Theatre of Social Responsibility

I arrived at Grinnell knowing only that, whether as a historian or a chemist or a theatre artist, I wanted to make the world a better place. My Grinnell experience intensified my desire to fight for social justice and made a commitment to social justice my primary factor in choosing a career. While it is obvious to me now that I have always been a theatre director, at Grinnell I continued to debate my career options and questioned whether theatre could really make the difference in the world that I wanted to make.

Thankfully, Grinnell also taught me to take risks and to search for positive opportunities. When I was explaining to one of my professors my concerns that a job in theatre was not “tied to social justice” (i.e., Grinnellian), she told me, simply, to “be on the side of good.” From that moment, I launched into the world of being an artist and the world of trying to make the world a better place with stories.

A few months ago, I directed an all-women adaptation of the Odyssey, rehearsed and performed in an urban park, under a bridge. The production set out to be a small thing, but expanded into performances with audiences of more than a hundred people every night, crowded under the bridge to share in the story.

At the intersection of two different neighborhoods, the park has become a popular Milwaukee space and one that symbolizes the collaborative spirit of the city. It’s the result of the combined efforts of architects who initially built park space with light-up benches under the bridge, and a group called beintween that installed tire swings throughout the park in one night, calling it a “pop-up park.” The swings provided the perfect place for a play I had wanted to direct for a long time.

The play, Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad, is a powerful story about class and gender dynamics. Atwood retells the Odyssey from the perspective of the 12 maids hanged at the end of the story for their supposed promiscuous behavior with Penelope’s suitors. 

Atwood sees them as victims, not whores, subjected to Penelope’s requests to distract the suitors and the suitors’ sexual advances.

In a space where most women would not feel safe alone at night and the ambient sound is the revving engines of motorcycles, 13 women told a story about mistreatment, misunderstanding, and sexual violence. How do ancient texts portray women? How do we treat women today?

The performance drew people who had been at the park on a Sunday afternoon and saw a rehearsal. People came who had never been to the park before, but who had seen an article in the newspaper. The people who built the swings came with a cooler full of picnic supplies. The homeless men who lived in the park supported us by telling everyone who passed by to come. Those men knew all the words to the songs and never missed a performance. In a park at a crossroads of neighborhoods in Milwaukee, the community came together for a story. 

Rehearsing and performing under that bridge, I have never felt more Grinnellian. Grinnell challenged me to put social justice at the forefront and paved the way for me to do that with an art form that I know best (in the ways I know best). “Be on the side of good.” That is we can all do.

In my current job in the artistic department of a major regional theatre, I help choose a season of plays that will reach more than 200,000 audience members. Reading new plays as well as classics in consideration for selection for our season, I spend my days looking for plays that continue conversations with our community and provide a platform for discussion on a diverse range of topics. Our mission statement says our productions must be vital. When we get it right, performance has the power to shake the foundations of a community and raise actionable questions about how we live our lives.

No matter how you uphold the social justice values of Grinnell, remember that theatre, too, is a vehicle for social justice. As arts funding decreases, we must be vigilant to maintain the opportunities for people to come together to tell stories. Whether under a bridge, in the back room of a bar, or in traditional spaces, theatre makes our communities stronger.