Epic theatre in mainstream US television: reflections on ABC's "Once Upon A Time"

I recently had a fascinating discussion with a friend of mine about the kind of I aim to bring to my understanding of ABC's Once Upon A Time, how my awareness of a world beyond the show impacts how I approach and understand it.

It took me a while to remember where I had seen something like this before: in the epic theatre as theorized by Bertolt Brecht.

There’s tons of material on Brecht that you can find for yourself, so I’m not going to rehash all that here. However, one of the things that struck me about epic theatre and how it’s exemplified in just about every bit of OUAT meta that I write is the relationship between the spectator and the events. In so many words, it’s about difference between, “This is happening right before my eyes, and it feels like I’m there” and, “I am watching these events from my position outside them.”

I’ve spoken before about how the characters in OUAT are not real people. They are creations given life by the decisions of a dozens of people—actors, writers, directors, designers, producers, etc. Thus, when I talk about race, gender, sexuality, and so on with this show, it’s with a full awareness that the show is not a self-contained universe with no connection to our reality as we live it now. The show is not a world created ex nihilo by the words of TV gods, but a mirror reflecting the hopes, anxieties, and worldviews of the society that created it. As I write and think about Regina, Snow, Charming, Rumplestiltskin, or (fuck you) King Leopold, I am using those names as a shorthand for the many things that they represent in our world, particularly as they relate to race, gender, sexuality, and such.

Unlike Brecht, I do not conceptualize this distinction as prioritizing reason over emotion. In all honesty, the difference is in what I get emotional about. Anyone who’s talked to me about the show knows that I’m very passionate about what its says through these stories and these characters. As a matter of fact, it is my awareness of these things beyond the show, which nevertheless make their way into the show, that make me so invested in what happens within the show.

Despite the sensibility I bring to my viewing of the show and how I analyze it, I know for a fact that the show itself encourages me to pretend that all that stuff doesn’t exist, to get swept up in the story, to allow myself to believe the illusion of the show, to position myself as something like a tourist to the Enchanted Forest and/or Storybrooke as though I am looking through a window in time and space and not at something that was created by real people in the real world. In other words, I am aware that I am being asked to turn my brain off and just let the show work its magic on me (no pun intended—haha, yeah it is). And yet, time and time again, I find myself resisting that sort of hypnosis, and I find myself becoming increasingly uncomfortable about approaching the characters as though they are independent beings capable of real agency.

Being fully aware of these things means that I’m already experiencing Verfremdungseffekt (badly translated as “alienation effect”) before I even begin to watch the show. As soon as the episode starts, what is supposed to be familiar to me is rendered strange simply because the context I bring to the show is so radically different from the context that created the show. Although this show is far from the first instance where I've experienced this, it has made me increasingly conscious of the fact that I experience Verfremdungseffekt as a matter of course. I suppose it comes from my keen awareness that most media is not made with me in mind. Not because people deliberately exclude women, LGBTQ people, or people of color, but because in mainstream media, "person" typically defaults to white, cisgender, straight, male, and middle-class.

Take (fuck you) King Leopold. King Leopold is not real, but I loathe him. Why? It’s not about King Leopold the flesh-and-blood human being because King Leopold only exists as words on a page, or pixels on a screen. I hate King Leopold because his mannerisms, his attitudes, and the way he treats people reflects the experiences of myself, my friends, my family, and my community with men like him. It’s about the big and small ways that King Leopold shows up in the men in our lives. My irritation is also compounded by that fact that, just like in real life, I am meant to think well of him despite the harm he does.

Contrast this with how in a lot of ways I am encouraged not to identify with Regina, not to see my own struggles as a queer woman of color reflected in her story. Pity her, sure. But not see myself in her, or her in myself. I’m supposed to see her story as being about redemption and not liberation. Success for this character is supposed to be about earning someone’s seal of approval and not establishing true agency. I’m definitely not supposed to ask, “What does it mean to have Regina do this or have this happen to her? Whose interests does it serve to frame her story that way?”

