I just finished reading an article about performance as reasearch.
In Gina L Grandi's article, Theatre as Method: Performance Creation Through Action Research she describes how the high school students that she works with change completely when they are interviewed and during the Q/A sessions that follow their performances. The students build a community and report with each other and the facilitator where during the devising and reflection on the performance the students express their opinions and feelings with confidence.
But after performing the original piece, about the things most important to them, vulnerability, school, identity, when they are asked question Q/A session the students guard themselves and give the most surface level and accommodating of answers.
Having had many similar sessions with students in the past I believe this is due to who was in the audience. And I feel that I and my fellow teaching artists have unknowingly, or at least only partially knowingly committed a injustice upon our performance students by having showcases to which we invite the students' parents and teachers.
Naturally we've done this with the best of intentions. Believing that we by inviting parents and teachers to see the result of the student's participation in whatever theatre program, be it a summer camp, after school program, or workshop, we are inviting only a friendly audience. We believe that we are inviting people who are invested in the student performers' success and are stacking the deck with positive energy. However this may not have been the case. In Grandi's workshop the students explored issues of injustice in their schools. They expressed an inconvenient truth for their parents and teachers to face, or at the very least their honest perception of several. In the performance workshop Grandi worked hard to create a space that privileged and prioritized the students' voices while being sensitive to the power dynamic and identity context between herself and the teens.
But this environment didn't automatically extend to the audience because the audience was full of people who knew the students. Specifically the audience was full of people for whom the students needed to wear masks in everyday life. In many cases children and teenagers are not free to express their honest perspective with parents or teachers. Much of their interactions with adult authority figures is spent establishing the "right" and 'wrong" of life. Not merely the "right and "wrong" of the legal system, school code of conduct or religious ethics, but also the "right" and "wrong" of identity and opinion.
Parents may have a vested interest in who their child is going to be, and may attempt to control, who that student is rather than guide who the student will become. Teacher's may create operate in a hierarchy where they are the authority and the expert and disagreement or difference of opinion from the presented information isn't tolerated
Grandi acknowledges that aesthetic separation through theatrical performance and creation of character provides a space where the student performer is removed enough to feel empowered to express their authentic voice. And notes how once the separation of performance is removed most of the students are not able to speak their truth to the audience.
The article seemed to suggest Grandi was surprised witnessing this. I wasn't surprised reading it. Naturally, the students weren't able to speak frankly about their feelings to the very people who held power over them. These were the people whose power was the subject of the students' work. It made perfect sense to me that they wouldn't be able to express their frustrations, and authentic vulnerabilities in a dialogue with the people who came to the show expecting to see them put on a mask and behave a certain way. After the performance students in this theatre workshop had to go home with some of the audience members, and go to school with others who have the power to affect their comfort, and even their grades.
It is possible the students feared overt reprisals or covert biases.
I suspect the result would have been different in front of an audience of strangers, where even after the performances ended there would still be this esthetic of separation in that the student performers and the audience members wouldn't have any expectation of each other prior to the performance. And no power dynamic afterward.
I can see these possible reasons for the change in how the students carried themselves now as I read this article. But I couldn't see it when I was working as a teaching artist leading students through various theatre camps, workshops and after school programs. The arts organizations and teaching artists, including myself always assumed the "friend and family" audience was a safe one. We expected the students to take the same risks of authenticity in front of their families as they had taken in the class. But in class we'd built a community and a trust that the family weren't a part of.
The acting class was removed from the rest of their lives and the expectations they carried. It was also a space where their authenticity didn't have consequences that might go home with them. It may be that the parent might not be good at leaving the performance on the stage when the student steps off. It might be the student might fear the parent will ask the student to repeat the performance for other relatives, or mention it to friends who aren't part of the acting community. It might be that the parent may not like or approve of the student's performance due to form or content. But whatever the reason teaching artists should look for new approaches to the family performance. We can't be assured that the students feel like that is a friendly audience, so how can we approach this often necessary part of the arts program in a different way.
Citation
Grandi, Gina L. “Theatre as Method: Performance Creation through Action Research.” Action Research, Feb. 2021, doi:10.1177/1476750321993530.