Heightened Text Embodiment and Documentary Performance An intersectional

Heightened Text, Embodiment and Documentary Performance: An intersectional and interdisciplinary trauma informed approach to living and learning in catastrophic times By Warren Nebe

This is a simple presentation about a complex encounter in Performance Project during Lockdown Level 5, 4 and 3.

This is the story about a group of courageous students who chose not to give up, who chose courage over circumstance, and who found creative freedom in Lockdown.

This is the story about a group of people who captured the catastrophe of Covid-19 through their performance research.

What is Performance Project? • Performance Project is the Performance Research course for the Postgraduate Diploma in Arts (PGDA) in the field of Applied Drama and Theatre. This Drama for Life year long course extends the expressive, imaginative and symbolic language of the performance scholar, explores the nature of performance as research, and enhances the role of the artist in society. • This embodied performance research course explores the cultural, political, emotional, psychological and spiritual nature of performance. The course also explores how, through a deeper understanding of performance, we can begin to research in and through performance. This course further aims to demonstrate through praxis that researching in and through performance is a profound way of coming to know yourself and the world you live in.

Living and Learning in Catastrophic Times A Trauma-Informed Approach • “A program, organization, or system that is trauma-informed: • Realizes the widespread impact of trauma and understands potential paths for recovery; • Recognizes the signs and symptoms of trauma in clients, families, staff, and others involved with the system; • Responds by fully integrating knowledge about trauma into policies, procedures, and practices; and • Seeks to actively resist re-traumatization. ” (Quoted by www. Mental. Health. org)

Proposed Six Key Principles • “A trauma-informed approach reflects adherence to six key principles rather than a prescribed set of practices or procedures. These principles may be generalizable across multiple types of settings, although terminology and application may be setting- or sector-specific: • Safety • Trustworthiness and Transparency • Peer support • Collaboration and mutuality • Empowerment, voice and choice • Cultural, Historical, and Gender Issues” (www. Mentalhealth. org )

But, we also know ‘the body keeps the score. ’ Our Embodiment Process is a significant part of supporting the well-being of the performer. The performer's body, the home of intellectual, emotional and spiritual well-being, is core to the performer as artist and the performer as researcher. The COVID-19 catastrophe has severely limited the way we go about working as performers, and it has challenged us to find new ways to do the work that is fundamental to our craft, art and research.

Principles of Embodiment A Trauma-Informed Approach, cognizant of how the body keeps the score*, will incorporate the following key Embodiment principles: • • • Presence Breath Regulation Internal and external monitoring Structured repetition Personal agency and control * “Experiencing how the Body Keeps the Score”, Bessel van der Kolk, 2020

How did we create a foundation for the work? • • • Whats. App, Image Making, Voice Notes, Reflective Tasks Structured, daily routine Shared responsibility, shared holding Voice, Body, Movement Breathe, breathing, breath: ‘I can breath’ Intention Setting Relational Tasks Collective Objective Personal Investment Meaning of Artist in times of catastrophe Purpose of Course in times of catastrophe Countering fear, countering lockdown

What principles were used to shape the performance research tasks to enhance a trauma-informed, embodied approach? • Metaphor as a tool for distancing • Heightened Text as a learning challenge • Image Making as a means to frame • Heightened theatricality as a means to nurture the Imaginary • Heightened Text to speak about the unspeakable • Sensory exploration as a means to presence • Documentary encounter as a relational tool • Performance ethnography as a means to begin to understand the present

Heightened Text: A Performance as Research Task Heightened text is written and or spoken text that is not representational. It is presentational. Heightened text is poetic text. It is text that uses language to engage powerful emotions, relationships and epic events. It is larger than life. Heightened text creates metaphor, symbolic distance and complex language to make meaning of life. Our task is to explore heightened text, to select an extract, and to investigate the text through Performance as Research. This means that we will investigate the text through our embodied engagement with the text. We will explore sound, rhythm, pace, silence, gesture, movement and role embedded in the text. We will deconstruct the text to understand its power, its meaning, and significance to the present. Our research goal is to find out how we can transform this text for a 21 st century local and, or global audience. In what ways can you make this text come to life, speak truth to a contemporary audience, and make people relook at how they have understood that text historically. Performance as Research requires you to undertake this investigation through an embodied process that is placed in context of an interdisciplinary and intersectional understanding of the heightened text. You will need to travel though the text, into the text, and beyond the text. You will need to surrender to the text, become the text, and perform the text in the present, here and now.

