Meet The R&D: Maggie-Kate Coleman

Maggie-Kate Coleman, an artist in this year's R&D group, shares her unique developmental process.

Hello, my name is Maggie-Kate and I am a musical theatre writer.  There.  I said it. I’m still not sure how this happened.  And I’m not sure that I’ll ever be totally comfortable calling myself that.  Usually I call myself a playwright - not untrue, but sort of a lie of omission, because, hey I write a lot of lyrics too. Sometimes I opt for the all-encompassing and slightly vague “writer” and sometimes, depending on my motives, generalize even more and refer to myself simply as a “theatre artist.”  The truth is that I am just profoundly uncomfortable with people singing at me. Especially if they happen to be singing about their feelings. It’s just bizarre.  Am I right?  And singing and dancing?  Forget it. 

But I have written musicals in the past, and I am currently writing a musical in collaboration with composer Erato A. Kremmyda and Director/Choreographer Sam Pinkleton. And I assume that I will continue to write musicals well into the future. Sam once described us as a team of folks who all allegedly work in musical theatre by trade but tend to have a difficult relationship with the form and a lot of its output.  We’re not allowed to complain about it if we’re not working to change it, however, and aiming to make something as messy, huge, and impossible as this project seems like a good start. 

Why would three people who are somewhat uncomfortable with musicals want to write a musical together?  Well, first of all, the fact that musicals are bizarre and unnatural by nature gives you a lot of freedom as a creator. People are singing, so we’ve already tossed any semblance of realism out the window. So, if for example, you want to create a piece of theatre that is purportedly about Marie Curie and her life and work but probably actually about America’s long and troubled relationship with kitsch and terror in the post-nuclear era, and, if for example, you want to set it in an abandoned amusement park with attractions exploring the devastating (though indirect) repercussions of her work, specifically the five occasions post-Manhattan project when life has been threatened on a wide-scale by atomic devices (the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, the outdoor testing of nuclear weapons in Nevada and the South Pacific from 1945-1980, the reactor meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979, the reactor explosion at Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986, and the multiple reactor failures at Fukushima in Japan in 2011) – if that’s what you want to do, then it seems pretty obvious to us that a musical is the way to go. Plus, we need each other.  We can’t create this monstrosity alone.  We’re a team of folks who sometimes if we’re honest about it are really just writing/composing/directing/choreographing because it gives us a legitimate reason to delve into a giant, messy pile of research, ask questions, and see what it’s all about. 

So what’s our process?  What we don’t do is sit down and make an outline of events and actions and say, this is the song moment where Marie discovers radium and this is the love ballad between Marie and Pierre.  We do a lot of research, we ask a lot of questions, we make a lot of lists, mostly on large sheets of butcher paper with sharpie.  Like this one:  

I also sometimes make collages.  This is largely a stalling tactic that keeps my hands busy and makes me feel productive when I don’t know what to write. It’s also a way of avoiding writer’s block, which is mostly about being afraid to write bad stuff. Since I am in no way a visual artist, I don’t have the same qualms about making bad collages that I might when I go to the dark place and worry about making bad writing and/or bad theatre.  Plus it’s a helpful way for me to hone in on how the piece feels or should feel.  Tone is super hard to describe in words, and it’s easier to show what it’s supposed to feel like than describe it.  Or at least that’s what I tell myself to justify the time spent making collages instead of writing. 

As a team of three, we give ourselves a lot of assignments in order to generate a giant pile of source material that is ours, and not dry, academic or biopic in nature.  We use a random number generator to determine who is doing what in order to break down the roles of writer, composer, and director/choreographer so that we all share ownership of the piece equally.  Here are some of the early assignments:

1. Make a list of what Marie would cook during the day.

2. Design some radiation related tattoos.

4. Find the most boring piece of Curie-Related writing – 1 page max

5. Find Pierre and Marie’s favorite (post 1980s) dance song.

6. Build a giant Pierre or Marie using 10 people (like Voltron or Lion King Dad Face).

7. Make a list of 50 things that wash up on the shores of distant lands after Tsunami.

8. Come up with a game for Russian Children to play in a playground after Chernobyl.

9. Write a scene in which Godzilla comes to dinner at Marie and Pierre’s house in the style of kitchen sink American realism.

