“Like: A Devised Project”

One of my most important pieces of creative scholarship of the last five years was the devised production of LIKE which we presented in the Arena Theatre last spring. Beginning with a small group of students in the fall, we began to explore the effects of social media on our sense of identity. We asked what it was like to live in that terrain that lies between the “ping” – the affirmation - that we all live for and the isolation that comes with that obsession. It began with a lot of research on the sociological and psychological studies of culture and individual development.

As this continued we began to collect stories from the community, family and friends that would feed our later work of script writing. By using cell phone cameras, the students were able to record the use of devices in daily life as well as have a record of their own inclination to gravitate to their personal devices and social media. By the end of fall semester we had a working outline that we would use to develop our final production.

Spring semester brought with it a completed cast who would begin to work with those who were continuing with the project. I developed improvisational techniques to help the students better understand the necessary embodied responses to the subject matter. Story circles were used to share and collect personal stories and to build a necessary sense of trust among the participants. The final script was crafted from story circles, the improvisational exercises, the digital journals and the interviews from the larger community.

To support the story, I decided that we needed to work with a mediated world in presentation. I wanted the audience to sense that they were sitting in a digital world. We worked with a professional projection artist from Chicago to help create the virtual world. The scenography for this world was an essential part of the story telling for us and for the audience. In this way the audience became virtual participants or spectactors – not merely observers of an action.

As the audience entered the lobby they found articles of interest on the subjects we were exploring in the play. We had a video projector set up to record their responses to prompts regarding their personal use and attitudes toward social media. These were played back each night as part of the pre-show experience. Several weeks after the production I sent a questionnaire to the audience members asking for responses to the play and whether or not there might be any lasting sensitivity to their own use of their devices and social media. We received responses from approximately 25% of these participants. With a few exceptions, it was heartening to hear that our production had created sensitivity to the issue that they had not really had before coming to the production. Responses are available upon request.

This turned out to be a huge creative research project for both me and my students.

I could never have anticipated this at the time of writing up this last PDP proposal.

I certainly learned an immense amount that I will continue to use in my classes, production work and professional work.