As a result of the ways that, simply by virtue of existing outside the assumed norms the show operates in, the things I look at in the show and the questions I ask are different. I am not unique in this because when I talk about media with people of color and LGBTQ people, we often carry that same implicit awareness of media as a creation by real people in the real world and not an independent reality. I believe that, in a lot of ways, it’s a strategy for resisting narratives that reinforce harmful ideas about people of color and LGBTQ people—namely, that we do not or should not exist except in very limited capacities.

(It is my intuition that people of color and LGBTQ people would probably grasp Brecht’s epic theatre better than Brecht himself did.)

I believe this is why the commentary of the actors, writers, or creators don’t really bother me much when it seems way off base from what we see on the screen. To me, that’s not them speaking with authority about a character or the show but reflecting their own position in the society that created the show. Therefore, their commentary, no matter how sincere, is not taken as objective fact but a reflection of their own subjectivity. That subjectivity comes with its own insights and blind spots. Why should I defer to their interpretations if I and others who watch the show are able to provide a deeper and more expansive perspective? Why should I assume that because they were thinking one thing when they were making the show that it could not have another meaning or interpretation that’s just as valid but coming from a different direction?

Now, I know that to some, denying or arguing against a creator’s interpretation is a lot like arguing with God. Which is interesting because, well, I’m Jewish, and struggling with or arguing with God is, in some cases, a moral imperative. Saying things we don’t like about the characters or the show is not on par with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, yet it remains that we do not have to accept a position just because it comes from the “gods” of the show.

Paradoxically, it’s the distance between spectator and narrative that has given me the freedom to incorporate the full richness of my entire humanity to the show.

Taking my work beyond the black box

Gwydion is making me think with his blog post ("Theater of Belonging"), especially this part:

What if we started combining what we usually think of as theater with, say, biology experiments? Or yoga classes? Or podcasts? Or role-playing games? Would we find new collaborators to work with us? And thus other audiences to engage with?

And on Facebook, Gwydion mentioned wanting to see more exploration and investigation in theatre, a parallel to research and development in science and technology.

(This is the part where a more patient writer would smoothly transition from one idea to the next. Forgive me for not doing so right now and getting to the good part right away.)

Whenever I feel the need to get back to the essence of what makes theater work, I go back to Peter Brook's The Open Door. One of the things that has most vividly stuck with me is his description of The Carpet Show. With nothing but a rug, the actors, and the audience, The Carpet Show transformed mundane spaces into vibrant, compelling performances.

After my most recent foray into The Open Door, I believe I had something of a breakthrough about the direction I want the development of my work to take.

I realized that more than I want to see my plays put on a Real Stage (TM) with all the bells and whistles, I want my plays to have vitality, to connect with the audience, to give the audience the freedom to imagine different realities. If that is what really excites me about theater, why would I put so much effort and energy into doing things that signify that I am a Real Theater Person (TM) and not an amateur with delusions of grandeur?

Part of me did--and does--want to convince other Theater People (TM) that I know and admire that I'm a Real Theater Person (TM) and serious about my work, which means I have to do "better" than a bunch of people sitting in a circle watching actors play pretend.

But the thing is: that's the part I like because I've never outgrown my need to play with my imaginary friends, to make up stories about them, and to go with them to worlds that can only be entered through the imagination.

Having finally admitted that showing my work on a Real Stage (TM) and proving that I'm a Real Theater Person (TM) are no longer my priorities, where does that leave me? Where does my work go?

Honestly, now that I've freed myself from that, it could go anywhere. In particular, I'd like to do my own rendition of Peter Brook's Carpet Show, using that format as a means of testing where the theatrical vitality of my work is found and how to bring that out in performance. Yet, I also want to play with adding a little bit of the spirit of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, allowing audiences to participate by shouting and throwing various items. Oh, and I want people to be able to film my shows on their iPhones. And tweet during the show. And maybe nix the talkback at the end in favor of asking the audience questions during act breaks, where they are free to come and go and eat and drink and other "inappropriate" things.

In the meantime, I want to keep an eye on what works, what doesn't, why it works or doesn't work, and ideas on how to make it better. A strong sense of freedom and play, plus an equally strong insistence on figuring out what makes something work.

And get the hell out of the damn black box.

