The Playback Conductor Or How Many Arrows will I Need?

49 Pages·2007·0.59 MB·English

The Playback Conductor
Or
How Many Arrows will I Need?

By Mary Good

This material is made publicly available by the Centre for Playback Theatre and
remains the intellectual property of its author.
Centre for Playback Theatre www.playbackcentre.org

THE PLAYBACK CONDUCTOR

OR

HOW MANY ARROWS WILL I NEED?

By: Mary Good B.A., BEd, M.A.Ps.S,
Graduate Diploma Drama in Education.
Submitted as a partial requirement for Certification as a Psychodrama Director.
September, 1986.
Centre for Playback Theatre www.playbackcentre.org
PREFACE.
Writing this paper has been rather like being a sleuth. I have been working - directing,
acting, conducting* in Playback Theatre since 1980 - and the constant question I asked as I
wrote was - What is the conductor doing here? If the conductor is saying this ….What role is
he/she in? Or more importantly what is his/her purpose? Like a sleuth there have been times
of delight at discovery, times when the rusty doorway stayed steadfastly closed, and times of
meticulously combing through a thousand details.
My own work as a conductor has developed and sharpened as I have been doing the work and
thinking in this way. As I am gaining a clearer sense of my purpose with each interaction I
have, I also am able to be more flexible and to shift my focus and my intent. My teaching about
conducting has similarly been enriched. Jonathan Fox, who first developed Playback Theatre
in New York, taught me more than I knew at the time about conducting, and without his
generous assistance I may never have begun seven years ago. Jonathan has returned to
Australia at different times and worked most productively with our company in Melbourne: and
it is with members of the Melbourne Company that I, and they, have struggled to develop what
I now know to be very good work. I thank them all for their vision, their support and their sheer
hard work. I would also like to acknowledge Francis Batten, Bridget Brandon and Deborah
Pearson with whom I have had long discussions which last from year to year about Playback,
and its purpose, and the role of the conductor. Telecom would probably gleefully thank them
too. It has been Max Clayton, who has among other things, taught me to think more clearly
about what I am doing, and who has opened the delights and value of thinking as a
Psychodramatist to me.

*Footnote: The conductor in a Playback Performance is the Master of Ceremonies cum
Director cum Group Facilitator. It is his/her task to communicate with the audience and to
evoke or draw out the stories of the night.
Centre for Playback Theatre www.playbackcentre.org
This paper does focus on what a Conductor is doing in a Playback performance but it
will also be of value to Teachers, Psychodrama, Sociodrama Directors, and any Group Leader
or facilitator, because it is offering an approach, or way of looking at what any leader is doing
with any group. From this follows an ability to diagnose what roles are adequate in yourself,
and what roles are underdeveloped, overdeveloped or absent. I think, too, that there are
sufficient pictures and examples given to show a way of developing new roles.

