Building Coalitional Spaces in Lois Weaver's Performance Pedagogy

In Betty Sasaki's 2002 article, "Toward a Pedagogy of Coalition," she explicitly decries discourses of consensus, particularly those constructed by family metaphors that portray multiculturalism on the liberal arts university campus. For example, Sasaki cites materials distributed by her university that present its multicultural "differences" as all part of its "happy family." Discourses that create seamless narrative subsume difference and assume stable identities, excluding contradictory identities like Sasaki's biracial one. More importantly, such institutional narratives inhibit classroom interactions; students self-censor to avoid conflict and erase differences within the group. Sasaki calls instead for a "pedagogy of coalition" that builds alliances while encouraging students to recognize the multiple contradictions that exist within their own subjectivity, as well as the contradictory positions among class members that are not easily reconciled.

Because a pedagogy of coalition aims to engage critical discussion of difference outside the purely moral and personal/private domain, it challenges the institutional narrative of good citizenship. One's standing as a member of a coalitional community is determined not only by the risks we take in claiming our difference, but more importantly, by the ways in which we negotiate those claims in relationship to the differences of others.

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For Sasaki, the classroom becomes a site where students can contest dominant narratives, as well as each other's, as they discover new ways of relating to one another outside of a merely personal realm. Sasaki emphasizes that students must be able to recognize their own contradictory natures and hybrid identities in order to effectively negotiate their identity among others. The process of claiming and negotiating difference is integral to the formation of the self and the coalition; nowhere is this more evident than in collectively created performance.

For this reason, Lois Weaver's performance pedagogy, which includes her teaching residencies at various universities,¹ is particularly relevant to an examination of how complex identities and difference may be negotiated through performance. In the late 1990s, I worked with Weaver to conceive and produce a residency at the College of William and Mary, a moderate-sized "public ivy" liberal arts school. While William and Mary was consciously working on its identity in relationship to race, other identities—particularly those of queer and working-class students—had been almost completely suppressed in the curriculum and in campus life. We planned a collectively generated performance piece around "the Southern Voice" that explored the style of Southern gothic literature and themes of regionalism and identity. As the producer of the residency and assistant director for the production, I participated in and documented the entire workshop and rehearsal process.

In a liberal arts theatre department that focused primarily on the study of canonical theatre, the Southern Voice project was a radical departure from the regular curriculum. The rehearsal process was guided by a feminist ethic that required students to embrace the uniqueness of their identity on multiple levels that included regional identity, class, sexuality, gender, religion, and race. Such a focus on the personal autobiography of students is always a risky undertaking, particularly in institutional environments in which students many times are trying to transcend specific markers of identity. Weaver's performance pedagogy speaks to a complex understanding of feminist identity that balances individual voices within group creation. Guiding concepts such as "multiple-choice acting," "the layered character," and "improvisation in space" allowed Weaver to construct a coalitional space in which ensemble members engaged conflict and contradiction in productive ways that underlined the fluidity of their identities as they created a jointly authored representation.

A unique aspect of Weaver's work is her ability to preserve the individuality of actors' voices in the exploration of the intersection of their identities, all while critiquing dominant culture. In Whose Improv Is It Anyway?, Amy Seham points out that in striving for a "group mind," many performance improv traditions wind up stifling the voices of minorities in pursuit of a unity and flow...