"Encanta" and indie theatre in the 21st century

Free copies of a full-length play for virtual strangers is not how things are usually done. For the most part, people usually have to pay to see a performance or buy a published script. But with Encanta, I've been much more free-handed about things that I ordinarily would be.

However, it does make you wonder: why would a playwright without a job at a pie factory hand out a script for free that is probably worth charging money for?

The first reason is pragmatic: plays are ultimately meant to be performed, not just read. Production, not publication, is where it's at for a play. The text of a play is, in my view, closer to sheet music than to a novel. Reading Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, while very likely meaningful and enjoyable, is nothing compared to hearing even a recording of it.

Secondly, a lot of theatre hasn't quite caught up to how to reach out via social media beyond promoting the next show. I'm not going to change that by myself, but I do want to do my part to engage 21st century audiences beyond asking people to follow me on Twitter or "like" my Facebook page.

For me, the internet has been crucial for building an audience. It makes no sense for me to treat their participation as auxiliary to bringing my work to life. It also makes no sense for me to make my work less available to them just because they cannot be physically present at a performance.

Then there's the fact that I have never given my script to someone and had them less interested in a live performance. The vast majority of the time, when I gave out my script, the person reading it said, "I have to see this live."

So, to me, this means that I need a different process for engaging audiences with my work.

I came up with 3 layers of engagement that I believe would be a good way to guide how I get my work to its audience from now on.

The first layer is the "Hey, I'm writing this play. Interested?" layer. I call it "Creation" in the picture because that's what was legible in the circle.

This part of the process is not just about writing the piece. It's about sharing my vision for what the play will mean to the audience. For me, one of the first things I ask is, "Who will see themselves here?" and "What are they going to see about themselves?" It's the appetizer and a taste of what's to come.

A story about a sorceress and a pirate falling in love is nothing spectacular in and of itself. But when I say that every single character is LGBTQ and Latin@/Afro-Latin@, that means something to people. People, especially people excluded and marginalized in arts and entertainment, care about that because they want to see themselves in ways they normally don't get to see themselves. So, they're immediately hooked and want to know more about where I'm going with it. This usually means a complete draft. Or several, in the case of Encanta.

From here on out, things are a bit more experimental.

The second layer is the, "Let's see what we can do online" phase. I call it "Virtual Event" in the picture because, again, it's legible and fits in the circle. This is the main course.

The first thing that came to mind for this was a livestreamed performance where the audience hangs out in a chatroom or on a Twitter hashtag. No camera tricks. No movie magic. Just what actors can do just from the strength of their performance. This includes readings, staged readings, and workshop productions. Not to mention interviews with the writer, cast, and crew, and so on. I believe this could be the main form most performances would take because they would by far be the most accessible.

I have no idea how the logistics of this where tickets and what not are concerned, but it's one of the ideas I had.

Finally, there's what I call "Live Event" (once again, because it fits and its legible), which in my mind I think of as the "Icing on the Cake" layer.

Here is where the fully realized productions would happen. It's what we have for dessert. Just as every meal doesn't have dessert, every piece won't become a fully realized production. And that's fine. The point is to get the piece performed and in front of an audience.

The great thing about these layers is that they are very porous. None of them has to work in isolation from the others. For instance, it's entirely possible to combine a live event with a virtual event.

Special Valentine's Day thanks from Crossroads Theatre Project (aka me)

Anybody who knows me knows how much I HATE being on camera, so the fact that I made this shows that it really means something.

Back to my roleplaying roots

Inspired by Flux Theatre Ensemble's BARP (Big Artistic Risk Project) and Howard Shalwitz' TCG post about theatrical innovation, I've finally decided to put pen to paper about the sort of production process I want.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that I want a production process that goes back to my roots in roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons, World of Darkness, and so on. I come from a background where the only thing I needed to build a world, develop a story, and/or make a character were a few sheets of paper, a book, some dice and my own imagination.  I could enhance the experience with costumes and props, but I never needed them to feel fully invested in the setting, the story, or my character.