OUTLINE.
As already stated, the focus of this article is the work of the Conductor or M.C. in a
Playback Theatre performance. It begins with a brief description and discussion of Playback
Theatre. This is followed by a literature review which sets this work in its context. Then the
reader is given a picture of the process of a Playback Performance. There are some excerpts
from transcripts of Playback Theatre performances in terms of the roles the conductor is
enacting. Following this is a description of each of the Roles enacted during a performance,
with examples. Four transcripts of different conductors conducting have been used to develop
a map of the roles a conductor enacts - of what is adequate and what is not. Most of the
examples, but not all, come from these appended transcripts. This work is to be basis of a
training curriculum for Playback Theatre Conductors.
PLAYBACK THEATRE.
Playback Theatre is a form of community theatre where the actors and musicians act as
a mirror to enact the stories of people in the audience. The form was developed by Jonathan
Fox in New York where the first Playback Theatre Company lives and performs.
In an article written by Jo Salas the New York Playback musician she says:
"There is no audience that does not share the desire to tell stories, as well as the
excitement and fear associated, with doing so. In the hundreds of performances given by
Playback there have always been Tellers." (i.e. story tellers)
Centre for Playback Theatre www.playbackcentre.org
"The stories are fragments of lives, often chaotic half understood by the Teller, without
clear beginnings, endings or climaxes. This is the nature of ongoing experience. It is difficult to
describe and contain real events without remaining on the anecdotal level. It is the task of the
Conductor, (M.C.), the actors, the musician and lighting person to receive raw material, filter it
through their understanding and inspiration, condense certain aspects of it, expand others, all
without discussion - and present Teller and audience with a theatre piece. The Teller has an
opportunity to comment on and correct the scene if necessary. In stories with an unhappy
outcome, the Teller may be invited to find a new ending, after seeing it once." (1)
For this kind of story telling and theatre to work in the context of a room full of strangers
(which is how many of our performances begin) it is essential to create a safe and respectful
environment.
As people see their stories played back and share them with an audience (be it of
peers or strangers) we see - how life ~ - and in the sharing we, who become peers, transcend
our separate, private, individual experience and know ourselves as part of a whole, and are
one with it.
A fundamental factor in this occurrence is the particular marriage the actors and
musician create. Bede Griffiths suggests that ... "We must I marry the language of reason with
the language of imagination and. intuition to go beyond the material level. The language of
myth and poetry, of the concrete imagination engages the senses, the feelings, the affections
and the will as well as reason and so leads to the transformation of the whole man. It is in this
sense that the language of the imagination can be said to be a kind of incarnation." (2)
By creating this language of imagination as we enact stories each person in the
audience can be touched. The story ceases to be just that of one person.
The following story about Gregory Bateson takes this to the extreme - but I think that
what he describes can give us a picture of how story (rather than fact) links us all, and has an
organizing function for our experience.
Centre for Playback Theatre www.playbackcentre.org
Bateson tells a story of a man who asks his computer (3) "Do you think computer that
you will ever think like a human being?" The machine did its work, analyzing Bateson says, "its
own computational habits" and then printed neatly the following answer: THAT REMINDS ME
OF A STORY. Bateson goes on to say, "If the world be connected, if I am at all fundamentally
right in what I am saying, then thinking in terms of stories must be shared by all mind or minds,
whether ours or those of redwood forests and sea anemones. The evolutionary process
through millions of generations whereby the sea anemone, like you and like me, came to be -
that process, too, must be of the stuff of stories."
A function of Playback performances is to mirror the essence that lives within each
person, i.e. to experience our soul and to connect individuals to their community. In Playback
the hidden stories of the community become public and individuals find how they do, and don't
belong. In this way communities can develop - their strengths and frailties become apparent
without judgment or criticism, and people and whole groups can be freed to look ahead and
develop a vision or purpose of themselves.

THE CONTEXT OF THIS WORK.

In the literature which has been written on Playback Theatre there hasn't been an
attempt to look at what is happening in terms of Role Theory.
In "Drama in Therapy Vol II - Jonathan Fox (4) writes a chapter in which he describes
Playback Theatre and touches on some of the roles of a conductor in the interview with a
storyteller. He says:
"The conductor's task during the interview is threefold.
1. To elicit facts in an efficient manner.
2. To help the teller structure his material so that it is actable.
3. To size up the teller in order to know what kinds of action will be appropriate."
Centre for Playback Theatre www.playbackcentre.org
Here he is focusing very much on the one to one nature of this relationship between
teller and conductor. From my observations of Jonathan conducting, and from my work and
that of others, it is clear that the conductor is doing far more than this; he/she is working with
the whole group (the audience) all the time, and during an individual teller's interview there will
have to be interventions which engage and include the audience, and interventions which
direct the actors: if the teller and conductor are not going to float off into a world of their own.
By using transcripts from four different conductors I have made descriptions which
illuminate the purpose of the conductor in each intervention, be it aimed at the teller, the
actors, the audience or the whole group.
The role description attempts to give a snap shot of how the conductor is viewing the
world in that moment, ego the role description, “a naive enquirer". A naive enquirer is
someone who sees the world as a benign place which is full of diverse treasures to be
revealed to him/her. This leads us too, to a sense of the conductor's purpose in this role, i.e. to
explore and discover other ways of viewing the world.
In an unpublished document written by Jonathan Fox (5) he has also taken transcripts
of conductors conducting and made comments about what he sees happening. His comments
tend not to look for the role of the conductor - sometimes they do. For instance, he refers to the
conductor as a "stage setter" when the conductor says:
"Okay. We're just going to have the woman and the man and you. And we'll take if from
where they're across the street arguing, and you're at the bus stop."
More often he makes a description of what is happening in terms of language ego. At
one point he says:
"Teller picks up on the poetic language of the conductor”.
Whereas in this paper I will be focusing on the purpose of the in using the poetic
language he uses - i.e. in saying and doing what he/she does.
Centre for Playback Theatre www.playbackcentre.org
In the "Structure of Magic, Volume I", Bandler and Grinder (6) take transcripts of
interviews with clients and therapists and they do a running commentary looking at the
language that is used - particularly the therapist's responses.
I analyzed the transcripts I had in a similar way, that is, I went through interaction by
interaction but instead my focus was the roles enacted.
Apart from Moreno's writing, I have not found in the literature a description of a group
leader or a director done in this way. There are plenty of transcripts of directors directing
Psychodramas ("Moore (7), Deane and Hanks (8), Carl Hollander (9), Parrish (10)") and plenty
of discussion about the function of the director ("Fink (11), Greenberg (12)") but I have not
discovered an analysis which describes each interaction.
Moreno (13) p252-258 Vol I, writes at length about the roles of the Director and gives
very concrete descriptions of what the director, the auxiliary egos and the audience are doing
because of their particular function. He also talks clearly of how the director can correct his or
her limitations. I have attempted to add to this by giving many adequate examples of each role
function and in some cases to give examples of inadequate functioning.
The other very relevant and valuable document in this area is the Training and
Standards Manual for Psychodrama, Sociodrama, Sociometry and Role Training prepared by
the Board of examiners of the Australia and New Zealand Association of Psychodramatists,
Sociodramatists, Sociometrists and Role Trainers (14). In this document there are descriptions
of each role that must be adequately developed for a director in each of these areas.
There has been no such document prepared for Conducting Training in Playback and in the
preparation of this work I have referred constantly to the above manual. The development I
have made, as well as bringing this way of thinking into Conductor Training, is the pictures or
examples which illustrate the role description.

