#SPEAK UP: Sharing = Enlightenment

Contributed by Shaun FauntleroyThere’s great power in the sharing of personal stories. People seldom respond well to being preached to unless they’re members of the choir, and let’s face it, “preachy” art usually isn’t very good. However, when you allow an audience access to your hurts, fears, longings, and deepest wounds you give those in observance a cathartic release along with the freedom to think differently, love differently, and behave differently. This potential for enlightenment is one of the many reasons that using storytelling as a form of advocacy can be so effective.

All photos are courtesy of Isaiah Tanenbaum Theatrical Photography / Flux Theatre Ensemble.

Last year I, along with Flux Theatre Ensemble, produced a one night event focused on the theme of street harassment titled #SPEAK UP: The Street Harassment Plays. We commissioned monologues from six playwrights and asked them to write about their experiences and feelings on street harassment. Our goal was not to “tell” our audience how harmful and ubiquitous street harassment is, but to “show” them how it personally affected the souls of the brave writers who shared their stories. We put our focus on female-identified playwrights, mainly because studies have shown that the majority of victims of street harassment are female-identified and the majority of perpetrators are male-identified. (We did attempt to widen the diversity of our playwrights, but when it came down to it I realized that I didn’t know many LGBTQ artists. I was dismayed by this, especially since in a 2014 study by Stop Street Harassment, people who identify as LGBTQ were more likely to report experiences with street harassment than those who identify as heterosexual. I’ve since worked to amend this dearth of diversity in my artist pool.)

We’re not the only ones who had this impulse. In October of 2014, Hollaback released a video that showcased a woman being sexually harassed by strangers as she walked the streets of New York for roughly 10 hours. The video sparked a bit of controversy for many reasons I won’t get into here, but it did highlight how street harassment can create a sense of being preyed upon for its victims. The woman in the video, actress Shoshana Roberts, often looks afraid, perturbed, and weary as a result of being stalked, aggressively objectified, and criticized by the men who approached her and commented on her body and demeanor. You can see the effects of sexual harassment in her body language as she holds her body more stiffly and begins to pay closer attention to the people in her periphery.

   

Additionally, last year, Emily Arnold, a comedian, wrote a revealing blog post detailing her experiences with sexual harassment in the stand-up comedy industry. In her post, she artfully (and comedically) exposed the underlying social belief in this country that a man’s sexual approval of a woman is a high honor and should be welcomed in all its forms. Along with this belief is the notion that if a man is aroused by or attracted to someone, then he is entitled to their body, time, and attention. These beliefs, essentially, are the fuel that feeds the fire of street harassment and sexual harassment in general. Additionally, Arnold’s blog revealed that the men (and probably some women) around her had no idea of the emotional toll these beliefs and the abuse that stemmed from them took on her and easily dismissed her complaints.

Lastly, Jen Kirkman, another brilliant comedian, recently began reTweeting the testimonies of women who have shared their stories about street harassment on Twitter. With Hollaback’s video, Arnold’s blog, and Kirkman’s reTweets women’s experiences are being told with their own authentic voices, revealing the hurt, oppression, and oftentimes terror of sexual harassment. Their stories don’t tell you sexual harassment is bad, they allow the reader/audience to see the effects of it in the author’s lives and the audience can then decide for themselves how to absorb this new information.



I’m proud of so many things where #SPEAK UP is concerned, but one of the the most poignant for me was hearing from victims of sexual harassment how powerful and healing it was for them to have the light shown on this topic. So often, we’re told that being victimized by someone who is attracted to us is just a part of life. Calling that absurd notion out as a lie with the Flux team was one of my proudest moments. Another thing that made my heart swell was hearing from several of the men in attendance that the stories they heard illuminated this subject for them in a way that they didn’t expect. I heard phrases like, “I had no idea that women were going through this” and several in attendance, both men and women, vowed to take a more active role in combatting street harassment (safely, of course. Nandita Shenoy’s brilliant monologue The Interruptor gives a hilarious “how to” for this).

All in all, you can be funny, poignant, entertaining, and moving while opening up a can of whup ass on social injustice, but you have to be willing to get bare, and you have to be willing to let people think for themselves. There were those in attendance at #SPEAK UP who didn’t agree with our message and told me so. I’m still very glad they came.


