This is gonna be the community column. If anyone remembers the name of the photographer at Zuni last summer, please let me know, so I can provide acknowledgment of his photos. And if anything is terribly wrong, let me know and maybe I can still get it changed.

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RADICAL FAERIE PLAYBACK THEATRE
HAS ARRIVED

By Mountaine

Thirty years ago, two visionaries schooled in the power of psychodrama came up with a revolutionary idea. Jonathan Fox and his wife Jo Salas discovered that the theatre created in drama therapy could be as entertaining as well-performed scripted plays. They gathered a group of colleagues, developed a few flexible forms of improvisation, and began to create theatre from true stories that were provided spontaneously by people in their audiences. Jo and Jonathan could not have imagined the results they would achieve.

Thirty years later, there are about 200 playback troupes active in 30 countries. Their styles differ as much as their cultures and languages, but the basic forms are universal. A typical performance begins with a warm-up in which audience members are asked to share personal feelings about various subjects, and a group of actors does brief “fluid sculptures” to dramatize what they hear, accompanied by live music. Then the conductor of the evening asks for someone to offer a story. An audience member comes up to the stage and is interviewed. The only rule is that the story they tell must be their own – it could be memory, dream, or fantasy, but usually it’s memory. The actors and musicians listen very carefully, the conductor gives them assignments, and then come the magic words “let’s watch”. The story is played back. At its best, the “playback” reaches into the story behind the story, serving the storyteller by adding insight and art to what she or he has shared. At its best, it’s as profound as the best performances of Hamlet. (Not surprising - it’s even more real!) Listening to people tell their stories and then watching those stories enacted is one of the strongest community-building techniques I’ve ever come across; that’s why it’s caught on in so many different cultures.

Personally, I came to playback in 1995, when Asheville Playback Theatre was formed. Although I had some acting experience, all I knew of improv was the kind in which actors try to outdo each other (funnier than thou), and I didn’t like the competitive style. But over the past ten years, I’ve discovered that I can be as effective in a straight romantic scene (playing either the man or the woman) as when I’m cast as a lobster in a Times Square Steak ‘n Ale, or as God intervening in a violent monsoon. Practicing and performing playback has greatly improved my sense of spontaneity and has enhanced my willingness to trust my intuition. And it’s so much fun!

A few years ago, I began to offer playback theatre workshops at faerie gatherings. Each time, I’ve been amazed at the fit between playback and the skills that faeries already tend to have. Many of us have learned to hear each other’s stories with compassion, in heart circles and in less structured settings. Since the ability to listen deeply and well is one of the most difficult skills a new playback actor has to learn, it’s remarkable how easy it is to teach playback to faeries. No acting experience is required; the kind of acting we do can be taught. The non-verbal communication that’s essential to playback is much harder to teach, and faeries are naturals!

In August 2004, at the shaman’s gathering at Zuni Mountain Sanctuary in New Mexico, radical faerie playback really came into its own. Early in the week I offered an introductory workshop, with the idea that if 4 or 5 people liked it, we could practice a few more times and then give a performance to the 90-or-so faeries on the land. Over a dozen participants came to the first session, and their enthusiasm was really thrilling. In about an hour they had learned what might have taken a day or two with other groups, and already they were talking about starting playback companies in their hometowns. (The annual shaman’s gathering isn’t called “Faerie University” for nothing!) After a few more practices (in which the actors shared super-intense personal stuff, and developed a profound sense of family), it was show time.
I’ll never forget the excitement of that performance. One by one, faeries came up out of the audience and told us funny / touching / awkward / meaningful moments from their lives. We had a dozen actors, and for most stories we only used four at a time, so all the others sat in the audience and played on musical instruments to support the mood of the enactment. Fortunately, there was a professional photographer from Europe on hand – what he captured on film provides a glimpse of the fun we had that night.

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For me, the experience at Zuni was so fulfilling that I became more persistent in promoting faerie playback. In March 2005, I went to San Francisco to teach a 3-day workshop and conduct a public performance. It turned out that all but one of the actors in the workshop had been at Zuni 6 months earlier, so we were able to build on the work we had already done. Again, in our practice sessions we played back several intensely personal stories of trauma and transformation, and the bonding that happened among us was miraculous. It was really hard work, challenging as well as invigorating.

For the show Sunday evening we had 9 performers: Crystal Cobra, Ender, Lady Shalidon, Lucyfir, Mountaine (oh, that’s me!), Mouse, Sin-er-gee, Spiraleena, and Whiteeagle. The stories that evening ranged from Khol’s conflict about staying in the USA or returning to Canada, to Boomer’s story of getting gloriously lost at Wolf Creek, to Shandra’s memory of her first sugar high at the age of 4 at a rainbow gathering, to Storm’s tale of Glitter Bunny’s worldwide search for her tribe. It was a thrill to be hosted by the legendary Kaliflower commune, and because they were directly involved in the early days of the Cockettes, the entire event felt to me like coming round a full circle.

As time goes on, I feel more committed than ever both to my home company in Asheville, to the global playback movement, and to planting seeds for faerie playback theatre. At home, I’m participating as fully as I can in prisons and in public shows with my ongoing playback family, who I love dearly. Globally, I’m helping organize playback companies in a series of theme shows (stories of “acts of kindness, and missed opportunities”) around the world on November 13th for World Kindness Day. And in faerie space, I am available to offer playback training wherever and whenever it’s wanted. If you’re interested in hosting a (free) workshop at a gathering or in your local community, please let me know via email at mjonas@madison.main.nc.us, or through RFD.

This is my story. Sometime soon I’ll tell this story at a playback show. If the conductor feels like having my story done in an abstract way, she’ll tell the actors to do the story “sing-dance” style. She’ll ask me to cast an actor to play myself, another actor to play the radical faerie tribe, and a third to play the muse of playback theatre itself. She’ll instruct them to move but not to use sound. Then she’ll choose 3 more actors to stand still and just use their voices. With the magic words “let’s watch”, the movers will find a position on stage and “freeze”, then the sounders will start to make sounds, then the movers will move to the sounds, the sounds will shift, the movers will shift, the sounders will respond to the movement and the movers will respond to the sounds, and I’ll be watching the truthful essence of my love affair with radical faerie playback theatre. I hope you can be there to enjoy it with me!


For more information about playback theatre, visit www.playbacknet.org.