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Dan Friedman’s Theatre for Nothing

August 16, 2010

My good friend Dan Friedman has written a paper I highly recommend. Entitled “Theatre for Nothing,” the paper delineates how theatre is being instrumentalized, especially in relation to social change efforts. Dan urges that politically oriented theatre activists recognize the stifling effect this is having on the potential for human development inherent in performance. In a conversational style, he manages to weave together history, politics, art, philosophy and psychology to make an important statement about applied theatre and developmental theatre. Dan delivered this paper last month in Belém, Brazil at the VII World Congress of the International Drama and Education Association (IDEA), at the invitation of IDEA’s president and our friend, Dan Baron Cohen.

Here’s a few tidbits:

For some 500 years now the world has become increasingly instrumentalized, a development not so subtlety connected to the rise of capitalism, science and industry. Now not only is science expected to lead to useful technology but a wider and wider range of human activities, in order to be socially supported and funded, must prove themselves to be useful, that is, to be a means toward a concrete end. Over the last few decades this instrumentalism has gained considerable foothold in the theatre, particularly educational, community-based and youth theatre work. This tendency has had a number of names over the years. At this point, the most commonly accepted label is “Applied Theatre.”

In our quest for usefulness, the search for meaning is being neglected.  If we lose that quest, we lose the heart and soul of humanism, the progressive, developmental historical tendency to move the world somewhere else.

The creative tension between what is and what is becoming propels us into development individually and as a community and as a species.  While cause and effect, tool for result, instrumentalism has worked well in the study of the natural world, that is, for science and technology, its imposition on theatre (and other forms of social creativity) threatens to seriously under cut the power of theatre.

Human development doesn’t proceed according to the rules of Western logic—or any static set of rules, be they generated by science, psychology, religion or political ideology. That is precisely why theatre is so fertile an activity for social development.  Theatre is where we are allowed to do the un-doable, to be who we are not, to transgress and transform with others through play.

The complete Theatre for Nothing can be read here. Dan Friedman is artistiic director of the Castillo Theatre, Youth Onstage! and Becoming Producers, all at the All Stars Project, Inc.

Posted in Applied Theatre, Community Organizing, Culture, Education, Learning Environments, Performance Movement, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, Theatre. Tagged with , , , , , , .

By loisholzman
August 16, 2010

2 comments

The Blessing and the Wound

August 10, 2010

I know hundreds of performers-social change workers (and know of hundreds more). But I’d not heard of Hector Aristizabal until Amazon sent me an email (just for me of course!) recommending his book written with Diane Lefer, entitled,  The Blessing and the Wound: A Story of Art, Activism, and Transformation. Hector grew up in Colombia, where he faced hardshp, violence, repression and torture. He moved to the US and as an activist, performer and therapist, he uses his suffering and anger to help others grow through performance/therapy/conversation. The book chronicles events in his life and that of his country and the world, interwoven with how he approaches poverty, pain, people and performance.

I liked the book a lot; it’s completely engaging and unusually honest. Throughout the book, there were comments that so very close to my experiences and beliefs about performance and development. Here’s a few of them:

“Those of us who’ve survived torture or any other trauma need to see it as simply one event in our lives, not the definition of our identity. I don’t want to hold on to the trauma but rather to reimagine it, see it with new eyes. The wound can be both tomb and womb…”

In sharing some performance work he did with Israelis and Palestinians in Bethlehem, Hector tells us how performing together is a way people come to work together: “People are not forced to change who they are; they are invited to experience the Other, the unknown, through creating something together.”

“So I dance and I stumble; but there’s no such thing as a bad dance. The only thing that’s bad is not to dance at all.”

Posted in Community Organizing, Culture, Education, Outside of School, Performance Movement, Psychology, Psychotherapy. Tagged with , , , , , .

By loisholzman
August 11, 2010

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Can Performance Change the World?

July 17, 2010

Participate in discovering/creating responses to this question by attending the sixth Performing the World conference: Performing the World 2010, September 30-October 3, 2010, New York City (hosted by All Stars Project, Inc and East Side Institute for Group and short Term Psychotherapy)

“Can Performance Change the World?”

Performing artists, community organizers, theatre workers, educators, scholars, youth workers, students, social workers, psychotherapists, psychologists, medical doctors, health workers, and business executives are coming from 31 countries to discuss/perform that question and their responses to it.  Performing the World 2010 is well underway.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll share  with you some of the nearly 100 presentations, workshops and performances that will be featured at this year’s Performing the World. Here are samplings of theatre related sessions and presentations dealing with performance, health and wellness. Future posts will highlight sessions on performance and education, performance and trauma, and performance and mental health.