10.Write the worst version of a love scene between Pierre and Marie Curie

11. Come up with a game for Russian Children to play in a playground after Chernobyl.

12. Explain the history of French music in 1 page or less.  Do NOT research first.

13. What time of the day would Marie and Pierre have sex and where?

14. Make a list of actual celebrity biography titles.

15. Make a video of yourself listing as many elements from the periodic table as you can recall.  Do Not Cheat.

What comes of all this?  A lot of stuff that I’m definitely not going to share with you under any circumstances (except for #7 which you’ve seen above).  But it led us to think about a lot of things we might not have thought about if we just sat down and wrote an Opening Number with capital letters and an “I want” song. For example, it led us to an image of a roller coaster submerged off the coast of New Jersey post-Sandy, which led us to the Golden Age of theme parks in America, which led us to think about how American culture is still so saturated with the colorful, kitschy images of the Atomic era that we often dismiss the reality that we (humans, earthlings) have put ourselves in the almost incomprehensible position of trying to find a way to mitigate the risk of living in a world we are undeniably turning into an apocalyptic wasteland, which led us to wonder who might be the radioactive superhero we can turn to save us from the horror we’ve created?  Is it Marie Curie? With jazz hands?

Thanks for sharing, Maggie-Kate. For other posts about our R&D Group artists, please click HERE!

SHARE YOUR STORIES: WEDDINGS

As a toast to the defeat of DOMA, we're launching a new interview-based project exploring the surprising, funny, remarkable and wild side of WEDDINGS in America.  Our investigation will include interviews from all demographics, cultures and sexual-orientations with real-life couples, wedding guests, vendors, officiants and others about the most astounding events ever encountered at weddings.

We are looking for your contribution. If you have outrageous TRUE wedding stories from anywhere in the U.S., we would love to hear from you!   Are you a mail-order bride?  Were you married as teens or really late in life?  Were you married via a vending machine?  Did you set fire to your wedding in order to get out of it?   We want to hear any and all things jaw-dropping.

If you or someone you know has a good story, shoot it our way to projectmanager@thecivilians.org. We'll be in touch!

We are looking forward to hearing from you! Thanks so much!

INSIDE LOOK: "Be The Death of Me" Investigation: Near Death Experience

One of our artistic collaborators, Rachel Lerner-Ley, recently interviewed David Bennett, a public speaker, teacher, and author, who survived two near death experiences and stage IV lung cancer. He recently published a book about his experiences, Voyage of Purpose, which you can learn more about HERE. Also be sure to check out David's personal website HERE!  This interview is part of our broad investigation into death, dying, and the afterlife in NY for an installation performance "Be The Death of Me" on June 28th and 29th at the Irondale in Ft. Greene Brooklyn.  Details HERE 

Check out a few excerpts from what David shared: 

In 1983, I was the chief engineer of the research vessel Aloha. And, uh, we were early-March off the California coast. We were two miles off the coast. We tried to beat a storm in so that we could get into the harbor. The captain decided to put a small rubber boat called a Zodiac that we used to retrieve our submarines in the water. So, I, you know, I got in the boat.  We just started heading for shore. Well, we fell off a twenty-five foot wave that a surfer would be envious of. We just fell off of this thing like within a few seconds: Boom! And it folded that Zodiac in half like a peanut butter sandwich. I was in the bow. It catapulted me into the water, and like I said, I was trained as a diver so I'm used to being in the water. But this is nighttime so there was no way of telling what was up or down. I was being tossed and tumbled like a rag doll.

