THEATER ARTS: Douglas Paterson, Paul Boesing, D. Scott Glasser

For many years I have met regularly with individuals who have spent their lives teaching, directing, and participating in the theater arts. My friendship with these individuals has been integral to my ongoing education and I am deeply grateful to them.

“Man will get better,” said Anton Chekhov, “when you show him what he is like.” This must have been one of the reasons that theater was born. I know I’m not saying anything that has not been said before, still, theater strikes me as a nearly unbelievable invention. To create “a place for seeing”, as the Greeks defined theater (theatron), suggests how deeply felt is the human need to know and understand.

I continue to learn from the individuals profiled below and in what follows I hope to acknowledge in a small way their contributions to the theater arts.

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Douglas Paterson — “we are all performers, performing ourselves”

Douglas Paterson grew up in Watertown, South Dakota. He went to Yankton College and later, Cornell University where he received his PhD in Theater. His career has focused on directing, acting, teaching, social justice, and facilitating theater-based experiences.

For more than three decades, Dr. Paterson has devoted himself to studying, applying, and adding to the Theatre of the Oppressed methods developed by Brazilian theatrical director and scholar Augusto Boal. In 1995, he launched the Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed (PTO) Conference, an annual conference that continues to this day. In 2011, Dr. Paterson was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award in Leadership in Community-Based Theatre and Civic Engagement from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE).

I first met Dr. Paterson in the early 1990s when we began a dialogue that over the years has been invaluable to me.

In 1977, Dr. Paterson left a tenure track position to act on his conviction that theater is activism of the most fundamental sort. Along with six others, he formed the Dakota Theater Caravan. For over five years in over eighty communities, the Caravan performed plays depicting the triumphs and struggles that characterize rural and small-town life in South Dakota.

In each town, members of the Caravan interviewed towns people: How did you get here? Why here? What has this community overcome? We’re making a play about South Dakota, what should such a play about your community be about? From these interviews came plays entitled: “Dakota Roads”; Dusting off the ‘30s”; “Welcome Home”. After each performance, members of the Caravan visited with those in attendance, enriching their understanding of the region as they furthered their dialogue with individuals who had just witnessed the life of their community honored by a troupe of traveling artists. Overall, the Caravan was an exercise in the power of theater to build pride in community and place.

In 1990, Dr. Paterson reached out to Augusto Boal, Brazilian scholar, and author of Theater of the Oppressed and Games for Actors and Non-Actors. Boal used theater as a tool for empowering disadvantaged and powerless groups to act on their own behalf. It is work in line with at least two principles that fueled Dr. Paterson’s commitment to the Caravan: first, we are all performers, performing ourselves (everyday life is, indeed, a stage) and second, theater can strengthen our capacity to act effectively for the benefit of ourselves and others.

There are now several theater companies and university theater departments throughout the United States using Boal’s methods. I once asked Augusto Boal who is most responsible for the growing interest in his work, especially in the United States. “Most responsible of all,” Boal answered, “is Dr. Paterson.”

How does this form of theater work?

In day-long workshops, scenes are created by community members, not by trained actors, somewhat as plays were created in the Caravan, i.e., through dialogue with participants. What are the current problems, concerns, pressing issues we face as individuals, families, villages, communities? Extensive dialogue leads to the creation of scenes that bring the issues of concern to light, scenes which are then rehearsed by community members for enactment. Participants know the issues. By enacting the scenes, they invite an enriched and clarifying discussion. However, the purpose of the enacted scenes is not simply to produce a clarifying discussion, but to have audience members enact their proposals for change within the scenes. Participants are invited to “stop” a given scene, take the place of one of the characters in the scene, preferably the most oppressed character, and then, to complete the scene more in keeping with the needs and aspirations of the individual (family, village, community, etc.). More discussion follows; more proposals enacted, until the best of what participants can imagine is in front of them, full bodied and enacted.

For Dr. Paterson, the theater that is most unforgettable and personally beneficial is the theater in which we choose to act, the theater that addresses our problems and concerns, and in which we (along with friends, colleagues, coworkers, and fellow citizens) work to find equitable and empowering next steps. Theater of this sort invites participants to overcome their hesitancy and to act on behalf of their own best interests. And, by so doing, give themselves a hard-to-forget experience, one that they will review and perhaps mull over, altering and enhancing their readiness to behave effectively when the issue of concern presents itself in everyday life.

I have found Dr. Paterson’s work both inspiring and illuminating, and I have used it to great effect. The Ethics of Human Development Training Program came alive with Dr. Paterson’s role-playing methods (along with Augusto Boal’s “exercises for non-actors” and Virginia Satir’s “sculpting process”). I thank him for that. I am one of many who have benefited greatly from his remarkable work.

