Performing Community in English Canada and Quebec

Building a sense of group cohesion is often assumed, in Western theatre studies, to be intrinsic to the process of creating a dramatic performance. Nowhere is this more evident than in the various forms of community-based theatre that have emerged in recent years. But any attempt to discuss community-based theatre quickly runs into the problem of what the term "community" actually means. Some of us, when we speak of community-based theatre, are speaking of a theatre whose work is based in a particular geographical locale. Others are referring to a theatre that speaks to and from the concerns of a group of people with a common lifestyle or set of interests. Still others are using the term "community-based" to refer to a theatre in which most of the participants do not earn their living by artistic work. Recent developments in political theory suggest another, and perhaps more useful, way in which we might consider appeals to "community" and "community-building" in theatrical work. Some political theorists use the term "community" today in the same way many social activists do, as a marker of communitarianism, a movement whose principle concern is the diminishing level of participation in the public decision-making processes of late modern societies.

Many communitarian philosophers blame this lack of participation on the contradictions inherent in a liberal claim to govern from a morally neutral point-of-view that maintains strict parallel distinctions between public and private concerns and the activities of mind and body. Philosopher Seyla Benhabib locates the chief flaw in this liberal claim: "All struggles against oppression in the modern world begin by redefining what had previously been considered 'private,' non-public and non-political issues as matters of public concern, as issues of justice, as sites of power which need discursive legitimation" (100). Community activists who share this view often use theatre to open "private" problems to collective scrutiny.

Theatre provides an ideal medium for this kind of community activism precisely because it combines mind and body to overcome the public/private split characteristic of liberal social thought. Still, theatre is not immune to the tensions between different forms of communitarian thinking. Benhabib describes the two most important of these as founded in opposing integrationist and participatory strains of political thought. On one side, Benhabib contends, an integrationist view of community sees the problems of modernity as resulting from the loss of a coherent value scheme and sense of belonging that would provide a solid foundation for public life. On the other side, proponents of a participatory view of community argue that social differentiation does not need to be overcome because "modern societies are not communities integrated around a single conception of the human good or even a shared understanding of the value of belonging to community itself" (79). According to Benhabib, participatory communitarianism is instead marked by sentiments of political agency and efficacy, "namely the sense that we have a say in the economic, political and civic arrangements which define our lives together, and that what one does makes a difference" (81).

Arguably, Canadian popular theatre workers are trying to construct models of participatory community, but their group-building and information-gathering exercises carry their own biases and reflect some of the tensions within communitarianism itself. The choice of activities is largely determined by the facilitators' presuppositions about what is blocking broad social participation in particular areas. It would seem that the "rehearsal for revolution" that Augusto Boal urges popular theatre to constitute may occur as much in the process of rehearsing a popular theatre piece as in performing it. As an example, a comparison of the theatre exercises used by Headlines Theatre of Vancouver and by the Théâtre Parminou of Victoriaville, Québec, reveals two distinct approaches to broadening participation in their creative processes and in the public life of their respective societies. Where Headlines's approach emphasizes the public articulation of problems that participants have in common, the Th&eacute...