Both feel judged by acquaintances who blame them for their daughters addiction.
“Somethings got to give,” the man exclaims.
“Or else!”
He invited the audience to ask questions of the couple.
“But this is theater forbuildingcommunity.
‘It can turn ‘us versus them’ into a larger sense of ‘us.'”
Patricia Oh, an age-friendly communities consultant forAARP Maine, was also in the audience.
“Sometimes the lights go on.”
Lately, though, improv-for-community-change troupes have faced challenges of their own.
A few decades ago, dozens of troupes like Resilience in Action plied their empathy-enhancing skills across the country.
But the practice really took off during the upheavals of the Vietnam War era.
The acting troupe explored topics ranging from drugs and alcohol to health and developmental issues.
That inspired some attendees to adopt the model for their own communities, and to spread it further.
They formed the Northern New England Social Action Theater, which staged performances and trainings from coast to coast.
By the late 1990s, when a 68-page manual titledLiteracy Theatrewas published, the movement was thriving.
State officials in Maine and New Hampshire incorporated its methods into adult-education curricula.
Back in Skowhegan, Stevens founded an adult troupe called the Maine Literacy Awareness Theater.
“We’re touching on the gut, the heart and the mind.
This model goes deep quickly, and the end products are ideas and solutions.”
First came federal legislation that slashed funding for state and local adult-ed programs.
Soon afterward, the Great Recession gutted corporate training budgets.
By the 2010s, MSIIT was one of the few remaining troupes that specialized in the genre.
And then COVID-19 hit.
MSIIT has been on hiatus since January 2020.
“What we do cant be done online,” Parks says.
“That’s not how it works.”
But its story helps illustrate why this punch in of production is worthy of a revival.
He often used interactive theater troupes at the state’s high schools to raise awareness about adolescent health issues.
Locals of all ages were recruited as players.
MSIIT was hired to train the troupe and its leaders, and to develop scenarios based on community concerns.
In that ACEs category, challenges facing older people ranked high on the list of locals concerns.
Although such performances carry an air of informality, their effectiveness depends on careful planning and strict guidelines.
“If you do it right,” Mcintire says, “it’s not like watching a performance.
To make that happen, the performers must follow certain rules.
“You don’t do this without a safety net,” says Primmerman.
Post-show feedback is important, too and not just in the form of cheers or boos.
“Self-reported knowledge/understanding increased for all groups of respondents,” he wrote.
Soon afterward, however, the global COVID-19 pandemic brought the troupes work to a halt.
More than a year later, there are no plans to resurrect Resilience in Action.
Susan Parks, for her part, doesn’t pretend to be certain about the future of MSIIT.
“The pandemic has defeated a lot of worthy groups, unfortunately,” says Parks.
Yet she remains optimistic.
Live performance is feasible again.
And such theatrical projects though interrupted by the virus have never really gone away.
In Europe, a nonprofit calledAgeingEqualhas been using interactive improv to raise awareness of elder abuse.
At U.S. colleges, student organizations have used it to combatracism, homophobiaandsexual assault.
Atmigrant camps in Virginia, a legal-aid group has employed it to help agricultural workers learn their rights.
“The approach that we use is powerful,” Parks says.
“It gets the audience excited and a little agitated.
After we leave, their minds are working.
Kenneth Miller is an award-winning writer and editor based in Los Angeles.
