Finding Identity Through Directing

Soseh Yekanians

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429509094
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Mezzi di comunicazione e arti performative
• Subtopic: Arti performative

Finding Identity through Directing is a practice-led autoethnographical monograph that provides an in-depth exploration into the field of theatre directing and an individual's endless creative pursuit for belonging. The book specifically examines how a culturally displaced individual may find a sense of identity through their directing and addresses the internal struggles of belonging, acceptance and Self that are often experienced by those who have confronted cultural unhoming. The first half of the story scrutinises Dr Yekanians' own identity as an Iranian born Armenian-Australian and how she struggled with belonging growing up in a world that for the most part, was unaccepting of her differences. The second half, looks at how theatre directing, aided her (re)discovery of Self. While evidence shows that within the past decade there has been a growing interest in the vocation of theatre directing, embarking on a career within this field, while exciting, can often be a daunting and experimental vocation.

Finding Identity through Directing questions this conundrum and specifically asks, in a competitive artistic profession that is rapidly developing, what attracts an individual to the authoritative role of the director and what are the underlying motivations of this attraction? By uncovering that there is more to the role of the director than the mere finality of a production, we can observe that the theatre is a promising setting for cultural exchanges in dialogue and for personal development. Theatre directing as the vehicle for these expansions and progressions of self can potentially address the internal struggles of identity often experienced by those who, in some form, have encountered cultural displacement.

1
Attracted to theatre: setting the scene

The stage is a magic circle where only the most real things happen, a neutral territory outside the jurisdiction of Fate where stars may be crossed with impunity. A truer and more real place does not exist in all the universe.

(Baber, 2010, p. 204)

Prologue

At the age of 7, my father cast me in an Armenian play he was directing called The Dog and the Cat. I was to play the cat. He had adapted the play from a poem by acclaimed Armenian writer Hovhannes Tumanyan. When I think back to this experience, I remember the overwhelming responsibility of having to learn lines and deliver them on cue every night. Feelings of anxious excitement and not wanting to let my father down envelop my memory. For over a decade, my father was an influential theatre director and practitioner in Iran. In 1969, he gave up his final year of studying architecture at a prestigious university to attend the first ever drama school built in the country called the Institute of Dramatic Arts. In 1979, he emerged as one of the few pioneering graduates who had completed the three-year degree. Even upon coming to Australia, my father continued to be dedicated to his professional career, working as a film technician and theatre director in both the cinematic and performing arts industries. While my father’s creative pursuits may have influenced my decisions, as we seemed to follow a similar path, possibly as an Armenian living under the strict regime of an Iranian government and then as a migrant Australian, my father suffered from a sense of cultural displacement, which may have influenced his decisions. Little did I know that the experience at the age of 7 would be life altering. From that moment on, I knew I needed to be “in the theatre”. Therefore, in spite of my mother’s disapproval, I too made the unorthodox decision to defer my university studies in psychology and audition for the Australian Academy of Dramatic Art in Sydney. Several years later, I again left my mother distraught when I departed the comforts of my home in Sydney, Australia, to study at the Atlantic Theater Company Acting School in New York. As terrified as I was and as cliché as it sounds, it was as if I had no choice in the matter. I was drawn by the need to explore more deeply my creative instincts in the milieu of the theatre. An uncertainty has remained with me ever since. Why the explicit attraction to the theatre?

The essence of theatre

Records of dramatic conception and theatrical performance have co-existed since the time of ancient Greeks and continued during medieval Europe, Tudor England and the France of Louis XIV (Cole & Chinoy, 1953, p. 4). According to Robert Cohen (2011, 2013), the word “theatre” is derived from the Greek word teatron, or seeing place, but no one knows as a certainty the origins of theatre. We can assume that, like most of civilisation, it arose from Africa via rituals and storytelling traditions. However, although debate surrounding the origins of theatre may vary, it is also important to note that the discussion depends on whether the chosen standpoint is an Eastern or Western cultural perspective (Cohen, 2013). For the purposes of this study, predominantly a Western theorists’ perspective on theatre was favoured.