All photos are courtesy of Isaiah Tanenbaum Theatrical Photography / Flux Theatre Ensemble.

___________________________________________________


Shaun Bennet Fauntleroy is an actress, playwright, and producer living in New York, NY. As an actress, she was most recently seen in Resonance Ensemble’s World Premiere of Burning by Ginger Lazarus, and this June she can be seen in Smith Street Stage’s production of The Tempest. As a playwright, her work was most recently featured in Primary Stages/ESPA’s Detention Series, New York Madness’ Radical Bias night (with guest playwright Chisa Hutchinson), Flux Theatre Ensemble’s ForePlay (appearing before the premiere of Gus Schulenburg’s Jane the Plain), at The Brick Theatre’s “Cleverbot Plays,” and in #SPEAK UP: THE STREET HARASSMENT PLAYS, which she co-produced with Flux Theatre Ensemble. As a producer, she has worked with Gideon Productions, The WorkShop Theater Company, and the HB Ensemble. Proud member of NY Madness, Resonance Ensemble, The League of Professional Theatre Women, AEA, and DGA. Shaun lives in Brooklyn with her dog, Bentley.

When the Art Chooses You

Contributed by Stephanie Cox-Williams

A lot of people ask if I always wanted to be a SFX artist or more commonly called, a gore designer. Well, no, not really. Or maybe?


Matt Hurley and Melody Bates in R & J & Z - Gore Design by Stephanie Cox-Williams. Photo by Hunter Canning

Going back to lil Stephanie days, each year I would choose 5 to 10 different possible careers. As I got older, I realized (after playing Sally Ride, my first role, in a 5th grade assembly) that if I couldn’t follow all 10 career paths, I could become an actor and just “play one on TV”. Or become a secret agent. I decided on actor.

Many moons later, I made it to New York. By then I had done just about every job in the theater from back and front of house and touched everything except lighting design (and gore design). Still with my dreams of being on Broadway -- or if LA came calling, a major motion picture star -- I needed all the training I could get, so I went to AMDA. I took acting classes, stage combat classes, dance classes, and eventually got my Masters in Educational Theater.

When I first moved to New York, I didn’t know about Off-Broadway, or Off-Off-Broadway. I didn’t know these were options for me to pursue in the arts. All I had done was Community Theater and I still had my eye set on Broadway. However my journey took me down a path that I didn’t even know I wanted to travel.

I remember my first experience with OOB or Independent Theater was through my friend Christopher Yustin who was doing a parody of Scooby Doo, Spooky Dog. After that, he was cast in a show, where he really connected with the company. He said, “these guys are really cool, I want to introduce you after the show.” The show was called Allston and the “guys” were Nosedive Productions.

Raw Feed in 2012. Photo by Isaiah Tanenbaum

Pulp in 2007. Photo by Aaron Epstien

I have “caught the artistic bug” a few times in my life. My first role on stage in high school; the first choreography gig I did; my first directing job; and meeting Nosedive (and subsequently working with them) each was a defining artistic moment for me. And then of course was the time I ended up doing gore design -- pretty much on the fly.

During the first show of The Blood Brothers Present… series, we had a “blood lab” and a lot of friends and designers gave us tips and helped us out. However, with the second show, it was up to each director to come up with their own effects. We were scheduled to try the effects for the first time during our tech night and incorporate them into the tech run. We were working with a lot of great ideas for effects, but they just weren’t working. It was taking a lot of time and everyone was getting frustrated. I walked over to our lighting designer and said, “I think I know how to do this, but I want to run it by you.” Together we came up with a great plan, tested it and it worked. For the rest of the night, anytime an effect was not working or taking a lot of set up (even one of mine), they called on me to solve the problem. I would instinctively MacGuyver it and we moved on. The two lessons I took from this experience was: 1) do not incorporate your effects tech into your regular tech on the same night – make sure to set aside “testing” time and then if time allows, an effects que-to-que with lights and costumes 2) keep it simple. Nowadays, I come in with, two strategies; something slightly complicated and the simple plan. Nine times out of ten, simple works best.

