Scene 1:
Behind the Barricades: The Payback
A woman, Summer Autumn, enters; she wears a
long green cape covered with bright flowers, glitter and stuffed birds.
She dances on-stage doing an interpretative dance to a recording of bird
songs. She is carrying a small chainsaw. She concludes her dance
downstage in a pose reminiscent of the dying swan from Swan Lake. She
stands up with difficulty, groaning as if her muscles are stiff and
sore.
Summer Autumn: There.
I’m finished. That’s what you expected me to do, right? That’s what
everybody expects me to do. It was fine a couple years ago, but
now…well, it’s different now (indicating the chainsaw). That
thing is heavy!
(pause)
I know how to use it,
you know. I grew up using it. My Dad taught me. I would buck the limbs
after my brothers dropped the trees. I got my first chainsaw for my 14th
birthday…gave me a competitive edge in the logger sports competitions we
had in my high school….
I love this
town—Eden—but I have a very definite role here. I’m the timber girl who
ran off to college and came back a bleeding environmentalist; a greenie,
a loose cannon, a squirrel junkie, a tree-hugger. Actually, I’m a
performance artist….
Introduction
So begins Saving
Eden Creek: A play about people and forests. In the next ten scenes,
we meet: Carol, a concerned home remodeler; Jeremiah, an affable store
clerk at Building Blox; Karen, a middle-aged logger’s widow; Trisha, an
Eden resident whose Dad was the Woodland King three years in a row.;
four picnickers (two of them human) along Eden Creek; Barbara, a
successful developer of Eden Creek Estates; Jamie, a child whose family
lives in a trailer in the wood; and. Mike, an insurance actuary whose
evolving awareness connects him to Eden Creek—and to Summer Autumn.
Storytelling is a rich
tradition in societies around the world, helping communities to expand
their social capacity. The intention of this play is not to teach the
audience about forest management practices or to push one point of view.
Rather, the function of the performance is to use different fictional
characters to portray a variety of conservation ethics, and to
illustrate the conflicts that surround natural resource management in
the Pacific Northwest. The story is presented as a series of monologues
and/or vignettes with characters representing a variety of viewpoints
regarding forests and forest resources.
Our objectives are to
use theatrical performance to help audiences appreciate the complexity
of forest resource issues, become aware of their own values and beliefs
surrounding these issues, and understand the validity of differing
points of view.
Several years ago,
Oregon State University Extension foresters experimented with using a
traveling art exhibit, Seeing the Forest: Art about Forests &
Forestry, to address natural resources issues(WiNR published our
article about it in 2003 [http://www.cnr.uidaho.edu/winr/simonbr.htm]).
Our experience convinced us that using the arts is a particularly
effective strategy to:
The
beginning
Scene: Two
middle-aged women in a back of an airport shuttle. They are leaving a
national conference.
JC: I
enjoyed your presentation about the art show.
VSB:
Thanks. It was a great project. Now I’d love to try writing a play.
JC: Did
you know that before I became a wildlife extension specialist, I was a
professional actor and director?
VSB:
Hmmm.
This serendipitous
conversation in an airport shuttle led to a three-year-long
collaboration between us; Janean Creighton from Washington State
University, and Viviane Simon-Brown from Oregon State University. We
brainstormed the concepts we wanted to cover. We sequestered writers and
poets in a cozy cabin to elicit ideas. We tracked down other “plays with
a point.” We hired a playwright. I learned about “through-lines” and how
to develop an evaluation form to be used by audiences we may never see.
Janean took over the script writing, spending hours in the local coffee
shop gulping expressos. We sent the draft scripts out to natural
resource professionals for comment (and the biggest controversy turned
out to be, do you “fell” trees or “fall” them?) We teamed up with an
Oregon State University editor to polish the dialogue and format the
play. We developed a discussion guide which doubles as a theater
program.
Two years after our
fateful shuttle ride, we debuted Saving Eden Creek at the
Association of Natural Resources Extension Professionals conference in
West Virginia. Another year’s worth of tinkering brings us to the
present with completed script, theater program and evaluation.
