Theatre of the Unremembered

Jonathan Gillman, Looking In

Many of us who participate in theatre have dreams of transforming the world around us. But it’s hard to change adults’ fixed minds, especially when faced with the constant demand for “entertainment.” If only we knew how to reach audiences before their expectations calcified, before they became deaf to art’s social potential. If only we could reach a broader, more diverse audience...

Hartford, Connecticut’s Looking In Theatre creates topical content for teenagers, by teenagers. Director Jonathan Gillman auditions interested teens from around the state, who want in for unique reasons. He doesn’t favor art stars, or teenage proto-celebrities who do well in high school theatre; he favors teens willing to imbue some aspect of themselves into their scenes. This means he often gets teens whose lives reflect the struggles they depict.

And what struggles those are. Gillman and his performers, who act without props or costumes or sets, create scenes where teenagers play teenagers, facing the problems which plague teens everywhere. From topics so familiar they’ve become banal, like drugs and peer pressure, to topics adults often fear to address directly, like relationship violence and rape, Gillman’s performers delve unflinchingly into issues teens face daily.

Gillman uses Second City-like techniques to guide his performers in creating their own content. By his own admission, if he wrote scenes for these actors, the performances would probably lack immediacy. But the performers choose topics close to their hearts, and work intimately to turn raw experience into something intense onstage. Gillman coaches them to reach the next level, but doesn’t force their content into staid directorial visions.

Jonathan Gillman

This book is Gillman’s account of one year directing Looking In. He admits, from the beginning, his account is lightly fictionalized, to protect his performers’ privacy. And what privacy they need to protect! The intimacy of dealing with other teens on topics of such searing urgency often results in personal disclosures. The boy concerned with bullying? He was locked in his own locker last year. The girl concerned with parental roles has two alcoholic parents.

Early on, Gillman emphasizes he doesn’t choose his performers for their personal problems. But troubled teens generally find themselves attracted to his program. One kid he describes was able to accept his own homosexuality after seeing gay characters depicted in his program as perfectly normal. Tellingly, this performer’s ability to accept his homosexuality gives him power to play some of the program’s most repellently heterosexual characters. Yay for art.

Gillman doesn’t burden readers with lengthy philosophical justifications or on ruminations about teen experience. Like his theatre itself, he doesn’t preach, he merely shines a light. However, for the more pointy-headed among us, his philosophical familiarity with thinkers like Paolo Friere, Bertolt Brecht, or Augusto Boal is visible. He creates art specifically to expose audiences to ideas and places they’ve never encountered before… importantly, without being boring.

The Second City comparison above isn’t flippant. Having guided performers through creating their individual scenes, Gillman also creates set lists so his actors’ separate creations come together into a single, unified play. Actors will carry one character across several scenes, allowing for development from situation to situation. This results, in Gillman’s telling, in a convergence of ideas, where audiences realize individual struggles reflect larger problems.

And the cumulative experience isn’t merely preachy. Gillman emphasizes the importance of humor in reaching audiences. Topics like, say, the pressure for sex and the liberty to refuse, can be funny, when stripped of ninth-grade health class pedantry. Gillman doesn’t want to heap topical performances on audiences’ heads simply because they’re important. He wants viewers to have a complete, immersive experience in teenage anomie.

Gillman doesn’t provide a handbook for creating programs similar to his. There’s no manifesto here, no list of meaningful improv exercises for creating characters or heightening situations. But he describes the rehearsal process in such exacting detail that others willing to recreate this experience at home could follow his guide. Thus Gillman comes across less as a prescriptive lecturer, than a mentor walking us patiently through the steps of program creation.

Don’t mistake this for “important” nonfiction. Gillman crafts a memoir of leading youths through the creative process, and their own struggles, with open heart and novel-like pacing. And he’s unstinting on his own difficulties, as a married man far older than his performers, continuing to lead these teenagers. Like his actors, Gillman crafts, though experience, something more profound than fiction could dump in our laps. In telling his story forthrightly, he encourages us to do better.