I still love to act, direct, choreograph, write, design props and sets, run sound, you name it. And while it wasn’t what I expected, I could not be more happy with the path my artistic life has taken. And I can’t wait to see where it leads me next. All thanks to independent theatre.

                       _____________________________________________________


Stephanie Cox-Williams is a FX/Gore Designer, Actress, Director, Producer and Fight Choreographer for independent theater and film. Some SFX/Gore credits include: Theatre – R+J+Z (OHA/Hard Sparks), The Temple (Tin Drum Productions), Jesus Christ Superstar, Bat Boy (NJIT), Frankenstein Upstairs (Gideon Productions), The Tower, Motherboard and Death Valley (Antimatter Collective), The Blood Brother’s Present…Anthologies (Nosedive Productions); Film –They Will Out Live Us All (AGottaandTwoShearersFilms), Assistant Effects/Make-up - Zombies: A Living History (History Channel). Named "Queen of Gore" by The New York Press (2009) and the “Tom Savini of Off-Off-Broadway” by The New York Times (2011). She has received a BA in Theatre, a Musical Theatre Conservatory degree and a Masters of Art. Named A Person of the Year by nytheatre.com in 2011 and recipient of the Outstanding Innovative Design Award for R+J+Z in 2015 by the IT Awards.

Permission

Contributed by Nandita Shenoy

During previews of my Off-Broadway play Washer/Dryer this winter, I noticed a strange trend: when I emerged from the stage door, my friends would say “I didn’t know you were in the show!” Didn’t know I was starring in my own show? Really? My name was on the poster. I posted about it on social media. I even sent out a casting announcement out in my MailChimp newsletter. Why didn’t anyone know that I was acting in my own play? What was going on?

The truth is that I had been playing down my role in my own play! Even now, weeks after closing, I find it hard to write “starring in my own show.” It feels grandiose. Having grown up in a household where the motto was “Self-praise is no praise,” announcing to the world that I had written a leading role for myself seemed too much. Although I started writing plays specifically out of the frustration with roles out there for me, I had a hard time stepping into my own play with pride. Somehow I felt I needed permission.

So much of being in theater is asking permission. We audition. We submit. We apply. We ask to audition, submit, and apply. And we get rejected. A lot. For women, I believe this experience is amplified by the fact that there are much fewer roles for us both onstage and off, and that in our culture, judging women seems more socially acceptable. To combat this debilitating cycle, some of us create our own work. Indie theater exists today largely because of this impulse. I started writing in 2006 to create the kinds of roles that could have been played by my friends rather than the cast of Friends. I liked being a writer. For once, I didn’t have to ask permission to be creative–I could just pull out my computer and write. Unfortunately having that creativity produced for other people to see still required permission.

Nandita Shenoy and Johnny Wu in Washer/Dryer presented by Ma-Yi Theatre Company. Photo by Isaiah Tanenbaum

So when one of my plays was produced in New York, I still felt I had to ask permission to be in it. Although I had written a role for an Indian American woman whose speech patterns resembled mine and whose circumstances and life experiences mirrored my own, I wasn’t sure that I should do the role. Would it hurt the play? Would the other actors take issue with acting opposite the playwright? Would the director take issue with me in two roles? Would the producers? For months, I wasn’t sure what the right thing to do was. And when we decided that I would be in my own play, I still felt awkward about telling people. I needed permission.

After noticing the alarming trend of no one knowing that I was acting in my play, I decided to embrace it. I wrote a Facebook post, of course! I was a female artist of color who had taken matters into my own hands. Hear me roar! Inhabiting a role that I had written as a response to what I never auditioned for was nothing short of revelatory. For once I was able to present my own vision of me to the world instead of one that the world imposed up on me. The lesson that I learned from the experience was the most important person to give me permission to act was me. 