And I never made it to the surface. I drowned. I found myself in this absolute darkness at first. But it was calm, and it was peaceful. And I just had come from this very violent, loud, you know, horrendous environment to this sudden calm, peace, but absolute darkness. Nothing existed. But it didn't feel like I was alone. And I was comfortable. And I was warm. The California coast: the water comes off the North. It's really cold. I wasn't cold anymore.

And then I saw this light. We've all heard about the light, you know, Hollywood's pretty good. They've overdramatized that quite a bit. I saw this light and it was millions upon millions of fragments. And they were all moving and coalescing and working together. And as I got closer, it was like this, there were waves of love that were just wrapping me, enveloping me, and transforming me, this light with love. Just pure love. They were welcoming me home. I grew up in a pretty dysfunctional kind of situation. I was thrown from one family to the next to the next. So, I never had a sense of family, but these beings that were with me they were more of a family than anything I had ever experienced here in life. 

Well, as I was reviewing my life and you're experiencing your life from all these different experiences.  I saw that a lot of times with things in life that were done with loving intention were the cause of some of the greatest ripples because every time we interact with someone we create kind of like these ripples that cascade outward through the people and beyond. And I saw that whenever we did something with loving intention, it created the greatest ripples. So the things that I thought were important like becoming chief engineer had hardly any significance. But when I would do something with loving intention, it created this huge ripple. 

Thanks so much to David and Rachel for sharing. Make sure to catch "Be The Death of Me" June 28th and 29th at the Irondale!  Details HERE 

INSIDE LOOK: "Be The Death of Me" Investigation: The Cemetery Explorer

Our collaborator, Alex Rosenthal, recently interviewed Allison C. Meier, a young writer with a penchant for for exploring cemeteries and researching their occupants. She leads tours of New York City cemeteries through Atlas Obscura. Learn more about Allison HERE, and check out Atlas Obscura HERE!

Allison C. Meier

Check out a few excerpts from Alex's interview with Allison below:

I try to get lost, basically, when I'm exploring a cemetery. I don't know, you could have sort of a checklist of famous people when you're going through a cemetery, which I think is totally fine, but I think like getting lost and experiencing the place is what I usually try to do. Like some, you know, you come across like, for example, a tombstone in Green-Wood just says like "Grandmother" on it, it's like half shifted in the ground, and you're like "Who was Grandmother? Why didn't she have her whole name on it?" And you do a little bit of research, you find out it was the woman who had the affair with the reverend, the Quaker church of Brooklyn preacher, but then you realize, oh, she was like totally ignored in her death.

Allison leading a tour through Woodlawn Cemetery, viewed from a mausoleum.
(photograph by Ronny Preciado)

You can't really build on top of–aren't supposed to build on top of a cemetery. So sometimes they actually just move the gravestones as if that's like totally fine. Like at Green-Wood, there's a Dutch cemetery that used to be somewhere else in Brooklyn, and in theory they should have dug up all of those people and put them with their right headstones again, but as you can imagine, like digging up 200-year-old graves and trying to...it just...so, there's a lot of skeletons under the ground. Like during construction under the city it's not unusual to find skeletons. I know there's a potters field behind the New Museum, and when they were doing construction there they found some skeletons. And like Washington Square Park,  Madison Square Park, and Bryant Park all used to be Potter's fields.

One of Allison's tours in the catacombs of Green-Wood Cemetery.

If you want to be buried in New York city, you need a lot of money, or a family member who already has a plot, or you just get lucky with immediate internment, otherwise you're probably going to be buried in New Jersey. The reason we have the big cemeteries in the outer boroughs is because the ones in Manhattan filled up. I don't know if someone is going to like build a cemetery island or like underground burials or, yeah, everyone could go to space. It would be very expensive. I'm sure they would love it. The moon would be a perfect graveyard.

Thanks to Allison and Alex for sharing! Don't miss BE THE DEATH OF ME June 28th and 29th at the Irondale (details to follow soon)!

