This is the second blog in a series of Artist Responses to Paprika’s 22/23 Hot Topics series. In this post, actor and creator Paul Smith provides a personal response to the ‘Responsible Storytelling’ online conversation.
The more I see theatre and the more I create it, I've realized that most theatre isn't made for me. And it shouldn't be. Personally, I don’t believe that would be responsible. Theatre would suck more than it already does if it were only made for someone like me. But who am I? What is that responsibility, and who is that responsibility to? In the performing arts sector, I would say it’s to our community. But I question, when we think about community, is it the audience buying into our programming or the audience that has never felt welcomed to? However you define it, it is clear that there is some vague sense of duty we take on as storytellers, and if that is what we continue to call ourselves in grant applications and “about us” pages, then that inherent responsibility should be applied to all sides of production.
Cut to Feb. 22, 2023: I'm watching the Paprika Festival's latest Hot Topics session on "Responsible Storytelling". I'm speaking out loud as though I'm sitting in the live-streamed Zoom room with Santiago Guzman & Donna-Michelle St. Bernard, facilitated by Cheyanne Scott. The three brilliant artists can't hear me snapping or see me nodding, but I want them to know how much their words impact me. You can catch the recording of the discussion focused primarily on the creation-based practices of Guzman and St. Bernard here, but their paraphrased themes can be found along this response. On your way to the end, I’ve articulated myself through a list and some art.
“Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing”, AI-prompt-to-painting by Paul Smith inspired by Donna-Michelle St. Bernard likening a [mal/misintention] playwright who hides harm behind their story as a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
But first, a definition. At this moment, I understand community as an environment or population in which an understanding of care is intentionally shared, established, and respected. In my communities, you care for one another when no one else will. Love born out of survival. Despite its instinct to protect, love can cloud the impact of your care. In turn, when care is misplaced, healing can not happen until you understand the harm caused. If you create while denying healing, you only create space for harm. Responsibility in storytelling is then not only about accepting the big wins. It’s also accepting the losses (or learning moments), and facing the choice to own and learn from them instead of denying the reality of one's mishandling of responsibility—lest it spill over into the stories we share and how we share them.
Here are my takeaways:
“When you know all there is to know, your community will teach you all that you forgot.” The question of "responsible storytelling" is not only that of a playwright, dramaturg, performer, or director. It starts and ends with all of us, no matter your role on the performance, production, or administrative side. The message is important, but responsibility comes in how we tell it. Remembering that can allow for fruitful, authentic, and ongoing relationships that foster community as a base pillar of the art we create, but when it is jeopardized or trivialized, neither those making or consuming the art (nor the art itself) will experience their fullest potential.
“Give your community the power to try”. Your intention matters, but it also doesn’t. Your community will experience your story however they experience it, and no amount of care can stop that. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. This notion of trying is what interests me so much, as the art of trying is expensive. Unfortunately, there’s not always enough to go around, and even when you're graced with it, how do you use it responsibly? I don’t know. I’ve stopped believing I have to be the one to figure that out.
That being said, I have some offers.
a. Talk-backs & Talk-forwards.
i. The arts’ way of describing what I grew up calling an Ask Me Anything (or AMA). Much like applause after a show, these question-and-answers before or after a show are moments that lower the wall that separates the artist(s) from the audience and equates us as people. I see them as a means of engaging in active discourse, as opposed to just stirring it up and vanishing at the end of a curtain call (if we are granted one). If you have a great facilitator who can host these kinds of discussions, talkbacks and talk-forwards can evolve from an expense to a tradition that makes space for education, meaningful connection, and care. In the last year, I’ve talked with audience members about why they’ve felt uncared for by a production, and often have to tell them “Sorry, I don’t work here”. There are many productions with many reasons why these events don’t happen, but I would have loved to see these paired with a production like Fairview (2023).
b. Check-ins, Check-outs, and the 24/48 Space
i. Sometimes, we bite our tongues for the sake of “the work”. Doing so will only continue to hurt us. So, if something affects you and you are still thinking about it 24 hours later, for whatever reason, know that you can and should address it in the next 48 hours. That space can be created as a result of checking in and out with your community at various checkpoints along the timeline of production, or the start and end of each day. If where you are doesn’t make you feel like that’s possible, maybe you have yet to find or foster community. In The First Stone (2022), similar conventions played a small and essential role in the production.
c. Community Engagement as Gesamtkunstwerk: The Contemporary “Total Work”
i. It is simply not enough for a company with the finances to do more than two shows a year to not engage their community outside of performance. If for whatever reason you choose not to hold a separate event or initiative, how can a community be integrated into the performance itself? I often think about Where the Blood Mixes (2022) or Dixon Road (2022). The former’s design integrated artwork from young students in their community, and the latter production also included reserved spaces for prayer where the show could also still be experienced.
d. Community Nights
i. An extension of the original Black Out Night concept as seen in Slave Play (2020), I see a future where Community Nights act to hold and support space for an affinity group or community that is used as a device for the themes behind the work they are being invited to witness. It’s not just for Blacks anymore (unless we say so)!
“You can’t create for your community responsibly until you stop being scared of them.” I finish the session realizing I still haven’t answered who I am, nor what my responsibility is. As a 24-year-old queer-Black emerging artist with a lot of interests and never enough time, identifying community is harder than defining it, because my community is large. I don’t think I’m equipped to responsibly care for all of them in the ways they need, and that scares me. But I intend to try and will listen as I do, because that is my responsibility as a storyteller.
Now, your turn. Who are you? Who is your community and how have you cared for them? How have you experienced responsible and irresponsible storytelling in your own community? Let me know when you know.
End of list.
Quotes from the Paprika live-event that I offer if you aren’t tired of reading:
I want to entertain but at the end of the day, I think about what is it that this story is going to do for my audience. I think a lot about theater as a way of engaging with our community, so I have a responsibility when I put a story on stage. And I think a lot about that: why am I telling this story to begin with. I think that that's my entry point.
-Santiago
Whatever you're writing, you're putting yourself into it and your perspective into it. Even when you are writing someone for a story that seems far from your lived experience, you are going to insert yourself—not necessarily have a specific avatar, but really all up and down in the cracks. So it's good to know that going in, to intentionally look for what you don't know what you can't know.
-DM