______________________________________________


Nandita Shenoy is a New York-based actor-playwright who enjoys hearing an audience laugh. Her most recent play, Washer/Dryer premiered at East West Players in Los Angeles and was subsequently produced in Chicago by Rasaka Theater and Off-Broadway in New York by Ma-Yi Theater Company where she played the leading role of Sonya. Her first play, Lyme Park: An Austonian Romance of an Indian Nature, was produced by the Hegira outside Washington, DC. Nandita is the winner of the 2014 Father Hamblin Award in Playwriting for her commissioned one-act, Safe Haven. Other one-acts, Marrying Nandini, By Popular Demand, Rules of Engagement, and A More Perfect Date, have been produced in New York City and regionally. Notable acting credits include World Premiers of Eric Pfeffinger’s Some Other Kind of Person and Richard Dresser’s Trouble Cometh as well as a season at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. She is a proud member of the Ma-Yi Writers Lab and the Dramatists Guild. Nandita holds a BA in English literature from Yale University. www.nanditashenoy.com

Finding the Right Steps

Contributed by Emily Edwards

Dance always improves a show. It doesn’t matter if it’s a full pas de deux or a simple grapevine of unadulterated glee. The amount of movement however, should always correspond with what the story needs. No more, no less.

I’ve been actively choreographing for the past eight years. With a background in ballet and modern and a fervent love for musicals; I’ve choreographed everything from a textbook production of Thoroughly Modern Millie, to a K-Pop dream sequence featuring comic book characters, to a 1940’s-era fight using a placenta as a weapon against easily horrified Nazis. With each new production, I realize how little I really know.

The first show I ever choreographed was Pippin. Not terribly daunting. Just following in the footsteps of some guy named Fosse. My goal for the show was to prove exactly how talented I was and how I could be just as good as Fosse. Somehow, I don’t think I managed it, but this mindset continued. Every time I was asked to do a new show or number, I was so grateful, then excited, and then needed to prove to everyone beyond a doubt that I was a valuable member of the creative process.

The result of this was a bunch of shows with lots of dancing. LOTS of dancing. So much dynamic movement everywhere, all the time. Then a couple of years ago I got into a heated argument with my musical director in the late hours of a tech rehearsal about whether or not the male lead should be dancing during his big solo. To me, his “big solo” meant that this was his time to shine in movement as well as song, and thereby win the audience’s hearts. The musical director’s counter argument was that he needed to be able to sing the song. Which, I totally get, but why not push it a bit? A comment from the musical director stayed with me: “They never do that on Broadway. They don’t have to sing and dance at the same time.” I disagreed, but let it go. The end result was that I cut out most of his movement and it was fine, except for my feelings being hurt. Nevertheless, I started paying closer attention to the movement in the shows I attended.

Many years have passed. A directing course I took stated that in order to clarify the story, only one person on stage should move at a time. This completely blew my mind! How does that even work?! Once again, I started studying performances and found it to be largely true. Shows with big name choreographers tended to be the shows I was least impressed with because I could tell that they were trying, much like I used to, to prove themselves. The story felt overwhelmed and muddled by the albeit beautiful dancing. I found myself becoming a believer in simplicity.

Emily Edwards (right) into the swing of things on Governors Island.  
Photo: Mike Cho

So I made a shift and started focusing on the story, more than my ego. The end result has been transforming. I don’t have to create the most complicated or difficult moves; I need to create movement that serves the story. I no longer get upset when a director tells me a number needs to be cut or simplified. Often I end up completely agreeing. Just because I can do a certain move, doesn’t mean I should. Oh sure, there’s still room for big production numbers with flips and kick-lines. (Who doesn’t enjoy a good kick-line?) But it doesn’t have to be about me “proving myself” anymore. If I do my job correctly, you should barely even notice I’m there.


                         _________________________________________________ 


Emily Edwards is a choreographer, director, and performer who has worked in NYC for 13 years now. She loves the Indie theater community and has worked with Vampire Cowboys, Dysfunctional Theatre, DM Theatrics, The Brick, New Georges, The Flea, and Nosedive Productions to name a few. She is also the resident musical choreographer at NJIT/Rutgers. Emily can be found this summer teaching free swing dance lessons on Governors Island as part of the Dysfunctional Collective. http://emilyedwards.net/

Letter to a Younger Self

Contributed by Chana Porter


An out-of-the-blue letter from an ambitious ex (whom I haven’t spoken to in many years) recently got me thinking about how my career expectations have shifted since I was a wee thing in the city. About how my writing life has become less about milestones and more about the daily practice. About making room for the unexpected. Small, seemingly inconsequential experiences that continue to resonant. Big deal "water-shed moments" that were disappointments. How I tried to follow a more traditional path until it felt like I was flinging my body against closed doors. How I turned and walked another way.
 