Sample Questions
Which scene was most
thought-provoking to you?
Making intelligent consumer
decisions is tough. For example, in the Building Blox scene, what
diverging issues stood out?
What “right versus right”
dilemmas did you observe in the play? These can be described as:
“On
the one hand, it’s right to …
On
the other hand, it’s right to ….”
Components
Saving Eden Creek
has two integrated parts: the script and a separate theater program. The
11-scene,one-act play script contains stage directions and costuming
suggestions. The content can be adapted for local audiences. The theater
program has background about the play, thought-provoking questions for
conversation after a performance, a list of additional resources, and it
also includes a blank centerfold (called a “double truck” in the
parlance) for local presenters to add their information, such as actors’
names and sponsors. A tear-off evaluation form with pre-paid postage
completes the theater program. (For those of you “into” evaluation, it
contains five Likert Scale questions and three demographics questions,
plus room for comments.)
Uses
Our target audience is
the general public—adults and high school-aged youth—although both the
script and the discussion guide can be adapted for younger people. Our
target users are community organizations, not-for-profits groups,
service clubs, community theaters, high school drama clubs, 4-H clubs,
Extension professionals, professional natural resource organizations—and
most importantly, the natural resources people who read this e-journal!
Here are some ways to
use Saving Eden Creek:
Full production
with lighting, costuming, stage sets and 4-14 real actors and a director
(is Andrew Lloyd Webber available?). Youth, community and professional
theater groups are logical venue examples. The play would take about 75
minutes to perform and allow a half hour for the follow-up facilitated
dialogue.
Reader theater.
Several people “read” the characters’ parts with drama and emotion but
without moving around the stage. No props or sets needed. A narrator
creates the scene image by reading the stage directions. For example:
A single spotlight rises on a man, Mike.
He wears a business suit and is writing at his desk, located stage right
and facing diagonally toward stage left. He has a cell phone to his ear,
but is not saying anything. He slowly lowers the phone, stands and walks
downstage, still holding the phone in his hand. He begins to recite,
almost as if in a trance.
This method takes 5-15
readers, and about 60 minutes reading time with another half hour or
more for facilitated discussion. This approach works well if it is the
featured event at a community meeting, professional association, or
service club.
Excerpts. If
you are working with a shorter timeframe (as at a conference, a
community presentation, or in a classroom), you can choose to perform or
read only selected scenes. Ask 1-5 people to practice their scenes ahead
of time. With excerpts, the discussion aspect becomes more important;
the readings provide the catalyst to delve into the issue.
Reading.
Saving Eden Creek is a 20-30 minute pleasant read. Book clubs can
assign it and then use the theater program questions at their next
meeting. I’ve used this technique in a classroom too.
Conclusion
Saving Eden Creek:
A play about people and forests is more than just a worthy successor
to the Seeing the Forest art show. As it says in the theater
program, “Saving Eden Creek isn’t just a play about trees. It
isn’t a story about who’s right and who’s wrong. It’s a story about
ethical dilemmas….” Each fictional character in the play strongly
believes in the rightness of her or his own viewpoint—just as we do. If
audience members, upon seeing this play, examine their own values and
beliefs about natural resources—and try to understand how they mesh or
diverge from others’ viewpoints, then the play will have succeeded.
The Hoecker Family
provided funding for printing the script and the theater program. Send
an email to Viviane at
viviane.simon-brown@oregonstate.edu to receive one free copy of
each.
The play is
downloadable for free at
http://eesc.orst.edu/agcomwebfile/edmat/html/EM/EM8858-E/EM8858-E.html
Click on View a Scene
to see Janean perform Scene 5, “Trisha’s Dad.”
Viviane Simon-Brown
is an Extension Forester and Associate Professor at Oregon State
University.
Janean Creighton is
currently an Assistant Professor, Human Dimensions, in the School of
Forest Resources at the University of Arkansas at Monticello.