Turning theatre into law, and other spaces of politics

Cultural Geographies

Volumn 14, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 92-113

  Pratt, Geraldine ^a   Johnston, Caleb ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA   (Canada)

Author keywords

Augusto Boal; Canada; Legislative theatre; Spatial disruptions

Indexed keywords

BUREAUCRACY; LOCAL GOVERNMENT; POLITICS;

BRITISH COLUMBIA; CANADA; NORTH AMERICA; VANCOUVER;

EID: 33846598119     PISSN: 14744740     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/1474474007072821     Document Type: Article

References (74)

1. Interview with David Diamond, 1 June 2004.
2. D. Mitchell, The right to the city: social justice and the fight for public space (New York, Guilford Press, 2003).
3. The list is very long. Employment legislation has been rewritten so that minimum wage rates have been substantially reduced for first-time workers, the minimum workday has been reduced from 4 to 2 hours, and the regulation of child labour substantially weakened. Single parents are deemed employable when their youngest child turns 3 (as opposed to 7, as in the past), welfare rates have been reduced, and eligibility for childcare subsidies restricted. Food programmes and counselling services for inner-city schools have been drastically cut back or cancelled. Funds for social housing projects were frozen, and the Ministry for Women's Equality was eliminated, as was core funding for women's centres.
4. D. Diamond, Practicing Democracy final report, available at www.headlinestheatre.com.
5. The enthusiasm for the project reflects the fact that there is a rich history of community-based, political artistic production in Vancouver. See e.g. N. Blomley, Unsetting the city: urban land and the politics of property (New York, Routledge, 2004);
6. J. England Representation and the production of space: aboriginal women in Downtown Eastside, Vancouver (Unpublished Masters Thesis, Geography, University of British Columbia, 2000);
7. A. Haller, Class Act: Mayworks and the Spaces of Cultural Activism (Unpublished PhD thesis, Geography, Simon Fraser University, 2004).
8. For a history of community activism in Vancouver, see S. Hasson and D. Ley, Neighbourhood organizations and the welfare state (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994).
9. For a discussion of Headlines Theatre's reticence in engaging with academic researchers and the nature of our collaboration with the theatre company, see G. Pratt and C. Johnston, 'Putting play to work' in A. Tickell, E. Sheppard, J. Peck and T. Barnes, eds, Politics and practices in economic geography (London, Sage, forthcoming).
10. N. Thrift, 'Movement-space: the changing domain of thinking resulting from the development of new kinds of spatial awareness', Economy and society 33 (2004), p. 587.
11. P. Freire, Pedagogy of the oppressed, trans. B. Ramos (New York, Continuum, 1997).
12. See R. Schechner, S. Chatterjee and A. Boal, 'Augusto Boal, city councillor: legislative theatre and the chamber in the streets: an interview', TDR 42 (1998), p. 80.
13. A. Boal, Hamlet and the baker's son: my life in theatre and politics (London, Routledge, 2001), p. 194.
14. A. Boal, Legislative theatre: using performance to make politics, trans. A. Jackson (London, Routledge, 1998), p. 142.
15. A. Boal, Theatre of the oppressed, trans. A. C. and M.-O. Leal McBride (London, Pluto Press, 1979), p. 122.
16. Boal, Hamlet and the baker's son, p. 334.
17. Ibid., p. 336.
18. Schechner et al., 'Boal, city councillor', p. 80.
19. Of course, the process began long before the workshop. The decision to explore how the city could respond to the danger being created in peoples' day-to-day lives as a result of provincial cuts to social service programmes was made by soliciting community input. With the participation of Vancouver City Council, Headlines constructed a short list of topics and, using their community networks and media, polled 144 individuals for their first and second choices. The impacts of welfare cuts emerged as the most popular of the four possibilities. Other topics included the relationship between youth and police; the ward electoral system; and seniors and the city. Headlines Theatre raised approximately $120 000 over a 10-month period prior to the workshop, and this involved writing numerous grants to funding agencies and soliciting various community sponsors. This was necessitated in part because of Headlines' commitment to paying workshop participants and actors a fair wage, and providing a range of social service supports to participants, some of whom were homeless and marginalized in a variety of ways.
20. Caleb Johnston was a full participant in this weeklong workshop. Subsequently, we have interviewed 7 of the other workshop participants, 3 of whom were also actors in the play, 2 members of Headlines Theatre, the 'legislator', 3 members of city council and one social planner.
21. For a detailed description of the workshop see Diamond, Practicing Democracy.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
24. B. Latour, Pandora's hope: essays on the reality of science studies (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1999).
25. T. Mitchell, The rule of experts (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2002).
26. K. Anderson and S. Smith, 'Emotional geographies', Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 26 (2001), pp. 7-10.
27. Interview, 11 Mar. 2005.
28. Interview with Councillor 'A', 16 Mar. 2005.
29. T. Osborne and N. Rose, 'Governing cities: notes on the spatialisation of virtue', Environment and planning D: society and space 17 (1999), pp. 737-60.