Play On Stage and Off

A Day in the Life of the World – The Living Theatre has been pushing the boundaries of the theatre and working to change the world since 1947.  Founder and artistic director Judith Malina and company members will lead a workshop on Living Theatre performance techniques and a discussion on the Living Theatre’s perspective on performance and social transformation.

Performing Change – One morning a group of young people fan out through the downtown streets stopping people at random to engage them in conversations about problems in their community and what they think needs to be changed in the world.  A few days later this group of young people present a performance illustrative of the concerns raised on the streets. Members of the Street Spirits Theatre Company, based in British Columbia will share their play-creation process.

Towards a New Educational Theatre with Chinese Characteristics – Huizhu Sun, President of the Shanghai Theatre Academy, will share his efforts to introduce devised and educational theatre in China based on traditional characters derived from Chinese Opera.

Reinventing Avant-Garde Theatre – Projekt Theater Studio in Vienna has transformed itself from a classical left avant-garde theatre to a community performance space, the Butcherie, creating new performance forms with immigrants, refugees, women and the elderly.  Founder and artistic director Eva Brenner will discuss these changes and lead a workshop in the Butcherie’s performance techniques.

Bubbles on the Subway – Play in Unexpected Places – Throughout 2009 Kristen Pedemonti played with people on the subways and streets of New York City using bubbles as a means to engage.  She wanted to help people remember what it is to play and demonstrate play’s potential to help people grow.  Pedemonti will share her experience and explore how adult play can change energy, shift focus and open us up to each other.

Performance and Health

Patch Adams – the Clown Laureate of Medicine, comes to Performing the World for the first time.  He will share his work from around the world, bringing performance and hope to the sick and suffering.  In addition to his own workshop, Patch will be joining Jim Mangia, executive director of St. John’s Well Child and Family Center in Los Angeles, and other innovative doctors on a panel entitled, “What is Health?”

The Performance of Resiliency at The Johns Hopkins Hospital – Oncology nurses from John Hopkins Hospital and performance coaches from Performance of a Lifetime share how performance games and workshops helped the nurses to regain the sense of humanity that initially led them to professional nursing.

The Power of Performing Our Story – Lewis Mehl-Madrona will share her work helping people transform the stories of their illnesses into performance and discuss healing as social performance.

Clowning at Hospital Changes the World – Clownetterna, a Swedish hospital clown group, brings performance to children in hospitals, and shares the special magic of the clown/child encounter.

Housing the World

The PTW 2010 Housing Committee is busy securing free housing for the hundreds of performance activists and scholars who will be attending. They have already secured, as of this writing, 80 beds for visitors in households throughout the five boroughs of New York City.

If you want to stay in a NYC home while at PTW, you must fill out a housing form (available at www.performingtheworld.org). The deadline to apply for housing has been extended to July 24. Housing forms will not be processed until conference registration is received. Additionally, if you live in the New York metropolitan area and would like to host a performance activist or scholar from around the world, please contact Jenny or Esther at 212-941-9400 x 414, or fill out a form on the website (http://eastsideinstitute.org/page63/page63.html).

Conference Schedule

Thursday, September 30, conference begins at 5:30 PM

Registration and Opening Reception

Friday, October 1

Concurrent Sessions and Evening Performances

Saturday, October 2

Plenaries, Concurrent Sessions and Evening Performances

Sunday, October 3

Concurrent Sessions and Closing Plenary

Conference ends at 6:00 PM

Registering for the Conference

Registration for PTW 2010 can be completed online at (http://www.acteva.com/booking.cfm?bevaid=204261) or contact Melissa Meyer at 212-941-8906 x 304.

Posted in Clowning, Community Organizing, Culture, Education, Health Care, Learning Environments, Outside of School, Performance Movement, Psychotherapy, Youth Development. Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , .

By loisholzman
July 17, 2010

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Critical Psychology on Street Corners

July 16, 2010

I’m beginning to write a chapter on the state of Critical Psychology for a Chinese journal and I’ve spent a few hours flipping through writings, both mine and colleagues of mine. It’s part of how I create an environment for having a new thought, for allowing others (including myself!) inspire me. One of  the things I re-read was a piece I wrote in 2005 for a book of narratives by psychologists about their life and work. (There’s some interesting lives in the volume, so you might want to check it out:  Yancy, G. and Hadley, S. (Eds.), (2005) Narrative identities: Psychologists engaged in self-construction. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.) One part of the essay did spark an idea for something I want to address in the new article I’m writing. I want to explore the distinction between Critical Psychology as an academic subject and critical psychology as a daily practice anyone can engage in. Over the last decade, from what I see and experience, the distinction is blurring some, and that’s a good thing. Here’s the excerpt. (If you want to read the entire essay, it’s called Performing a Life (Story).

“Hi, my name is Lois Holzman. I teach psychology. I’m out here today because I think it’s so important to support young people doing something positive for their communities. That’s what the All Stars Talent Show Network, a city wide anti-violence program, is. I’m talking to people like you and asking you to support the young people of the All Stars by giving a dollar or 5 dollars or 25 dollars.”

This was the “R and D” for what became known in the activist community of which my work is a part as “the street performance.” Like all the programs my colleagues and I created, the All Stars Talent Show Network was built by volunteers like me reaching out to ordinary people—for financial support, for participants, for audiences, for fellow builders. For years we had gone door to door in city apartment houses and suburban homes. Now the idea was to talk a little bit to a lot of people. We created a 45 second “rap” that could stop and engage passersby on NYC’s busy street corners. Five or six of us set up a literature table as home base, fanned out a bit into the crowd, made eye contact with someone and delivered our personal versions of the rap. Those who were interested we would speak with in more depth at another time. (We invited people to give us their names and phone numbers so we could call them back, give them an update and ask them to contribute more. Many, many did.)

Of all the research I’ve done, this is the project I’m most proud of. Today the All Stars not only continues to reach tens of thousands of New York City kids, but through its expansion to cities up and down the east and west coasts, thousands more are participating. My involvement with this extraordinary youth development/supplemental education project is many-faceted (some of them more psychological in the traditional sense), but to have contributed in this way is very special to me.

How was it that I and artists, actors, social workers, teachers, doctors and secretaries could do this? We could and did by performing as other than who we were. We created the “stage” upon which we could perform bold and friendly and outgoing and proud of what we were doing, rather than behaving shy and intimidated and embarrassed. And in doing so, we became bold and friendly and outgoing and proud.

This kind of grassroots fundraising is essential if you’ve decided to be independent from government, university and corporate funding (as all the projects I’m involved in are). But it’s more than just a way to raise money. It’s community organizing. It’s relationship building. It’s giving people the opportunity to do something small. It’s allowing them to be touched and to be giving, if they choose. It’s finding out what people think. It’s discovering that they care. For about twenty years I regularly talked in this way to people on the street and at their doors, as a community organizer who happens to be a psychologist. It’s an antidote to cynicism.

Posted in Community Organizing, Culture, Learning Environments, Performance Movement, Psychology. Tagged with , , , , , .

By loisholzman
July 16, 2010

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Gita Vygodskaya

July 15, 2010

Gita Vygodskaya (Lev Vygotsky’s daughter) died on July 13. She was in her mid-80s. I and so many Vygotskians around the world will miss her wonderful stories, her warmth and sparkle, and the joy she took in meeting people the world over whose work was inspired by her father’s writings.

Gita was nine years-old when her father died at age 37 in 1934. His works were then banned by Stalin and   his widow and two daughters kept the manuscripts safe under their beds in their apartment in Moscow for years. When her mother died, Gita took charge of keeping the  manuscripts safe and getting a volume of them finally published in 1956. Over the next two decades she worked, along with some of Vygotsky’s students, to turn the manuscripts into six volumes of his works published in Russia in the 1980s. She received her  doctorate in psychology from Moscow University in 1959 and worked with deaf children for many years.

I first met Gita in Moscow in 1993 when she invited me to visit her in her apartment. She shared memorabilia and stories of her childhood with her father, something she continued doing with people until her final days. The next year, I and the East Side Institute brought her to the US for her first ever visit to visit with our community, visit the Vygotskian school we were running at the time (Barbara Taylor School) and give a conference presentation.  Over the years, Gita and I saw each other a few more times. Our last visit was this past November at the home outside of Moscow she shared with her daughter, son-in-law and their family. With friends Carrie Lobman, Elina Lampert-Shepel and Dot Robbins, I spent a memorable and lovely night there.