Here is what I wish someone had told me when I was 24.

1. You cannot wait for something to come and change your life. Your life is happening right now. Change the things about your life that you can control. Say it again: Your life is happening right now.
2. Screw the schmooze. Find people you care about and can critically engage with on a deep level. Cultivate genuine friendships. (And like Taylor Mac says, people you dig will eventually have cooler jobs.)
3. Those blanket pieces of advice like: Form a writing group! Go to grad school! Have a production! Get an agent! Only do these things if they make sense. The right people, place and time. Otherwise, they are undercooked pasta on the wall of life. They will not stick.
4. Say no. Don't take every opportunity that comes your way. Be precious about your time. Learn how to direct the fierce fire of your energy. This will make you unstoppable.
5. As a woman, an artist, a person--not everyone has to like you. Wear this like a badge of honor.
6. Say number 5 again. Not everyone has to like you. Sometimes, directors will try to pull fucked-up shit, like asking women in your play to be perpetually naked as an “edgy choice”. Sometimes, actors will think you are upset with them because you do not smile constantly. Sometimes, casting directors will try to cast a 31-year-old for a character in her 50s because she’s “got a quirky look.” Speak your mind clearly and without guile. Then allow yourself to be surprised—the relationships worth keeping don't mind a little rocking. And everyone needs to be called out, sometimes. Because #7.
7. Recognize that, no matter how well-intentioned, you too have grown up inside white-supremacist, patriarchal capitalism. It is the air that you breathe. As a writer, you must interrogate your own assumptions. You will get it wrong sometimes. Listen louder than you sing.
8. Present yourself as authentically as possible. There is no image to cultivate. No one else can be you or write the things you write. You are not in competition. Not with your peers, not with Lena Dunham or any other person who you think had more access to opportunities. You are simply yourself, and the path you are carving is your own.
9. Use your writing practice as a fierce investigation of your own mind. Go deep. Scare yourself. If your play runs away from your original intention, you’re probably doing it right. Art should surprise the maker. Be unapologetic in your wildness. We have many tidy, well-made plays already in the canon. Remember, Shakespeare was weird as fuck. Brecht broke so many rules he wrote his own. Your play is not a static, literary object. It is a blueprint for a theatrical experience, meant to be expanded by other great collaborators. Leave room.
10. Cultivate a bodily practice that gets you out of your head. Once a day will go a long way to keeping you sane, especially when the opportunities you’ve been striving towards actually start happening.
11. Keep finding ways to do your work without the need for outside validation. The poet Bhanu Kapil once said that when you make a work you are sending a future interaction into the world, like a lover walking down a road to meet you. Trust that the meeting is already in motion.
12. But, after all that, outcomes are unpredictable. I come from a nice, Jewish family that pushed getting a law degree, no matter what you were interested in— everyone should get law degrees! (And they are very supportive of my being an artist, hi Mom and Dad.) Our world is tremendously uncertain, even for the lawyers. The middle class is largely fiction. You might die tomorrow. Why not dedicate your life to what you love?

 
                        _____________________________________________


Chana Porter is a writer and teacher living in Brooklyn. Her plays and performance pieces have been developed and occasionally produced at Cloud City, 3LD, Rattlestick Playwright’s Theatre, Cherry Lane, The Invisible Dog, Primary Stages, Movement Research, PS122, and The White Bear in London. She has been an Artist-In-Residence at Space On White, CAVE, and Dixon Place. She is currently shopping her first novel, SEEP, book one of her queer-pagan-punk science fiction trilogy, POST HUMAN CLASSICS. Chana is the co-founder of the Octavia Project, a free SF/F summer program for Brooklyn teenage girls. Learn more: www.octaviaproject.org

Immersive Theater in So Many Ways

Contributed by Siobhan O'Loughlin

Photo by Jason Speakman

I didn’t write Broken Bone Bathtub out of a great need to do a show in a bathroom. If you’ve seen the show, you’ll also know that it’s not something I’ve actually written. Half of the performance is the stories that audience members tell, and the rest of the semi-script came out of a bunch of sloppy journal entries (sloppy, because I only had one hand).

