of identification with the characters theycreated. For some young people it was an aspirational process: these were char-acters they wanted to be like. For others, it was an escape from their own livesinto a fantasy version of adult life or a make-believe world of theatre.

The final production could perhaps be best understood as a playful experi-ment in living a different sort of life. However, the residency as a whole con-tinued to be perceived as a positive experience by the young people. It becameclear that the communal identity of CYPT was born out of the creative pro-cess. It was a transitory community that grew from the act of performing a play


4. The students of theCamden Young People’sTheatre had one idea ofwhat their play would be,the facilitators another.Playwright Dona Daleyand CYPT participantMarlene Telliam. Rock-a-Bye Camden, directed byJanette Smith, the CentralSchool of Speech andDrama, October–December2000. (Photo by Amy Bas-kin; courtesy of CYPT)

and the ethical interaction that communal creativity necessitated. After theproject ended the membership and subsequent community of CYPT changed,but for those who participated, new social networks and friendships wereformed.

While clearly some friendships began prior to the project and continued be-yond the confines of CYPT, other alliances emerged that were contingent onthe project. Some of the young people who were less confident seemed to de-liberately explore a new level of social ability in the characters they created;the exchange of stories and experiences encouraged discussion that was re-sponsive and generally respectful. Of course it is possible to suggest that thesenew social networks would have developed in the course of any play that wasrehearsed and performed by a group. Yet it was noticeable that the young peo-ple felt a particular level of ownership over this project because they had cre-ated it, in dialogue with the writer. As CYPT participant Paul said:

This time with [the playwright], we have been more involved in thewriting process. [...] Dawn knows how to approach young people. Sheknows what to talk about and she’s very easy to get along with I wouldsay. And just the whole thing of us seeing her every workshop: she’sthere, she’s talking to us, she’s going out of her way to talk to us andmeet us. [...] I like being involved in the whole writing process becauseI want to feel more involved in writing and creating pieces and stuff in-stead of just performing them.

Or Karen:

I think this is quite good because it’s different skills, it’s not just readingout from a piece of writing that has already been written by someoneyou don’t know. Also, I guess, even if they don’t take a character thatyou’ve done, if you’re in it you already know the characters so it’s easierto get into it.


6. Rehearsal for Refuge byDawn Garrigan, directed byAnnie Mckean. Performers:Elle Gritten, Maria Pa-gonis, Tanya Winter, JoanCampbell. Prison Gymna-sium, West Hill HMPrison, Winchester, 12 May2003. (Photo by Peter Ja-cobs, King Alfred’s Univer-sity College, Media and ITDepartment)

In conclusion, there are a number of differentmodels of practice available to the playwright in res-idence. Each residency discloses a different ideologyand each interaction reveals a different expectation ofthe relationship between playwright and host com-munity. However, to perceive the playwright as acommunity’s storyteller is to develop a model that isinformed by an ethics of practice that is both recip-rocal and responsive; able therefore to negotiate theconflicts, the commonalities, and specific needs ofthe host community. While I think it would be mis-leading and perhaps presumptuous to suggest that theplaywright in residence has the power to enable acommunity to radically transform itself, this practicecan certainly have affirmative and beneficial outcomes.The creative exchange of stories and collective inter-pretation of shared lived experience enable participants to throw off unwantedlabeling and prejudice and become authors of their own lives.

Although the traditional storyteller may be long past, I believe there is stilla place for the storyteller to work with people to help them tell or invent sto-ries that actually build a community. When Benjamin uses the term “Story-teller,” he refers to the wisdom that develops from the experiences of thecommunity members themselves. In today’s fragmented communities, a co-herent story may be hard to discover or construct. But the work of playwrightsin residence, even if it does not lead to radical change, can establish an ethicaland communal interaction that may in time, make unified community con-sciousness and action a possibility. To accomplish this, the playwright must befully integrated with the host community. This requires a sustained period of“in residence” time enabling the playwright to establish relationships, developtrust, and find ways to create a shared communication.

