Lessons in Improvisation: Adapt ing to on-line program delivery by Naomi Tessler

Lessons in Improvisation: Adapting to on-line program delivery

by Naomi Tessler, M.A.

In times of discord and disconnect, Playback Theatre weaves storytelling, music, movement, improvisation, and great doses of intuition together with audiences for a restorative, community-building event. Created by Jonathan Fox and Jo Salas and their theatre troupe in New Paltz, New York in 1975, and now practiced across the globe, Playback offers an interactive and therapeutic form of improvisational theatre. Audience members are invited to share their stories for the performers to bring to life on-the-spot through improvisation. It serves to motivate self-expression, a sense of shared experience, and compassion, validating both the diversity and universality of their experiences.

Our own company, Branch Out Theatre, is committed to theatre for social change and community building. We recently created an online Playback Theatre performance series welcoming audience members from around the globe to share their experiences during COVID-19. The themes explored revealed a great deal about our collective strength and resiliency. In this short summary, I am sharing some of the lessons learned in creating our new online practice. I hope they may be of benefit to others service providers engaged in interactive group programs during this pandemic and beyond.

Adapting our practice

As the Artistic Director/lead facilitator of Branch Out Theatre, I lead highly interactive public workshops, performances and community arts projects. My practice creates opportunities for participants and audience members to have their voices heard, their stories shared, embody their lived experiences, and rehearse creating change on- and off-stage. When COVID-19 swept into our lives, I initially assumed that I would need to suspend my practice. The idea of transferring my work online was not even a thought in my mind. How could I build a sense of trust using an online platform? How could I create a safe space for openness and vulnerability to emerge? How could I build a sense of connection, play, and solidarity online? How do I even operate a zoom meeting?

The combination of all these concerns along with my lack of online technical know-how made the first week of COVID-19 a time of professional confusion.

Yet, even as the weight of social distancing set in, I was inspired by all the online events, shows and workshops that were popping up, and began to question whether it might be possible. As I read more and more stories about others’ experiences, my desire to offer a playback theatre performance online grew. COVID-19 was impacting people in so many different ways physically, mentally, socially, financially and spiritually. Playback has always been a pathway for me to bring people together to share, hear, see, and learn from each other’s humanity. It felt like a transformative way to respond to the pandemic crisis.

In our online rehearsal we quickly realized how great an adaptation would be needed to make our techniques work effectively on a video platform. To make it feel like we were acting together in one place, we had to practice even deeper listening and give each other more space to begin and end our movements and all dialogue. It was difficult to layer sound, so we needed to create space for our musician to open and close our techniques rather than play all the way through. We learned how to play with the screen as our stage and attempt to use closeness and distance from our cameras as metaphors for the layers of emotions we aimed to represent.

Soon we were ‘as ready as we’ll ever be’, a refrain I imagine common among workshop facilitators everywhere diving into this new online world. Our show was called: In This Together: an online playback theatre performance, with net proceeds going to Parkdale Community Health Centre’s initiative to support the homeless population impacted by COVID-19 in downtown Toronto and Parkdale Food Centre, a food bank in Ottawa.

Strengthening our connection

To begin each show, and support our audience to land with us online, we invited all who wished to join us to take some deep, slow, relaxing breaths. This helped participants ground into the present moment and, slowly, open up to notice one another together in our ‘zoom room’. To help build that sense of connection, I invited everyone to reach out ‘across their screen’ (as we modelled how to approach the screen with our fingertips) and make a connection to one other person, ...and one other, …and again one other, … until they had reached out to as many folks as they could. This simple exercise evoked smiling and laughter, and a sense of ease was painted across the screen.

The invitation

To share their stories, we invited audience members to message us in the chat and let us know they wanted to share. With each story shared, we invited the teller to stay on screen with our troupe, as they shared their story, then ‘black out’ (turn off their video), to watch their story ‘played back’, and then join us again on screen after the scene to ‘debrief’ their impression as well as correct anything misinterpreted. This also allowed the audience to have a chance to hear and see the teller’s response to our improvisation. Other than the teller, the rest of the audience was off-video throughout the show. This enhanced the focus on the actors. Our audience members had an array of diverse stories ranging from the shock that swept in to various parts of the world suddenly hit by outbreaks, neighbours supporting elders with shopping, the challenge of caring for parents and children while working out of home, social upheaval and varying support for or opposition to social distancing, feelings of deep isolation, conflicting messages and varying responses by country, the joy of re-discovering hobbies, the frustration of not being able to contribute more when limited by age, health, or economic necessity, the adventures of buying groceries during a pandemic...

Acknowledgment

Our final show (the third of three performances) was performed just six days after the murder of George Floyd and two days after the death of Regis-Korchinksi Paquet. We began this performance with a moment of silence, holding space to remember and honour each of them — a 49 year-old Black American man who had moved to Minnesota to get a fresh start, and a 29 yearold Indigenous-Black Canadian woman in need of mental health support.

This acknowledgment opened up a safe space for audience members to share their own personal stories at the intersection of racism and mental health. There was an ocean of feelings present surrounding the loss of these lives, each a poignant tragedy reflecting the differential and oppressive treatment experienced by visible minorities every day in our society. To play back these stories at a time of deep grief for all present, and for members of the Black community in particular, felt like a sacred responsibility in support of our audience.

Wrapping it up

At the end of each show, audience members were invited to write their feelings in the chat for us to reflect back in a final, moving scene. Hope. Connection. Community. Health for All. Equity. Justice. Laughter. Play… These are yearnings we all share.

And for those readers who are facilitating their own online programs, I hope some of the lessons we learned along the way may inspire and support you. Adapt your method to the medium. Experiment with warm-ups to bring the audience in from the internet. Issues and concerns are changing from day to day, so be ready to adapt on the fly. And perhaps most importantly, don’t be afraid to leap without certainty. It’s a resilient new world. Mistakes can be made on the way to rebuilding our sense of community.

About the Author

Naomi Tessler, M.A. is the Founder, Artistic Director and lead facilitator of Branch Out Theatre. She has been working with communities globally for 16 years, leading community arts workshops, projects and productions to motivate: creative play, community arts engagement, critical reflection, personal and collective transformation and rehearsal towards social change. As a graduate of the Masters of Arts program in Educational Theatre for Colleges and Communities, New York University, she is passionate about using theatre as a tool for encouraging self-empowerment, conflict resolution, social justice and well-being. She is the co-creator of the Creative Well Theatre Project which facilitates intensive arts programming with adults living with mental illness in Ottawa and culminates in a forum theatre play addressing the stigma attached to mental illness and the systemic barriers in the mental health system. Naomi is an avid guest facilitator with Carleton University’s School of Social Work. In addition to being a dynamic facilitator, Naomi also works as an actor, director, playwright, poet, singer, speaker, community arts mentor and Reiki Master. She believes in uniting communities through theatre to build bridges and break through barriers. www.branchouttheatre.com