After my oh-so-traumatic/dramatic Brooklyn bike accident in the Fall 2014, and upon donning a cast that covered my entire left hand and arm, I started borrowing my friends’ bathtubs all around NYC, because my Bushwick warehouse apartment was a shower-only abode. I traveled to every borough to bathe and was met with kindness and affection by friends who fed me, bought me wine or chocolate to go with the bath, new bubbles, and one friend who washed his warmest, best-est bathrobe for me to borrow. I was telling these tales to my friend, writer/critic Michael Dale of Broadway World, while sharing drinks at Don’t Tell Mama, when he said, “It’s like you’re going on a bathtub tour.”

But what if I really was?

And so, that’s what I’m doing. Thanks, Michael, for changing my life.

My goals with this piece in particular, artistically, are graciously being met. I hoped to be able to bring it anywhere that would have me, as long as there was a tub or water-based space for me to perform in. As I sit here writing this in Melbourne, Australia, I can tell you that I have received such bountiful opportunity to travel and perform this very mobile show. I also hoped that I could not only reach people with the stories I tell, as I have done with previous shows of mine, but that I could create a space in which participants felt comfortable sharing their own stories, so they could then move each other. And they have. They continue to. I have had audiences from Tokyo, Los Angeles, London, Belfast and in our own beautiful NYC, where people listen to each other, comfort one another, and open up in a tiny space in ways I have never seen before. I get to sit naked in a tub and bare witness somehow. I feel so lucky. I have yet to have a bad experience (really! You’d be surprised how even the bro-iest bros can reveal their feelings so beautifully), and I find such joy in the opportunity that this show allows me; to disarm, to charm, and to listen. In that order, I think.

I feel very privileged to be doing this show. I know that any struggle I've had with this injury cannot compare to the great injustices many people in our country and the world over are currently suffering through right now. I am not an American person of color facing the aftermath of slavery and oppression. I am not a Syrian refugee fleeing for my life. But I believe there is something that the Occupy movement enforced for me very strongly: all of our grievances are connected. Through our stories, we can connect to each other, and we can heal. That’s why immersive theatre has been the outlet for this performance. I would love for all artists to strive for transparency about their careers and situations Let’s get intimate. Let’s be brave.

There is a flip side, of course. I live out of a suitcase. When I began this tour in the Spring 2015, I gave up my permanent home in Brooklyn. I got rid of a lot of my possessions, and I reside wherever my next show is. I stay with friends or on the rare occasion when a producer puts me up somewhere. When I last performed in NYC, I was an au pair with a lovely, generous family in Brooklyn who gave me a home. Doing a few nanny gigs a year helps me immensely with finances. I have yet to receive a grant, (though I do keep applying and I am always taking donations) and while some months are great, there are others that are…opposite of great (for instance, my current nomadic status also puts a serious strain on the potential of a romantic partner).

However, we always look to the future, I think. I didn’t know that my weeping alone on a hospital stretcher with blood on my hands would lead me to be in Australia a year-and-a-half later, about to share stories with a whole new continent of people at some very cool festivals and events. Who knows what kind of beautiful things will emerge out of this month’s imminent disaster?


                              _________________________________________________


Siobhan O’Loughlin is a Brooklyn-based writer, performer, activist and award-winning playwright who tours her solo work internationally. She is a Moth Story Slam Champion, a founding member of the Australian/American storytelling conglomerate Everything is Everywhere, a published playwright with Indie Theatre Now, and a trained Joker with Theatre of the Oppressed NYC. http://siobhanoloughlin.com/about/

Twitter: @brokenbonebath, @siobhan_solo
Facebook fan page: https://www.facebook.com/siobhansolo
Broken Bone Bathtub Facebook fan page: https://www.facebook.com/Broken-Bone-Bathtub-200266236997436/?fref=ts