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Wednesday, April 3, 2013

ARTING About...? "I Had A Monkey In My House..."

by BRIAN BOZANICH, MFA


I had a monkey in my house…
I have told this story a hundred times; this is how I always start it in my Drama 1 class. I then stop and answer the two questions that always appear. First, it was 1993 in suburban Los Angeles and second the story is absolutely true. For the next fifteen minutes I tell them how it all happened that Sunday afternoon. How the monkey walked in the back door, took refuge in the bathroom, sampled lipstick, and created a rainbow of Kleenex. The story follows our attempts to cage the monkey, multiple calls to a skeptical animal control, the newly caged monkey eating dry cat food and loquats, his eventual pickup, and the epilogue involving the return of an upgraded cage and the fine paid by the monkey’s owner. It really is a fun story.

I did not tell this story for the first time until six months after the event. When I finished, my brother’s response was, “How did you not call everyone you know and tell them?” I started to understand power of this story. I have honed the telling of it into a teaching performance which demonstrates vocal variety, physicality on stage, and the creation of word pictures in the audience’s mind. Students who complete my class will always remember “The Monkey Story” and a group of alum even acted it out at my 40th birthday party. The stories we tell leave imprints on the listener. Sharing stories formed the core of my MFA thesis production Crow and Weasel by Jim Leonard Jr. Badger, the matriarch of the animal people says, “if something of value has happened to you, and you cannot find a dignified way to express it. Then what do you have to bring home to your people?” In theatre we have the obligation to share good stories well.

Sharing
My passion has always been family theatre. Not children’s theatre, not theatre for young audiences, but theatre for all audiences. Susan Zeder summed up my view saying she writes for an audience which does not exclude young people. Like the old Bugs Bunny cartoons or Pixar films, theatre which layers meaning for different ages is compelling. That type of family theatre in 2013 is a challenge. Both kids and adults come to the theatre with a background in film and television. Mass media deals with a reality bias, theatre often works in symbolism. Audiences know a twenty-two minute sitcom or forty-four minute drama, the two-hour two-act time frame of theatre is the exception to their experience. A tweet or status update cannot explain the nuance found in good theatre. In the coming weeks I will speak about my ideas for audience engagement, for now, I just want to lay bare some of the challenges theatre artists face in sharing stories to a broad audience.

Stories
One of the successes of my program is a commitment to only working with good material. My view of family theatre is, admittedly, a bit broad. I have worked with children’s literature adaptations (The Phantom TollboothSeussical), but I have also successfully presented Medea to a high school audience. The hunt for quality plays and the focus on a great theatrical experience for the production team and audience means reading many, many scripts.  The amount of low-quality youth theatre plays is staggering. Plays with stilted dialogue, poor structure, and simplistic ideas populate many family theatre catalogs. Even adaptations of great literature can produce mediocre scripts when playwrights try and talk down to a younger audience. I have never met a child who enjoys condescension. Another obstacle is that most of the top playwrights write plays which, because of content, exclude the broader audience. The economic realities of commercial theatre and professional pressure to avoid the label "children's playwright" conspire in the dearth of quality.

I love a good story, both the telling and the hearing. My Daughter's First Trip to the Emergency Room... The Scar on My Shoulder Blade...There Was a Monkey in My House...The closing number of Once on This Island  gives voice to this idea  “Out of what we live, and we believe, our lives become the stories that we weave.” Feel free to share any quality scripts for a family audience in the comments. In my next post, I will explore the results of these experiences, creating community.





Brian Bozanich
MFA Youth Theatre- University of Hawaii, Manoa
Visual and Performing Arts Coordinator, Saint Joseph High School












Please visit: Twitter: @FilmRobin for up-to-date info on where I am travelling for ART. LinkedIn: LinkedIn.com/in/robinscottpeters for complete resume & work history. Smashwords.com and look for Dr. Robin Scott Peters Ebooks now available. YouTube: Youtube.com/user/robinscottpeters for all my video work.

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