A recent project directed by Annie McKean at Winchester Prison providesa good example of what can be achieved from an extended creative partner-ship and residency. The project took place over an 18-month period in 2001/2002 and involved students from King Alfred’s College working alongside

5. An 18-month partnershipinvolved students from KingAlfred’s College workingalongside women prisonersfrom West Hill Prison. Per-former Rebekah Wilsonplays “Jess” in a rehearsalfor Refuge by residentplaywright Dawn Garrigan.Prison Gymnasium, WestHill HM (Her Majesty’s)Prison, Winchester, April2003. Directed by AnnieMckean. (Photo by PeterJacobs, King Alfred’s Uni-versity College, Media andIT Department)


women prisoners from West Hill Prison. Refuge,Dawn Garrigan’s play written as a result of the resi-dency, was performed at Winchester Prison in May2003. The project was a meaningful experience forboth the prisoners and the college students: it forcedboth parties to confront their prejudices and expecta-tions of one another. Many of the participants com-mented on the value of the friendships that formedthroughout the project and a number of the womenprisoners particularly commented on how the pro-ject had had a humanizing effect in the otherwisealienating prison. As one prisoner-performer statedin the Refuge program: “Doing the play and meeting

the students has made me feel like a human being again.”Perhaps the most interesting feedback took place at the end of the perfor-

mance. While the discussion was still going on, a prison guard appeared witha huge bunches of keys. Almost as soon as the last comment was made, he is-sued a command and briskly marched the performers/prisoners out of theperformance space and back to their cells. The last comment of the discussionwas from a prisoner/performer who spoke of how the project had “taken herout of herself.” She said: “When we’re here I’m no longer in prison, youknow, in my mind, I’m free.”

Notes

1. Badiou challenges the Levinasian construct of the other as radical alterity:

The truth is that, in the context of a system of thought that is both a-religiousand genuinely contemporary with the truths of our time, the whole ethical pred-ication based upon recognition of the other should be purely and simply aban-doned. For the real question—and it is an extraordinarily difficult one—ismuch more that of recognizing the Same. [...] What, then, are we to make of theother, of differences, and of their ethical recognition? Infinite alterity is quitesimply what there is. Any experience at all is the infinite deployment of infinitedifferences. Even the apparent reflexive experience of myself is by no means theintuition of a unity but a labyrinth of differentiations. (2002:25–26)

2. Camden Young People’s Theatre (CYPT) for people aged 14–18 is funded by CamdenBorough Council, London, and managed by the Central School of Speech and Drama.From 1999 to 2002, I was responsible for the day-to-day management and support ofthe artistic director.

References

Badiou, A.2002 Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil. London: Verso Press.

Boal, Augusto2000 [1979] Theater of the Oppressed. London: Pluto Press.

Cohen, Anthony P.2000 [1985] The Symbolic Construction of Community: Key Ideas. London: Routledge.

Coghlan, Lin2000 Interview with author. London, 7 November.

Freire, Paulo1993 [1970] Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Penguin.

7. “Doing the play andmeeting the students hasmade me feel like a humanbeing again.” Staff, stu-dents from King Alfred’sUniversity College, andprisoners from West HillHM Prison Winchester:Kerryn Davies (PrisonDrama Tutor), Vicky Bur-nell, June Gordon, MariaPagonis, Mimi Frank, Ste-phen Manley, AnnieMckean (Director, ProjectManager), Carla Dorward,Tanya Winter, TashaColes, Nicola Ward, Na-omi Evans, Elle Gritten.Rehearsal for Refuge byDawn Garrigan; directed byAnnie Mckean. (Photo byPeter Jacobs, King Alfred’sUniversity College, Mediaand IT Department)


Garrigan, Dawn2000 Interview with author. London, 28 November.

Kearney, Richard2002 On Stories. London: Routledge.

O’Hare, Jeanie2001 Interview with author. London, 5 March.

Turner, Victor1982 From Ritual to Theatre. New York: PAJ Publications.

Amanda Stuart Fisher is a Lecturer in Applied Theatre at Central School of Speechand Drama, London, and has worked as a drama teacher and as education coordinatorat the Royal Court Theatre, London.

the playwright in residence: a community's storyteller

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