The Art of Community Conversation

• In a student center at Dartmouth College, a young white student who has been actively involved in the Dartmouth American Festival sits down with Junebug Productions's director John O'Neal to express her discomfort with Junebug's representation of the military in their current play, Ain't No Use in Goin' Home / Jodie's Got Your Gal and Gone. An army dependent, she worries that the play only complicates misunderstandings between civilian classmates and herself. O'Neal listens to her concerns and talks with her readily, frankly, and accessibly about how the military is viewed by many African American men, especially those of an earlier generation, not as a mode of service, but as a means of getting ahead.

• Following a performance by Roadside Theater in rural upstate New York, a middle-aged man approaches Roadside performer Tommy Bledsoe to thank him for the play, part of Roadside's Pine Mountain Trilogy. When Bledsoe encourages the audience member to stay and talk, he points to his wife and their two young children, already dressed in pajamas, explaining that they had driven two-and-a-half hours to attend the performance and had to return home that night. Both parents' families had been forced to leave Appalachia to find work, and when they learned about Roadside's performance of an Appalachian play, they made the long drive so the children could experience something of "home."

• After a performance of Junebug/Jack, a collaboration between Roadside and Junebug, at the Columbia Festival of the Arts in Maryland, an audience member talks of the gap between the original conception of this planned community as an open, accessible crossroads and the development of luxury homes on tiny, high-priced lots in an area with no rental properties. The parallel between the economically driven oppression of poor communities in the play and the current choices by Columbia developers forces the audience to apply to its community the play's central ideas, which are being played out in local homes and backyards.

The community conversation, also called the talkback or postperformance discussion, is thriving in new forms that go beyond the traditional goal of dazzling subscribers with the skill of theatre professionals. Unlike some question-and-answer sessions at regional theatres for season-ticket holders, where audience members ask questions of the professionals who work onstage and backstage, community conversations typically take place after performances in more communal spaces, with audience members and artists speaking as equals. The focus is not on understanding theatrical craft or appreciating the skill of directors and designers, but rather on the potential for communities to express their own anxieties and hopes.

A growing number of community-based theatre artists are formalizing their attempts to elicit audience response in order to shape a community's relationship to the theatre in a more direct and democratic way. From storytelling performances that end with informal opportunities to respond to the artists, to formal audience discussions integrated within the performances themselves, artists are purposefully challenging the passivity of audiences by providing structured opportunities for immediate feedback. Using performance not as an object of art to be studied and appreciated but rather as a catalyst for dialogue about issues of particular interest to an audience, community-based performers are engaging audiences in startling conversations precipitated by performances. These conversations allow audiences to give feedback that does more than provide evaluation of the work: when carefully organized and facilitated, these dialogues can contribute to the process of forming community self-awareness.

Many of the artists I have observed over the past decade belong to the American Festival Project (AFP), a coalition of community-based performers committed to using the arts as a tool for social change. Through twenty-one festivals organized in nineteen states, the AFP has addressed issues of homophobia, racism, racial and ethnic violence, environmental justice, and violence against women. Festivals include performances, workshops, extended residencies, master classes, community performances, and--perhaps most importantly--various types of community dialogues, both formal...