Devising and Mandatory Reporting: An Update from the Field

Since writing “Why Devise? Why Now? ‘Houston, we have a problem’” in 2005 for the first Theatre Topics’ special issue on devising, I have had the opportunity to test-drive Fringe Benefits Theatre’s script-devising methodologies in a couple dozen theatre for social justice collaborations¹ with university and community groups throughout the United States, and in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Recently, my good friend and colleague Daniel-Raymond Nadon and I coedited an anthology of essays by artists, activists, and scholars who participated in some of these projects: Staging Social Justice: Collaborating to Create Activist Theatre (2013). The book functions as a kind of toolkit, comprising thoughtful reflections about and strategies for collaborative decision-making, creating “safe space,” coalition and community-building, measuring impact, and “marketing the revolution.” I am writing this Note from the Field at this time because I feel compelled by my most recent experiences devising activist theatre on university campuses to share some concerns I have about our ability to continue to do this important work.

To be specific, over the past few years I have found that the mandatory reporting obligations entailed by the US government’s Title IX and Clery Act present some serious challenges to anyone who wishes to work with university students to devise theatre based on their experiences of discrimination on campus.

“Story Circles,”² or personal storytelling of some kind, is a fundamental part of creating such work. As Jan Cohen-Cruz so aptly puts it: “Personal storytelling expressing what people in different walks of life know from the authority of experience is appropriately the signature methodology of community-based performance . . . [and it is] in tune with the democratic underpinnings of the field” (129). A few of the myriad compelling arguments she offers for story-sharing’s vital importance to this form of devised work include that it promotes “solidarity” (136) and creates a “level playing field apparent to everyone” (135), and that “[t]hrough the deep meeting place that is personal story, oppression may not only be made manifest but reframed, no longer a secret shame but a political condition. Those who hear are also reframed, as ones who must respond” (143).

There are countless other critical reasons for individuals working together to address social justice issues through theatre to use their own true stories as the basis of that work. Three reasons stand out to me. First, having the real-life experiences of the community as the foundation of a play grounds the work in reality and can help the audience engage with, relate to, and empathize with the storytellers more fully. And of course really interesting, nuanced, thought-provoking stories can make great theatre!

In my work with Fringe Benefits Theatre, story-sharing is the first step in our devising process; to be more precise, it is how we begin our first session with the full devising team. Before the entire group meets, project leaders work together to determine, among other things, the specific activist goals and target audience for the project. Once we are all together, each of the participants offers “a story or anecdote to the (very large) circle of thirty-seven³ people with a view to these stories being used in a play—the play that we’re all to write together. We [do] this by literally going around the circle and speaking a story aloud to the group, and into the tape recorder for later transcription” (Busby and McNamara 176). Veteran Fringe Benefits devising facilitator Flint vividly describes one such session focusing on anti-Aboriginal discrimination in a Canadian community:

When the time comes to share stories—of discrimination, of violence and rage, of sorrow and neglect, of racial and ethnic myths built and broken, of strength and resiliency—the participants speak in turn or shake their heads and take a pass as they shape their courage into a bundle of words and wait for the turn to come around to them again. We will build the final play out of the bones and breath of some of these stories. They stutter and...