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One last point. Our friends are often telling us what we should read, listen to, plan on seeing, perhaps do. We should take note. Sometimes their recommendations benefit us greatly. It was Dr. Paterson who introduced me to the work of philosopher Bruce Wilshire… the following quote by Wilshire in line with one of the goals of Dr. Paterson’s work:

“One is not just a being in the world but (through theatre) becomes aware that one is a being in the world. One becomes aware of oneself as aware, interpreting, and free.” – Bruce Wilshire

Dr. Paterson can be reached at [email protected].

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Paul Boesing – “nothing to hold on to, no through-line”

Paul Boesing is a composer, singer, actor, and voice coach. He has spent his life in the theater arts.

As an actor, Mr. Boesing was a company member of the Academy Theater in Atlanta, Joe Chaikin’s Open Theater Workshop in NYC, the Firehouse Theater in Minneapolis, and was, as well, an original member of Peter Brook’s International Workshop in Paris and London. In various theaters, he played the title role in King Lear, Polonius in Hamlet, James Tyrone in Long Day’s Journey into Night, Frank Hardy in Faith Healer, and George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

What does a person gain or acquire by assuming these roles?

Mr. Boesing: “I learned that life is open-ended, always moving with nothing to hold on to, no through-line. I know that sounds Buddhist, but you feel it when you’re on stage. Hold on too tightly and you miss your next mark, you’re a step behind. In some respects, that was the point–one of the points, at least–of the Open Theater movement. Each scene, though rehearsed, remains open to possibility. You are continuously composing what will be experienced by you, your fellow actors, and the audience.   

After listening to a recording of Photograph, I found myself in agreement with the reviewer. Mr. Boesing’s musical interpretation of Photograph adds to what must be a central theme of Stein’s play: life floats on… you can’t quite grasp it or hold it still long enough to know what it means though meaning is throughout.

If you listen carefully to Photograph, as I have done, you experience what is available to be experienced in the living of your life (or so it seems to me): mystery, wonder, and often delight when—as in Photograph—one moment leads to the next in the most surprising and pleasing way.

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 Mr. Boesing’s friends and supporters are hopeful he will be able to celebrate his ninetieth year with the performance of “Who’s Afraid of Gertrude Stein?”, a composition that pairs Photograph with its recently completed companion piece, Johnny Grey.

 For more on the production of “Who’s Afraid…” or to contact Mr. Boesing: [email protected]

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D. Scott Glasser – “With this, we can civilize the world”

“…theatre reveals life… it is life-like. …and life is theatre-like.”  — Bruce Wilshire

Scott Glasser has devoted his professional life to the theater arts, as have the gentlemen profiled above. He has directed over 180 productions and has acted in 120 others. Along with Dr. Paterson, he was a founding member of the Dakota Theatre Caravan. He helped create a flourishing theater program at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, was a professional director/actor in the Twin Cities for 13 years, was the artistic director of the Madison Repertory Theatre in Madison, WI, and was associate artistic director of Nebraska Shakespeare. Since 2004, he has been Professor of Theatre at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

His directorial credits include: Marat/Sade, Man of La Mancha, his adaptations of Much Ado About Nothing and Aristophanes The Birds, Titus Andronicus, The Cripple of Inishmaan, Our Town, Dracula, The Secret Garden, Shaw’s Misalliance, The Importance of Being Earnest, A Streetcar Named Desire, Dancing At Lughnasa, Six Degrees of Separation, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Three Tall Women, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, The Man Who Came To Dinner, The Winter’s Tale, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, The Tempest, Richard III, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, Love’s Labour’s Lost, King Lear, and Macbeth.

To the first question, Mr. Glasser responds: “A life in the theater increases one’s ability to enjoy life… to look into life, to recognize the tragedy and the comedy, to feel pity, wonder, fear, but at base, to be deepened as a person; and so, to appreciate and enjoy the fact that one is alive.”

“The performing arts,” Mr. Glasser writes, “tests one’s limits. They encourage exploration of the unknown, they challenge the intellect, combine skill and instinct, require collaboration, celebrate both the individual and teamwork.” And, he adds, “they demand punctuality and discipline.”

As for the second question: What are we seeing as we sit in the audience, observing actors in costumes, masked, enacting foolishness, folly, the heroic and the despicable… what do we see?

“We see a mirror,” Mr. Glasser has suggested, “and in it we see ourselves. But it should be noted that it is a magic mirror, one that allows us to see past our own masking and so, to identify with the characters before us, allowing that their actions under similar circumstances could be our own.”