Evans article

Theatre Transcending Trans-generational Trauma 

      Why do certain families have the same problems generation after generation? Why do neighboring communities war with each other generation after generation?  The effects of trauma inflicted on entire communities can echo for generations. How can performing arts break the cycle?

      I want to facilitate the transformation of traumatic cultural legacies into healing community-based theatre. Through a group dramatic process based in embodiment and animated interaction, participants can rescript their personal and collective narratives of inherited trauma. Our bodies hold the energy of trauma we experience in our lifetime and the inherited trauma of our ancestors.

      Healing can’t start until the hurting is stopped. Under the surface of hatred and ethnic conflict is deep grief and collective pain, often-ancient pain, but how can that be accessed in hostile environments? 

Theatre and Cultural Conflict

      Practitioners such as Armond Volkas and Arnold Mindell have put forth models for working together with people from both sides of an ethnic conflict.

      Armond Volkas' Healing the Wounds of History has a progression of process for working through historical trauma with people. From Roland Miller and Armand Volkas article published in 2007:

• Bring together conflicting groups, breaking taboo against speaking to each other.
• Humanizing each other through sharing stories.
• Owning and examining the perpetrator in all of us.
• Deep grieving of collective pain.
• Create performance in remembrance.
• Transforming cultural legacies into acts of creation/service.

 

      In the Worldwork approach to working with Transgenerational Trauma in cultural conflicts the primary focus is on humanizing each other through sharing stories. Arnold Mindell wrote:

       A prime cause of conflict is the imbalance of power, worldworkers' first step in facilitating conflict is to look, listen and try to empathize and feel the feelings of power and oppression on each side of a conflict. (p. 61) 

      Volkas' third step "Owning and examining the perpetrator in all of us" and Mindell's "feel the feelings of power and oppression on each side of the conflict" both have a similar aim. This is a stage where many people are resistant to such a process. It's easier to claim ways in which we have been violated than it is to account for ways which we have violated others. Once we can account for our own abuses of others we can more authentically heal the divides in society.

      Are you ready to go there with me? I’ll be back December.

Dramatic Tools

for Conflict Transformation 

Evan Hastings 

Double- Someone who mirrors the protagonists body language and makes statements in the first person (as if the protagonist) based on the feelings that arise in their body. Think of it as someone offering inner thoughts.

I'm doubling someone who is talking about how confident they are in the face of their conflict. While speaking loud the person is fiddling with the zipper on their hoodie. As the double I say "I'm nervous" 

Role Reversal- When two people trade roles within an enactment. Often useful when parties in conflict are having trouble listening to or empathizing with the other(s). Also useful to have the protagonist answer their own questions.

Protagonist asks "Mom why does it have to be like that?". Then I would ask the protagonist to switch roles with Mom and answer their own question, then switch back into their primary role. 

Pause- To stop a scene and have everyone hold the body posture of the paused moment.  Helpful when you identify a destructive behavioral pattern cycle is just beginning. In a pause you may employ any of the other interventions.

 

Fast Forward/ Rewind- Go back in time or ahead to the future. Every conflict has a history and every resolution has it's consequences. Fast-forward for pre-viewing outcomes or possible consequences. Rewind for showing context and history.

Rewind is especially useful when the conflict appears to start with a violent altercation, through a rewind you may find that the conflict actually had roots in the lunch line yesterday. 

Soliloquy- A poetic monologue. Can be used during a pause to make inner thoughts public and deepen understanding of where each other are coming from.

"Pause, Cindy can you give a Soliloquy" I said. "I'm trying to get him to listen right now, I'm so frustrated, I just wanna hit him and he keeps on giggling, nothings funny"  Cindy stated, she appeared more centered in herself when I said " Thank you Cindy, are you ready to resume the scene? Ready, Go!" 

Multiple Endings- Replay the scene with different endings. Identify a pivotal moment in the scene while it's enacted the first time through. Once it ends, invite a rewind back to that pivotal point and invite the characters to replay it in a different way. If the participants can't think of any other endings then pose "what if" questions.

Written by Evan Hastings