Ten Ways to Start Your Work with Groups

I wrote this originally for teachers of actors and directors...

This year’s Association for Theatre in Higher Education Conference is happening this week in Baltimore, Maryland. It’s a yearly event at which University and College theatre educators from around the US gather.

Hansel Tan, a friend who works at Villanova College and who participated this summer in my workshop Building Trust/Imagining Futures in Philadelphia, reached out and told me that the focus group he’s part of (Educators who specifically teach Acting and/or Directing) is hosting a pre-conference called First Encounters: Setting the Stage.

Their goal is to explore the question- “how do we seed the possibility of imagination/community when meeting/gathering for the first time?”

I couldn’t be in Baltimore, so he asked me to write something that he would read to help start the day.

I’m sharing it here in the hopes that it might be interesting for folks who teach in the arts, for teachers in general, and for people who lead group process and hold space.

This is what I wrote.

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What does getting started mean for actors and directors?

What does it mean for educators,

whose job is to prepare actors and directors to start?

When I went to school, training to be an actor-

this was a while ago-

to start meant to warm up.

To prepare your voice, your primary tool of expression,

and to prepare your body, your instrument of presence and action.

Today, I think much more about how to warm-up the civic body.

Civic could mean Community- it often does in my work.

But it can also simply mean- the Circle we are in.

The class.

The rehearsal.

The project.

The collaboration.

So

how does a director move a group of individuals

from I to we?

How does an actor help a room see that

me

has more power

when seen as part of us?

How does a theatre event invite the self which lives inside each one of us,

often insecure and alone, to risk vulnerability and consider, upon leaving the room, connection?

I definitely believed, as a young theatre artist, that theatre was a sort of church.

That people come into the dark to watch us in the light,

breathe the same air

and leave changed.

And then as I got older

I stared to think…

Well, no.

Yes. There is something sacred in coming together to gather.

To share experience.

To ask questions.

To tell stories- sure. Yes.

But what makes it sacred isn’t the dark- its the attention.

Its now, more than ever, agreeing to give something, someone-

Attention.

That attention, it can be aimed at whoever stands in the light.

But that attention can also be aimed at the people sitting in the dark,

and in fact, that attention can be used

to invite them,

the people sitting in the dark,

to pay attention to one another.

The lights can come on.

When we make space for strangers to give each other attention- attention that’s caring and even playful- we make space for trust.

We are sick with lack of trust in this country.

Our last surgeon general declared loneliness a public health crisis-

he literally named it the loneliness epidemic.

His prescription-

He described the students you’re training

as medicine.

The actors and directors you’re training are medicine..

Because they can help build trust.

Prepare them to help build trust.

Prepare them to be vulnerable not just in service to exposing their emotional lives, but in service to demonstrating the meaning of being present and emotionally available.

Prepare them to live onstage, to craft what happens onstage, not just in service to great drama, but because they can teach us how to be with each other.

How to love, how to fight, how to disagree…how to not be afraid to disagree.

How to stay in the room amidst difficult conversations.

How to love amidst struggle, rather than hate.

As you prepare students to start-

to start process, to start in the room, to start their work.

teach them ways to make rooms where trust is the bottom line.

Where everything that occurs occurs in the name of trust,

and for the sake of trust.

Teach them care.

Teach them that care can lead to greatness more effectively than cruelty and judgement.

Teach them that care is rigor.

Teach them that care is virtuosic.

Teach them not to accept process that suggests care leads to weak art.

Teach them not to accept that uncomfortable content demands discomfort in the making.

Teach directors and actors ten ways to start:

One.

Person to person.

Whether they are a leader or a participant in the room,

teach them- everyone of them- to take the time, even just a moment,

to meet every person individually before the start of the first class, rehearsal, meeting.

Make it clear- relationship matters. Even in groups, relationships start with one to one.

Two.

Circles-

Don’t stand in front and talk to them.

Circle up so everyone can see everyone.

Three.

Make space for everyone to be known.

Everything happens in the first 15 minutes.

Everything.

The spirit and structure of what this room will be, is clear at the top.

So start with introductions- short or long- that invite people to show up as themselves and be seen.

Four.

Take the time to work with a group on establishing culture-

How will we be with each other in this space?

What behaviors and attitudes do we want to normalize, and what won’t we accept?

How will we be accountable to each other?

Five.

Demonstrate and nourish curiosity.

Make sure every artist- every person- understands

that a good question is more powerful than a right answer.

Six.

Belonging.

Teach them to welcome every person into the circle.

From day one, everyone is necessary, everyone is a gift.

Tolerate no sentiment or action that allows anyone to feel any way other than this.

Seven.

Purpose.

Why is everyone here?

Make space at the top, somehow, and again throughout,

for people to articulate, for themselves certainly, perhaps for others,

why they are here.

And do the same for yourself- why are you here?

What purpose do you bring to the space?

How do you see your role?

How do you want them to see your role?

Start by starting a dialogue about purpose that underpins the why

of everything that will happen here, together.

Eight.

Smooth does not equal good.

Teach them that lack of conflict doesn’t mean the room is healthy.

It may mean difference is afraid to raise its hand.

It may mean keeping quiet seems safer than speaking up.

It may mean the room is working for those who dominate the space, and everyone else is going along.

Teach them to listen, to ask, to center care and to check in.

Teach them that if belonging is who we are and purpose is where we’re going,

healthy collaboration is the road we’ll travel.

Nine.

Teach them to collaborate.

Teach them to teach others to collaborate,

Help them understand what they need from others to be the best collaborator they can be, and help them learn what they uniquely bring to every collaboration.

Ten.

Presence.

Teach them that they have, inside of them, everything they need to be great.

Invite their presence, by being present.

Show up as you.

Invite them to show up as them.

We used to believe, in the world of theatre education- at least some teachers did- that the job was to break the young artist down in order to build them back up.

How sad.

How utterly heartbreaking that our predecessors thought so little of how they moved thru the world until someone broke them, that they had to break others.

Teach your students to start by believing that they are enough;

start by teaching yourself to believe that your students are enough.

Thanks for letting me share some thoughts.

Have a good conference.