30. This is one moment in a series of translations. For a discussion of earlier moments of translation, including selecting stories at the workshop, and using image theatre methods to enable participants to translate their personal stories into collective ones, see Pratt and Johnston, 'Putting play to work'.
31. Interview with Carrie Gallant, 30 Apr. 2004.
32. The large number of recommendations reflects the concern of the legislator and Headlines Theatre to deliver the full range of recommendations from the forum theatre experiences. The director of Headlines Theatre now recognizes this to be a strategic error: 'We should have boiled it down to no more than a dozen, (in retrospect), but didn't feel this was our role - Headlines being a conduit - not a creator. So - kathunk - this huge thing arrived. What should have happened [then] is one or two councillors should have taken it on. It required vision to sift through it all and make recommendations. This is the role of the politicians, not staff. Instead, it went to staff ... who got caught in between a project that [council] voted unanimously to [support] and also, I believe, something she recognized the value of, and her own job description, which does not include initiating policy recommendations. A vacuum got created in the process' (email communication with director of Headlines Theatre, 17 July 2005).
33. Interview, 11 Mar. 2005.
34. City of Vancouver, 'Administrative report: city of Vancouver initiatives related to the recommendations in Practicing Democracy: a legislative theatre report, January 27, 2005' (RTS No: 04517).
35. Email communication with the director of Headlines Theatre, 17 July 2005.
36. Interview with Councillor 'B', 5 July 2004.
37. Interview, 11 Mar. 2005.
38. City of Vancouver, 'Administrative report', p. 3.
39. S. Woolgar, 'Marketing ideas', Economy and society 33 (2004), pp. 448-62.
40. Interview, 11 Mar. 2005.
41. Interview with Carrie Gallant, 30 Apr. 2004.
42. City of Vancouver, 'Administrative report', p. 23.
43. That the fate of ongoing productions of Practicing Democracy should be put in the hands of the Vancouver Police Department is particularly odd, given that past productions of Headlines Theatre (e.g. Through a clear lens, 2001) have dealt critically with some of the practices of the VPD.
44. See M. de Certeau, The practice of everyday life, trans. S Rendall (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1984).
45. See also H. Lefebvre, The production of space (Cambridge, MA, Blackwell, 1991).
46. de Certeau, Practice of everyday life, p. 93: original emphasis.
47. A. Mountz, 'Human smuggling, the transnational imaginary, and everyday geographies of the nation-state', Antipode 35 (2003), pp. 622-44.
48. See also A. Mountz, 'Embodying the nation-state: Canada's response to human smuggling', Political Geography 233 (2004), pp. 323-45.
49. D. Massey, 'Spatial disruptions', in S. Golding, ed., The eight technologies of otherness (London, Routledge, 1997), pp. 218-25;
50. D. Massey, For space (London, Sage, 2005).
51. D. Diamond, 'Out of the silence: Headlines theatre and power plays', in M. Schutzman and J. Cohen-Cruz, eds, Playing Boal: theatre, therapy, activism (London, Routledge, 1994), pp. 35-52.
52. Interview with David Diamond, 1 June 2004.
53. Interview with Councillor 'C', 16 June 2004.
54. Interview with Councillor 'B', 5 July 2004.
55. Interview, 11 Mar. 2005. Further, at the council meeting in May 2004 when the Practicing Democracy report was presented, the presentation was momentarily derailed when Councillor Ellen Woodward made an appeal for contributions to Augusto Boal's hospital bill, accrued after he fell ill during a visit to the United States. Although this intervention was at cross-purposes with the objectives of Practicing Democracy, Councillor Woodward was displaying her own networks to Boal.
56. Massey, For space, p. 116.
57. Interview with Councillor 'A', 16 Mar. 2005.
58. Interview with Councillor 'B', 5 July 2004.
59. L. Spry. 'Structures of power', in Schutzman and Cohen-Cruz, Playing Boal, p. 171.
60. Both are examples cited in Diamond, Practicing Democracy.
61. Interview with David Diamond, 1 June 2004.
62. Ibid.
63. Ibid.
64. For a discussion of the distinction between a competitive agonistic, as opposed to neutral, public sphere, see S. Benhabib, 'Models of public space: Hannah Arendt, the liberal tradition, and Jurgen Habermas', in J. Landes, ed., Feminism, the public and the private (Oxford, Oxford University Press 1998), pp. 65-99.
65. Interview with David Diamond, 1 June 2004.
66. See S. Jackson, Professing performance: theatre in the academy from philology to performativity (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004);
67. D. Kondo, '(Re)visions of race: contemporary race theory and the cultural politics of racial crossover in documentary theatre', Theatre journal 52 (2000), pp. 81-107;
68. D. Mattingley, 'Place, teenagers and representations: lessons from a community theatre project', Social and cultural geography 2 (2001), pp. 445-59;
69. R. Nagar, 'Women's theatre and redefinitions of public, private and politics in North India', ACME 1 (2002), pp. 55-72;
70. G. Pratt and E. Kirby, 'Performing nursing: BC nurses' union theatre project', ACME 2 (2003), pp. 14-32.
71. For a similar distinction between fictional and autobiographical writing and the potentials for fiction to more effectively represent trauma, see L. Gilmore, The limits of autobiography: trauma and testimony (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 2001).
72. Woolgar, 'Marketing ideas'.
73. Schechner et al., 'Boal, city councillor', p. 86.
74. Ibid., p. 87