Posted in Activity Theory, Education, Psychology. Tagged with , , , .

By loisholzman
July 16, 2010

5 comments

Social Therapeutics in a South African Prison

June 5, 2010

“As progressives we have come to believe that if people address the issue of human development—in direct and practical ways—we might indeed change the world.”

So reads the title page of a booklet the East Side Institute put out several years ago on our history, philosophy and programs. I was reminded of this during the week when I was reading the dialogue among our faculty (myself, Chris Helm, Carrie Lobman and Fred Newman) and students in the Institute’s Social Therapeutics Online certificate program. The 20-week course is winding down and people are revisiting what we’ve read, written and said in reflecting together on the impact (or not) on our lives of what we’ve been doing. The conversation is too rich to keep private and, with the permission of the students and the rest of the faculty, I will share some of it on this site.

Alex is a theatre director and on the drama faculty at a university in South Africa. She’s been involved in community theatre and performance work with adults and young people for years. Throughout the course, she’s been sharing the performance work she’s doing with men in prison, and here she tells us of their conversation at the end of the program.

I had the most amazing group conversation with a small group of the men I have been working with in prison.  It was part of an evaluation of our process, and also part of my research (as a university teacher, I do need to always ‘explain’ what I do), and also part of our process together as we talked about what we believed drama and performance mean for us.  What they talked about was an enactment of all the things that social therapy says is developmental, growthful, educational, about group building through performance.

This group has certainly not been framed or established as a therepeutic group, yet each person talked about how therepeutic their involvement with the group and our activities had been.  I need some more time to listen to the conversation again (which I recorded) and process it all – there were just so many beautiful gems which dialogue with the theory we have been reading in Vygotsky at Work and Play.  In particular, I have just read the last sentance of chapter 2 – “my proposal goes in the opposite direction, namely, that education could be advanced if we consider the teacher as therapist”.  My work with this group has always been constructed educationally – yet, when we had our conversation yesterday, most of the participants ‘learning’ was articulated therepeutically, or socially.

For example, they all talked about how drama had helped them understand others better far more than any other programme, that through becoming another person through performance, they were able to leave the stress of their everyday lives behind and play with new possibilities, it helped them work well with others, communicate better, and most of all, understand themselves and their futures in new ways.  All of them reflected on how performing had helped them with anger and to understand their emotions differently, particularly relationally:  so that they found different strategies when dealing with conflict or understanding where other people had come from.  One of the participants talked about how he had to go and receive a certficate for something but was nervous, and thought that he would just perform confidence, stuck his chest out and collected it with pride.  ”A”, who is a passionate leader and initiator in the group, talked about how he is now always performing – both on and off stage, as he learns new ways to ‘be’ (and become, although these are my words, not his).  He seemed to see himself as what Lois says about “people are primarily performers, not thinkers or knowers”.

Drama always claims that it does these things that the group reflected on, but this is the first time I have heard a group talk about the effect of their work together in this way.  It was a thrilling hour.  When I think about it and the creative activities we have been involved in over the past few months, I start to understand what Lois talks about as the ZPD not being a zone, but an activity.

Posted in Culture, Education, Learning Environments, Performance Movement, Social Therapeutics. Tagged with , , , , , , , .

By loisholzman
June 5, 2010

2 comments

Philosophy, Pathology and the Oil Spill

June 2, 2010

“It’s a profound and systemic problem of our entire culture. We live in a broad international culture where people can’t accept that there is no answer. They have to have an answer for everything.”

Fred Newman and Jackie Salit have a conversation about the BP oil spill, how it’s being talked about among the politicians and talk show hosts, and the underlying “philo-pathology” of contemporary culture!  Curious? Read Determinism Run Amok…

Posted in Culture, Philosophy. Tagged with , , .

By loisholzman
June 2, 2010

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Online Learning Environments and Social Creativity

May 28, 2010

I “teach” online a lot and I love it. I’ve done a course on Social Therapeutics at Massey University (evidently in New Zealand English, though, a “course” is called a “paper”) and just launched one through the Zur Institute for 6 CEUs. But the bulk of my online teaching is through the East Side Institute—our introductory courses, online certificate program, and in-person/online combo called The International Class.

More of our faculty are offering online courses too, and I work with them on how to do it. I tell them (and hopefully help them) to see an online course as a completely new opportunity for social creativity.

