Theatre Like an Oak in the Town Square

Abstract

Theatre Like an Oak in the Town Square Courtney Elkin Mohler (bio) In the summer of 2021, the National New Play Network asked me to moderate a plenary panel titled "Decolonizing Theater's Relationship with Audiences" for their annual conference, "Growing Forward: Transcending the Transactional." The panel featured luminary artists, each working tirelessly to transform how theatre engages with community and fights for restorative justice.1 As I planned my questions, I found myself reflecting on the mighty task implied by the conference's theme and plenary's title. My thoughts drifted to several panels I have listened to or participated in over the past few years that similarly were seeking to explore theatre's relationship with "decolonization," always broadly defined. This uptick in opportunities to discuss decolonization indicates that folks are decolonization-curious, even if there is no consensus on what decolonization means in academic or artistic institutional spaces. Theatre in the United States is built on stolen lands, extracts resources, and engages with corporate capitalism. A "successful" company is touted for developing the economy of its neighborhood, which may lead to gentrification and further displacement for marginalized communities. I wanted the final beat of the plenary to wrestle with the contradictions inherent in the event's themes: Does focusing on decolonization inadvertently re-center settler colonialism? If we aren't talking about returning land to Indigenous people, what are we talking about? Due to technical difficulties and time constraints, my last question was aimed at the disembodied virtual audience, presumably theatre professionals. Into the Zoom ether, I asked, "What are you doing to Indigenize your theatrical space or practice? How does your work center the global majority Black, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander peoples and communities' histories, needs, and [End Page 34] stories?" What follows in the next few pages is an extension of this question, an open-ended charge to my greater family of artists, teachers, thinkers, creators. This is not a manifesto, not a guide, not even an article.I tread lightly,with a basket woven with skills not my own,full of more questions than answers. Indigenous Peoples the world over connect through space, place, and seasons by sharing a continuous appreciation for rivers of wisdom, ever-changing and always providing sustenance. Creativity is the result of neither human endeavor nor mastery but rather the simultaneous cause and effect of cooperative interaction with the cosmos, the great mystery, all our relations. More often than not, creation forms with human and animal assistance: spirit launched in beauty. Lakota visionary Paula Gunn Allen describes the impulse to create, to tell stories, to make art as holy and transformative—but not for the purpose of the individual. She writes: The tribes seek—through song, ceremony, legend, sacred stories (myths), and tales—to embody, articulate, and share reality, to bring the isolated, private self into harmony and balance with this reality, to verbalize the sense of majesty and reverent mystery of all things, and to articulate, in language, those truths that give to humanity its greatest significance and dignity.2 To writeTo create To embodyThrough songThrough ceremony The TribesThrough legend With sacred storiesTo Share To Share To Share! To bring the isolated self Into Harmony And Balance [End Page 35] How do we, as art-makers,writers, privileged RECORDERS,negotiate these two worldviews? Where do our neoliberalprofessional practices demandwe cement our knowledge intothe annals of time/make a mark/leave a Legacy? And when does such endeavorimplicitly or explicitly pillage thewisdom, resources, and spirited Beautypassed down by elders? (Here lies the hypocrisy of meritocracy:should this article remain anonymous?By: Anonymous. Or would such agesture render this work unverifiable,nonacademic, suspect?) Let us imagine, as Gunn Allen claims, that the grand purpose of art-making is transformation, bringing a community into balance through creative praxis. How would theatre embody this idea fully? Can we imagine a season, or a multiseason initiative, or a widespread multicompany, ongoing effort to develop a theatre that transforms our present community into a state of balance? How would an academic program in theatre—that held holistic communal healing as central—operate? What if...