With that being the case, there are numerous texts that offer an overview of what theatre’s purpose was imagined to be (Cole & Chinoy, 1953). In the distant past, theatre was used more as a way to help express the ritualistic ways of daily life by creating stories and myths that people could reflect upon and live by. Antonin Artaud, a French theatre director and playwright in the early twentieth century, held a belief that theatre should represent reality and affect the audience as much as possible. As theatre was representative of daily ritualistic life, he championed this “involvement” for both performer and audience as desiring to remove aesthetic distance by bringing the audience into direct contact with the dangers of life (Miall & Kuiken, 1994). In this way, he thought audiences would become involved with the action of the theatre and, as a result, would experience theatre (and in turn life) in all its pleasure and cruelty:

The theatre must make itself the equal of life – not an individual life, that individual aspect of life in which CHARACTERS [sic] triumph, but the sort of liberated which sweeps away human individuality and in which man is only a reflection. The true purpose of the theatre is to create Myths, to express life in its immense, universal aspects, and from that life to extract images in which we find pleasure in discovering ourselves.

(Artaud, 1958, p. 116)

It is evident that, no matter its use, for centuries, theatre has offered an outlet to people by “providing an occasion for a social gathering, with performances that demonstrate unpalatable truths in flesh that can awaken common responses among a large number of people” (Brown, 1997, p. 6).

Theatrical storytelling, formulated by the Greeks, evolved through history into what we recognise as Western theatre in its present form. John Russell Brown (1997) explored theatre in-depth and presented the idea that theatre has been many things: “Theatre can be a social art form, a lively powerful means of sharing ideas with thousands of people, and as a result has been subjected to severe political censorship in certain places and at certain times” (pp. 5–6). Paul Kuritz (1988), for instance, took the powerful nature of theatre and extended it to its origins of myth and ritual. According to Kuritz, “The peculiar distinguishing features of the special kind of theatre that interests us reveal themselves when myth and ritual are viewed as the progenitors of theatre” (p. 3). Dave Kelman and Jane Rafe (2011) extended Kuritz’s explorations of myth and ritual and examined how mythology has been used in a theatrical way in primary education. They said that the accessibility of this device through dramatic expression enables young people to develop a critical awareness as a channel for generating the contemporary meaning of issues within their own lives. Kelman and Rafe (2011) believe that the pivotal point here is that the process of translation of the ideas from one symbolic language to another inherently becomes integrated into the work and, therefore, myth becomes a vehicle for individuals generating deep understanding of their own human experience(s). They went on to elaborate that “meaning like all meaning – is specific to its context, but it emerges from a process in which young people are developing moral reasoning and creating their own sense of order in the world” (p. 11). Through Kelman and Rafe’s (2011) examples, we begin to notice that it is not so much theatre as a form (the result) that seems to hold all the influence. Instead, it is the essence in which theatre is created (the process) that allows for the change, the self-awareness and the expression of ideas.

American theatre director Anne Bogart (2001) memorably said, “I regard the theatre as an art form because I believe in its transformative power” (p. 1). In uncomplicated terms, theatre is “the activity or profession of acting in, producing, directing, or writing plays, in a building or outdoor area in which plays and other dramatic performances are given” (Pearsall & Hanks, 2010). I do not disagree with this definition, although theatre means much more to me personally than simply an activity resulting in a performance. I agree with Bogart’s notion of the uniquely transformative power of theatre, whose intimate and synergetic processes enable its personnel (performers, playwrights and designers) to come together and visually represent a story to a live audience in an imaginatively charged place, which is scarcely available via any other medium.

Throughout history, evidence suggests that theatre and its origins in rituals have been constant in most, if not all, societies. Debra Bruch (1990) believes that the reason for theatre’s permanency transcends myth and ritual and may have something to do with its innate ability for storytelling. Bruch stated,

Unlike any other art, the total, intense focus of theatre is on the human being, his or her existence, and his or her relationship with life. It is a part of human nature to need to examine who we are in relationship with where we are.