I’ve learned from these newbies some of the things that “seduce” them into relating to the course as if it’s a face-to-face, real time learning environment that just happens to not be face-to-face or real time! Like silence (i.e., no posts) for a few days, or a response to a reading that is very far from what you expect, or a conversational thread that seems “off topic.” In a  regular course, such things are no big deal, but online they can loom large indeed, sometimes enough to worry the course leader into trying to control what will happen, too quickly correct a misunderstanding, ask a lot of questions, or fill in a silence with erudtion—all of which don’t make good use of the uniqueness of the online learning environment.

In my experience, the slowness (or timelessness) of online discussion makes it easier to respond to the whole group even as you are responding to a particular person. You (and everyone else) can read and re-read what people have written, and see the process by which the conversation is being created. Someone can always revisit a topic, something that’s harder to do in regular courses. You can also play with each other’s posts. I’ve had students take a line or two from different people’s posts and create a new post that then becomes part of the mix (and can create another “student” in the course).

Taking playful initiative seems easier online. So does sharing. I’ve found that students tend to be more giving of their life experiences in ways that create a safe place for playing with the most challenging theoretical material. On their own, some have videotaped conversations with friends or colleagues on the readings and posted them for us to see and comment on. Others describe readings and web material that excite them and recommend them to everyone. Others create scenes, take photos, draw pictures.

If you want help with the online environment or have a story to share, post a comment!

Posted in Education, Learning Environments, Social Therapeutics. Tagged with , , , , .

By loisholzman
May 29, 2010

1 comment

Interweaving Theory and Practice/Learning in the Digital Age

May, 2010

I don’t know Michael Thomas, Professor at Nagoya University of Commerce & Business in Japan, but I intend to. I want to thank him for the favorable and thoughtful review of Vygotsky at Work and Play that he wrote for the British Journal of Educational Technology.  He says so well what I was trying to do in writing the book! The review begins…

The influence of Lev Vygotsky’s thought, particularly in relation to social constructivism and socio- cultural theory, has become one of the most prominent methodologies associated with a reorientation of learning in the digital age. This book examines the development and impact of Vygotsky’s thought using an engaging first person narrative and personal account, and examines how it has been applied to a range of learning situations both inside and outside of traditional educational contexts. Although this is not a conventional academic introduction to Vygotsky’s thought then, key concepts such as the zone of proximal development (and the author’s idea of the zone of emotional development) are introduced, and Holzman skillfully interweaves theory and practice throughout the book’s six chapters.

You can read the complete review at the Reviews page

Posted in Activity Theory, Culture, Education, Learning Environments, Outside of School, Postmodern Marxism, Social Therapeutics, Vygotsky, Youth Development. Tagged with , , , , , .

By loisholzman
May 27, 2010

1 comment

Ambassador for Development through Performance

April 17, 2010

Anyone who knows me and/or visits this site knows I’m an avid supporter of the All Stars Project and have been since it began some decades ago. The All Stars’ program are exquisite applications of the social therapeutic approach to human development because they are uniquely suited to the conditions that young people—especially those who are poor or “of color”—face today. So it was a special honor to be recognized this week at the All Stars Project’s National Gala Benefit, “Out of Crisis: Helping the World’s Youth to Grow.”

At the Lincoln Center event (which raised $3 million), I was given the All Stars Ambassador for Development award  by All Stars’ Board Chair Rich Sokolow and Dr. Elouise Joseph, youth programs manager for the Bay area All Stars and a member of the team I led in March bringing the All Stars’ approach to play to teachers in China.

What made the honor even more meaningful was that it was followed by the 2010 Bridge Building Awards for Leadership in Community Relations, presented to five countries for their exemplary leadership in providing aid to Haiti in the aftermath of January’s devastating earthquake.  All Stars’ youth leaders presented the awards to: Ambassador Osmar V. Chohfi, Consul General of Brazil in New York;  John McNab, Deputy Consul General of Canada in New York; Ambassador Pedro Núñez Mosquera, Permanent Representative of Cuba to the United Nations; Philippe Lalliot, Consul General of France in New York and Asaf Shariv, Consul General of Israel in New York. And Haiti’s Consul General in New York, Felix Augustin, accepted them. It was an honor to be in such company.

Posted in Community Organizing, Culture, Education, Learning Environments, Outside of School, Psychology, Social Therapeutics, Youth Development. Tagged with , , , , .

By loisholzman
April 17, 2010

2 comments