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Personal Stories in Public Places: An Investigation of Playback Theatre. By Nick Rowe This material is made publicly available by the Centre for Playback Theatre and remains the intellectual property of its author. Centre for Playback Theatre www.playbackcentre.org Personal Stories in Public Places: an investigation of playback theatre. Nick Rowe This thesis investigates Playback Theatre, an improvised form in which members of an audience are invited to tell personal stories to a ‘conductor’ and see these improvised by a company of actors and musicians. As a performing member of Playback Theatre York throughout the duration of this research, I have had the opportunity to record and analyse the processes involved in the improvised enactment of personal stories. The thesis argues that effective playback performances initiate a process of interpretative or hermeneutic play. Through this process the teller’s story is destabilised and opened up to multiple perspectives and subject positions, none of which are authoritative or final. It is argued that playback enactments often exemplify the ways in which narratives are constructed out of human experience and, by doing so, highlight their contingency and mutability. It is proposed that the contrasting means of representation between the ‘telling’ and the ‘enactment’, the particular position of the teller on stage, and the tension between the performative and the referential, all heighten the conditions for hermeneutic play. The method devised to construct this thesis includes the analysis of playback performances, the reflexive use of ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ perspectives, the use of writing as a means of discovery, and the employment of multiple subject positions to render the complexity of the field. Through these means the thesis works to reject the claim, often present in playback discourse, that performers playback the ‘essence’ of the teller’s story. Instead it is proposed that, since the past is irrecoverable and only capable of being signified through the complex mediation of memory and representation, playback theatre shows how the actors, in their unavoidable partiality, respond to the story. The thesis concludes by exploring some of the ethical and political issues that are raised by the performance of personal stories in public places. Acknowledgements Thanks are due to Hazel and Rebecca who have lived the stresses and anxieties of this thesis over the last six years. Without them this would not have been possible. I am also very grateful to Playback Theatre York who gave permission for me to conduct the research within the Company and who have constantly provided support and encouragement. The College of York St John have supported this work consistently, through financial means and through releasing me for study leave. I am very grateful to them. Finally, I am deeply indebted to Professor Baz Kershaw whose patient and wise advice has sustained me throughout the process. Personal stories in public places: an investigation of playback theatre. Nick Rowe. March 2005 Centre for Playback Theatre www.playbackcentre.org Chapter One Introducing Playback Theatre In December 1999 Playback Theatre York staged a performance at a centre for people with mental health problems in Halifax. It was the first of a series of performances commissioned by the mental health charity, MIND. The Company had performed at this venue two years previously and knew some of the audience that comprised of about fifty people with mental health problems and professionals who worked with them. The performance took place in a room used by the members of the centre for meeting each other. The chairs were turned around to face a stage area on which there were two chairs downstage right, a line of five chairs on the same level upstage centre and a chair surrounded by musical instruments stage left. An assortment of coloured fabric was hanging on a clotheshorse at the back of the stage. Halifax: 1 As the audience arrived the performers, who were dressed in black T- shirts, black trousers and bare feet, greeted them and introduced themselves. At the cue of music, the actors took their places in front of the five chairs centre stage. They began in the usual way. Each took turns to tell a moment or short story from his or her own life and watch as this was briefly performed by the others. The actors used brief improvisations to playback each story. The musician accompanied them. The stories told that day included: worries about feeling lonely at Christmas; feeling low in energy and wanting to stay in bed that morning; the changing relationship with an actor’s mother during her Personal stories in public places: an investigation1 of playback theatre. Nick Rowe. March 2005 Centre for Playback Theatre www.playbackcentre.org serious illness; memories of the last performance when an actor's husband was seriously ill; feeling tearful because of having lost her voice and finally, on the journey to Halifax remembering the saying ‘ Save us from Hell, Hull and Halifax’ and then dozing on the train. A woman, not dressed in the black costume of the performers, stood centre stage and welcomed the audience to a performance of playback theatre. She introduced herself as the conductor and explained that she would be inviting members of the audience to tell their own stories. She began by asking the audience if any thoughts or feelings had arisen from the actors’ stories. Playback theatre is a form of improvised drama in which members of an audience are invited to tell personal stories to a ‘conductor’ and see these improvised by a company of actors and musicians. In the playback lexicon, the contributor of each autobiographical narrative is called the ‘teller’. They are invited to sit on the stage or to recount their experience from the audience. Playback practitioners usually work in companies and perform to a wide range of audiences. Although this performance by Playback Theatre York was given to people with mental health problems and professionals who work with them, the company also perform at conferences, for different professional groups, in health and social care settings and occasionally at events that mark significant life transitions (for example, significant birthdays, weddings, retirements). I have been a member of this company since 1994; my involvement will present significant methodological opportunities and problems that will be discussed in Chapter 2. Personal stories in public places: an investigation2 of playback theatre. Nick Rowe. March 2005 Centre for Playback Theatre www.playbackcentre.org Playback theatre is relatively under-researched and, although practised in many countries throughout the world, relatively unknown amongst theatre theorists and historians. I will begin by acquainting the reader with a typical playback performance through presenting vignettes from the Halifax show. I shall also begin to ask questions of the form − to expose playback theatre and the process of writing about it, to a destabilising dynamic. To date, the limited literature on playback theatre has tended to have the aim of promulgating and explaining the practice for those who are unfamiliar with it, or it has been written for those ‘insiders’ who practice it and wish to develop their understanding. There is, therefore, little critical writing on playback and I know of no attempt to systematically examine the discourse and practices of its practitioners. This will be one of my central aims in writing this thesis. Accordingly, in looking at the course of one particular performance and through a somewhat critical examination of playback theatre’s history and discourse, I intend to identify some of issues that are raised by the practice of inviting personal stories to be told in public places. A ‘typical’ playback theatre performance It is, I think, noteworthy that the ‘usual format ‘of a playback theatre performance is, with some variations, remarkably stable throughout the world. I have attended playback performances in Australia, Japan, the United States and the Netherlands, watched companies from Hungary and Japan perform at the Seventh International Playback Theatre Conference at York, in 1999, as well has talked to, and worked with, practitioners from many other countries and there seems to be remarkable conformity in the structure of a Personal stories in public places: an investigation3 of playback theatre. Nick Rowe. March 2005 Centre for Playback Theatre www.playbackcentre.org performance. This relative homogeneity is, almost certainly, partly explained by the small number of international trainers who have introduced playback theatre around the world and by the observation that the form takes certain risks with the audience in asking them to tell their personal stories and, indeed, performers take risks in spontaneously enacting those stories. In light of those risks it is perhaps not surprising that practitioners choose to work within a stable and, for them, easily recognisable format. However what Anne Chesner refers to as the ‘simplicity’ (2002 p.41) of the playback form is problematic. It suggests homogeneity of practice which potentially may mask diversity and inhibit a flexibility of response to differing social, cultural and environmental conditions. An understanding of how differing ‘public places’ influence playback performances and so construct varying notions of ‘public’ and ‘personal’ is important in grasping the playback process. Halifax: 2 After the conductor had asked the audience if they had any personal responses to the actors’ stories, a woman, who was, perhaps, in her sixties, put her hand up and said that the actor who had spoken about being lonely had evoked thoughts of the imminent Christmas. She spoke about all the pressures to enjoy herself and be ‘happy’ at Christmas when all she felt was that she was ‘crying inside’. The conductor asked for this to be played in 'three voices', a ‘short form’ in which three actors give contrasting voices to portray elements of the story.

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