Community Narratives and Dialogue
I’ve been thinking more about community this week, and bringing people together in communities. I’ve been working my way through Margaret Wheatley’s “Turning to One Another” an exploration of conversation and community.
How do people connect? I think it’s through our stories--from our shared narratives to the stories of how we are different that bring us together. I remember attending a play several years ago about the lives of the Bronte sisters. Emily Bronte strode across the stage in one particularly memorable moment and asked her sisters “Why must we be heard? Why is it not enough to to just be?”
We all want to be heard--so that we can sink into being knowing that someone has heard our story. I think we can just be, once we know we’ve been heard.
We live in some sense, in a very disconnected and fragmented society. I log into social media every day and see people standing on their distant soapboxes demanding attention, validation and acceptance. These calls are usually met with loud and opposing opinions that turn into an argument with neither party listening to the other. Our world is chaotic and distant--and as times become difficult for people across the world, how can we learn to be together in creative, caring communities?
I suggest that in order to connect with those around us--we need to hear stories and share stories. Margaret Wheatley wrote: “We need time to sit together, to listen, to worry and dream together...we need to reclaim time to be together.”
It’s about holding space for conversations that bring people together--listening to one another in a gentle way and feeling free to share your own stories. That’s one piece that’s always intrigued me about theatre. Theatre is a storytelling form, a space for people to enter into dialogue, to share stories through sound, words and movement. In the theatre space, one is able to share difficult stories through the lense of another character. It provides space for listening and understanding as actors and audience members hear stories and through the medium of theatre are able to pause and listen in a particular way.
Everyone has a story, everyone wants to tell their story, to connect. I think theatre is a powerful tool for connecting and starting community conversations, because there is space for dialogue, but also silence. Silence gives the speaker and the listener space to see themselves, to hear themselves.
Early in Turning to One Another, Margaret Wheatley wrote “Whatever life we have experienced, if we can tell someone our story, we find it easier to deal with our circumstances.”
This, I think, is a first step in bringing communities together(whether rooms full of strangers or lifelong neighbors)--telling our stories and listening to the stories of others. It’s through our stories that we recognize our shared ways of seeing the world, as well as the things that make us delightfully different.
Community narrative experiences can build a relationship between individual empowerment and community connections that are vital to maintaining vibrant community. How can theatre be used as tool to start these dialogues and shape the narrative experience? Can participatory theatre become a forum for community conversation?
There is a sort of circular notion I’m entertaining right now--I’m thinking about vulnerability. How trust and vulnerability may be important pieces in community connections. I think trust is essential in belonging to community, and trust is connected to the way we listen and we way we are heard(by ourselves and the people around us). It’s about more than having a sense of self confidence or self worth. It’s about the individual trusting themselves enough to move from confidence into action, becoming empowered to contribute to a community and having enough trust to provide that listening space for others. I think I’m talking about self trust in a more intuitive sense than an ego sense. It’s just knowing oneself--trusting that one has the ability to figure out the answers and to engage with others in a trusting manner. Maybe it’s more than that--but this is what I’ve been thinking about as I’ve worked my way through Wheatley’s book this week.
I was completing my reading in a cafe earlier this week and I paused to refill my mug of tea and watch the people around me. I was struck by the buzz and hum of the cafe, but also by how many people were sitting by themselves. Flipping through phones or newspapers, or like myself, simply watching the cafe movement. I’d like to sit in a cafe with a sign propped up on the table. I’d like to write ‘Free Coffee with Conversation’ on the sign and see how many people would come and chat with me. Could I devise a set of questions--like an ice breaker--to start the conversation? Or could I just set back and see what happens? Perhaps I could start where Studs Terkel(a prolific journalist and life time listener) left off and ask people to sit down and tell me their dreams? How many people would join me at the table and tell me their story?
And think that’s where I’ll leave this post for today--maybe I’ll set up shop in a cafe this weekend and see what happens! Although I’ve also been thinking about dialogue and conversation--maybe I’ll spend some time thinking about the question of conversation and see what the leads me to this weekend.