(p. 1)

From the very beginning, societies have used storytelling as conventions to help explain human life. For the most part, these stories have assisted human beings in understanding their relationships with their environments and helped individuals and groups to understand their own natures (Bruch, 1990). William Shakespeare wrote stories that were reflective of the society in which he lived. Even today, Shakespeare’s plays are the most performed throughout the English-speaking world. According to On Shakespeare and His Times (Cannon et al., 2009), the longevity of Shakespeare’s work can be attributed to his “keen eye for detail and his sharp understanding of human nature, which enabled him to create some of the most enduring works of drama and poetry ever produced” (p. 5).

Artaud considered that the practice of theatre “wakes us up: nerves and heart”, through which we experience “violent action”. In turn, that action inspires us with the “fiery magnetism of its images and acts upon us like a spiritual therapeutics whose touch can never be forgotten” (as cited in Gorelick, 2011, p. 263). Is this need for theatre that Artaud proclaimed due to the substance and processes of the art form itself, or is it due to a core human desire to portray and express our stories?

In 2012, several theatre makers posted blogs on what theatre meant to them and why theatre was an essential part of society today. Rena Cherry Brown (2012) considered that theatre emerged because

in hard times people need to gather in one place, to be lifted, challenged or simply entertained. To experience a communal energy of emotion, wonder, fascination, brilliance, commentary. This is not a luxury, it is essential to being a human being.

(para. 1)

Although Brown’s opinion regarding the permanence of theatre is articulate and corresponds with my outlook, the elucidation that resonated most with me came from the artistic director of the Hub Theatre in Washington, Helen Pafumi (2012). She observed that theatre has a transitory spiritual aspect that other creative mediums rarely convey. Pafumi (2012) understood theatre as an “electric juncture” that allows the audience to “breathe in the same air” as the story transports from “living being to living being”. Once that “fleeting instant is over”, theatre then becomes “‘our’ [the audience’s] shared chronicle” (para. 8). What both authors communicate are the rare transformational and communal aspects of the theatre that allow participatory immersion into the story.

With this in mind, I began to look at my specific motivations for pursuing a profession in the theatre. I wondered how theatre’s performative power might have assisted my considerations surrounding the deep struggles I had with my identity and, in essence, my “order in the world” (Kelman & Rafe, 2011, p. 11). What makes theatre distinctive and how has it remained such a prominent creative medium through the ages? Moreover, why do performing artists continue to feel a need to create within the discipline of theatre? Could theatre be a place where identities are played out and shaped and new ones formed? More importantly, how is it that the theatre as a performing arts convention and the decision to become a director encompass so much of my identity as an individual? The answer may lie within the individual’s attraction to the theatre as a sociological phenomenon. To understand theatre from a sociological perspective, as well as its location in the wider community, I turned to Bourdieu (1977, 1984) to unpack the conundrum between individual agency and the pressures of social formation.

Theatre as a social construct

Arguably, each production of a play for the theatre can, in itself, be seen as a microcosm of society for the participants in that production. There is a space where an event takes place, a sense of community that develops whereby members either actively or inactively partake in its action, and to finish (for the most part), there is a response, celebration or engagement that results in some form of a debrief. It is, therefore, imaginable that theatre is a social experience that relies on individuals within that society or community to come together to perform or present a story for others within that community. French theorist Pierre Bourdieu (1977) used the term “cultural practices” for all types of activities played out within societies. Bourdieu devised a “generic category for art in order to identify art [the arts] as a cultural activity, hence also a social one” (as cited in Shevtsova, 2002, p. 36). For Bourdieu, creative (or any other) industries, such as the theatre, can be understood as fields of artistic production. In his view, society is defined by what he called “the social room”, and within each room, there is a “field” linked to its own specific practice and, as a result, operating via its own set of rules. Bourdieu argued that the rules need to be respected at all times by the “agents” (i.e. the individuals involved in the field). An agent’s position within the field can shift or strengthen, depending on the value that individual accrues within the field. He called these “battles” or “negotiations” between an individual and the field’s rules “playing the game”. Further, Bourdieu (1977) added that individuals do not have to belong to that specific field to subscribe to it, but they do need to be agents of it to contribute discussions on the value of that field’s position.

If we apply Bourdieu’s (1977) idea to a rehearsal room in a theatre, we can say that within the rehearsal room are its agents. These are the actors, the director, possibly the playwright, and the technical crew. ...