Documentary Performance: a Performance Ethnography Task Documentary Theatre is an act of theatre that purports to hold the mirror up to society in ways no different from the intentions of a journalist, or an ethnographer who tells the stories of the lives of ordinary people to better inform us of who they are, what their struggles may be, and how their society has shaped their lives. Documentary Theatre is sometimes referred to as Performance Ethnography, or Ethnodrama, or Verbatim Theatre. The job of the documentary performer is to work with eyes wide open, to learn that there are countless ways of listening, and to hold the people you intend to portray close to your heart. Our research is to understand the detailed lived experience of a person who has lived through lockdown. You need to: • select a person – not too close, and not too distant from you • get their permission on an audio note or Whats. App message to interview them • interview the person via audio note, or any other suitable and Covid-19 appropriate measure, about their experience of lockdown • Suggested questions: 1. What has surprised you about yourself during lockdown? 2. What has surprised you about other people during lockdown? 3. How did you initially feel when lockdown started? 4. How do you feel now? 5. When you are old, what will you tell people about this time in your life? • Be open to discovering this person's stories. You need to see this process as a journey, a journey with the person you select. This is an encounter, a meeting, a moment of revelation, an opening.

Examination Process 1 Dear Witness to the Performance Project Showcase, We welcome you to the 2020 Semester 1 Performance Project Showcase. We have two showcases, namely 'Heightened Text' and 'Documentary Performance'. The Heightened Text showcase will take place on Monday and Tuesday from 10 am respectively. It will take place on a special Whats. App group called the HEIGHTENED TEXT ARCHIVE. You will be added to the Whats. App groups. There are rules to be followed on these groups: 1. The process is strictly synchronous. 2. You may not comment, or participate on the board until the end on Tuesday. Thereafter, you may post personal, constructive comments. 3. If you are an examiner, you will be given approximately 10 minutes to comment after each performer has delivered all their work. A title "COMMENTARY BY PANEL" will be posted. This will signal that you can comment. 4. We will begin with a new student performer when an announcement is made "We welcome. . (student name)". Once this happens, if you are the examiner, you are kindly requested to refrain from commentary. 5. You may NOT share, or copy any materials posted in this group for ethical reasons. 6. You may not add anybody to this group. 7. The administrator will maintain the boundaries. 8. Commentary by the panel, and by participants at the end of the exam may be done via audio, video, or written text.

Examination Process 2 On Tuesday 3 pm we will present our DOCUMENTARY PERFORMANCE. You will be invited into a ZOOM performance space. • You will experience a documentary performance by each performer. The performers have been rehearsing the lives of ordinary South Africans under lockdown in the Covid-19 pandemic. • We will ask you to mute yourselves and to stop your video during the performance. • Some of our performers will perform on ZOOM live, and others will record their work on video and post to the DOCUMENTARY PERFORMANCE ARCHIVE called ‘LOCKDOWN STORIES’. You will experience a performance on Whats. App’s ‘LOCKDOWN STORIES’ running simultaneously to the ZOOM performance. • We ask for no text commentary in the beginning. You may, however, be asked to join. • Again, for ethical reasons, you may not share the material. Thank you, Warren

Brutus in Botswana

Clytemnestra in Johannesburg

Warren Nebe, MA, RDT, C-CASE Founder and Senior Lecturer, Drama for Life, University of the Witwatersrand