I love how, in roleplaying games, the act of exploration itself (through playing the game) organically gives rise to coherent characterization, narrative, and aesthetic. None of these things are truly determined beforehand. Sure, the Game Master (GM) may give you an idea of some of these things, and you can read about a lot of it online or in a rulebook. But it isn't until we start playing that those things really start to take form and come together.

I love the sheer freedom of roleplaying games. I love the fact that I don't have to wait to be given permission to bring something that enhances the game (music, pictures of people and places, props, even food!).  Even more than that, I love it when doing so inspires the other players to do likewise. In my favorite games, there was a jazzy vibe where each player brings something different yet essential, and we're constantly riffing off each other, just taking what each person offers and going with it.

The time commitment for a roleplaying game is also fairly manageable. It's not unusual for a group of roleplayers to meet every week and play for 3-4 hours. This could go on for months or years. I'm not talking about people who have no lives outside of roleplaying. I'm talking about people who often have families and full-time jobs that require their care and attention. For them, it's relatively to commit long-term to playing every Tuesday evening for the next five months. Much easier than, say, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evening for the next five weeks.

I want to get back to that. Or, to be more precise, I want to bring more of that into making theatre.

This cannot work with the way theatrical productions in NYC usually happen. The key elements that need to change are the division of labor and the time commitment.

I'll address the time commitment first because that's easier.

I'd rather do one two- to three-hour session every week for six months to a year than cram everything into 3-4 months of frantic activity. To me, it's like the difference between microwaving a can of soup and making soup from scratch and putting it in a crock pot. With more time to simply breathe, would more nuances in texture and flavor emerge?

I also want a process that lets go of expected results. Nobody begins a game knowing exactly what's going to happen by the end. So, I don't want to determine from the outset if this process would lead to a staged reading, a workshop, or a full production. It'll definitely lead to something, but I want to tailor the results to the process rather than vice versa. Let's say that the group commits to six months of weekly meetings. If, at the end of that, a fully realized performance is the next step, that's what happens. If a staged reading is where it's at, that's what happens. If it's something in between, that's what goes next.

Another aspect of roleplaying games that I want to see more of in theatre is blurring the line between audience and participant. In roleplaying games, the audience and the players are one and the same. While theatre often plays with the fourth wall (mostly by dragging them into the play somehow), I'd love to simply have a play where the characters are doing what they do while the audience itself forms part of the scenery somehow (as trees, a faceless mob, a flock of birds, people on the street, watchful spirits from beyond, or some such), and the actors treat it as such.

Now, I want to be clear that this wouldn't mean six months of navel-gazing and twiddling thumbs then getting to the "real" work of putting on the play (learning lines, blocking, etc.). It would still involve much of the same stuff as rehearsals and production meetings. The only differences are that: 1) everyone is involved from the outset, and 2) it becomes part of the rehearsal process rather than separate from it.

The way it usually happens in theatre is that the performance and the production are treated separately. So, you have the cast doing actor stuff while the crew does designer stuff and production stuff. And then there's the director who's trying to hold it all together with the help of the stage manager and maybe an assistant director. Not to mention the producer who's trying to keep it all under budget.

For the scope I prefer to work with, this seems inefficient and arbitrarily limiting to me. To me, it matters less who does what than that it gets done. That is, if it needs to get done at all. (Personally, I believe there's something to be said about exploring what can be done with nothing but performers in a space before putting a lot of time and effort and money into hiring a designer.) Even when choosing a designer, it always struck me as strange that their work gets done in isolation rather than in collaboration with the people who are most directly impacted by those design decisions.

I suppose that the general principle would be to add more to the production as the need arises. I'd start with the essentials: actors, text, an empty space. Everything else would be added once we see a need for it and not a moment before. For instance, a designer would only come into the picture if no one has ideas, if no one can agree on anything, or if something needs to be made that no one can make themselves.

This reflects the setup of the roleplaying games I've been a part of that all start with players, rules, and a place to play.

The trade-off for all this freedom and input is more responsibility for the production as a whole. Everybody does script analysis. Everybody does marketing and publicity. Everybody contributes ideas for the set, props, costumes, etc. Granted, there may be people who have the final say on these things, but the process of actualizing a performance is shared by all.