THE ROLE OF THE CONDUCTOR.
Centre for Playback Theatre www.playbackcentre.org

The conductor is a key person in a Playback performance, it is he or she who engages
the audience, develops the theme and sees that appropriate cues and directions are passed to
the actors. The conductor must be able to maintain and support him/herself throughout a
whole performance.
He or she must also be a multifaceted person or a person of many roles. The ability to
change roles in response to the audience or teller is fundamental to the task.
At times in this paper, there will be a differentiation between Public and Community
performances. Public performances are open to the general public for admission fee at the
door. Community performances are commissioned by a particular organization that pays a fee
direct to the Company. For example, the Family Therapy Conference paid a fee for Melbourne
Playback Theatre to perform at their 1985 Conference.
In this paper the roles of the actors, musician, lighting person or front of house
personnel are not being considered. All of these personnel contribute in a large degree to a
Playback performance.

The conductor's roles have been organized into 4 main clusters which faIl under the
following headings: (They are not in any particular order)
1. Producer.
2. Social Investigator.
3. Listener/Communicator.
4. Guide.

The Roles of the Conductor pre performance.

Role of Listener Communicator:-
Centre for Playback Theatre www.playbackcentre.org
One of the first roles which must be developed for community performances is the
ability to talk with and relate to a wide range of people - i.e. the people who-will be contact
people and organizers of performances.
Social Investigator:-
The second is the ability to relate to and discuss their area of concern - ego in 1986
some groups Melbourne Playback Theatre has performed for are The College of General
Practitioner's, The Mercy Hospital Chaplains Training Group, Diamond Valley Learning Centre,
The Public Tenants Union and The Personal Constructs Conference - and to seek information
which will be of use in preparing for the performance.
Producer: - Wise Person.
The conductor must be able to retain his/her sense of integrity and purpose in the work.
Organizers frequently want the performance to push their particular line rather than to act as
an investigator and mirror of WHAT IS.
Systems Thinker and Sociometrist:-
Once the conductor has received the information he/she required from the organizer,
he/she needs to become a Systems Thinker to begin to warm up to the performance. What
groups and sub-groups will be present and what hypotheses does he/she make about the
effect of their dynamics? What questions will open up the issues that are of importance? How
does it relate to the theme or purpose of the groups?
Guide and Producer:-
The conductor also acts as the person who warms the actors and musician up to the
group for whom they are performing. The purpose of this warm up is to pass on information
that may be relevant and also to warm the actors up to their role, in such a way that they are
not judgmental or prejudiced - nor are they sentimental. There is also the more general task of
warming the actors, musician and lighting person up to acting physically, vocally, personally
and as a team, and to air and deal with any issues which will be blocks to acting together.