Meet the R&D Group: César Alvarez

This post is by R&D Group artist, César Alvarez, about The Universe is a Small Hat, an immersive electronic musical theater experience he is developing with director Sarah Benson and game designer Ivan Safrin (check out Ivan's website HERE) as part of Berkeley Rep's 2013 Groundfloor Program.  To learn more about César and his work, check out his WEBSITE, or follow him on TWITTER.

"Games are a kind of theater in which the audience is an actor and takes on a role – and experiences the circumstances and consequences of that role.” -  Anna Anthropy (Riseof The Videogame Zinesters) 

During my time in The Civilians R&D Group I have been studying how to turn the experience of my musical into an immersive and interactive game. My piece is entitled The Universe is a Small Hat and tells the story of a techno-Utopian space colony which encounters a mysterious non-human atmospheric intelligence. Each audience member plays the role of a colonist and has to choose how to behave and interface within the micro-society on the ship. The decisions that each person makes influences their experience of the piece, opportunities they have, their access to the ship itself, and ultimately the ending that they experience.

“A game is an experience created by rules.” - Anna Anthropy

Games are systems and so they are well-suited to tell stories about systems. Small Hat is at its core about a society, which is a network of shared laws, customs, and/or organizations. My piece also deals with physics which is a system of laws capable of describing and predicting aspects of our Universe. The idea for turning my piece into an immersive experience first came from this video of futurist Jason Silva talking about his experience of Sleep No More. 

When I found this video I was trying to figure out how to tell a futuristic story in a theatrical context, but I feared that being conventionally presentational would come off as hokey. My sense is that science fiction has a bad reputation in theater. Perhaps science fiction works better in novels and films because both forms are so good at immersing us in a fictional future. Silva connects Sleep No More to virtual reality and frames its (albeit analog) interactive environment as an evolution of the video game and “the future of storytelling.” I think he has a point. For centuries theater has served to create a moment of physical rest and reflection after a day of labor. But now, as more jobs than ever require hours of isolation sitting in front of a screen, plugged into a network, theater might be well positioned as a place to engage our bodies, and allow us to interact with one another in physical space.

Image from Ivan Safrin's Space Cruiser, an interactive multi-playervideo game designed for Hayden Planetarium. Ivan is collaborating with César on Small Hat.

Below I've presented some game concepts alongside a description of how we are integrating the concept into The Universe is a Small Hat. The concepts that game designers use to describe their work have been helpful as I try to merge these two worlds. My hope is that more theatre artists start creating work that generates a story-driven interactivity.

Player Character -  is a character in a video game or role playing game who is controlled or controllable by a player, and is typically a protagonist of the story told in the course of the game.

In Small Hat the “player” is the audience member. And as I develop the “script” I am viewing the audience member as an actor in the play. The script should be a delineation of circumstances that allow for a mediated experience full of sensation, story and choice. The audience members will not be asked to “act” or play a character other than themselves. Since they are cast as members of the space colony we are asking them to be themselves exactly as they are, or as they'd like to be. Each colonist is given one of six “identities” based on a brief evaluation, but each individual can embrace, switch, or reject the identity as they see fit.

Non-Player Character - any character not controlled by a player.

In Small Hat the Non-player characters will be the trained actors. More than a script they will have a timeline of events, set of tasks along that timeline, an extensive set of guidelines and possible outcomes. Their interaction with the Colonists (audience) will often be improvised based on rules rather than scripted.

Reward - The reward is the positive consequence of conquering the challenge; it can be anything from an increase in score, new items, or a cutscene.

In our piece the primary driving reward is to know the space and the story. When you enter the multi-room space you'll want to explore it all, but it is quickly apparent that you don't have access to it all. Only through operating within or subverting the rules of the world can you discover the whole space and learn the whole story. At the end each colonist is faced with a personal choice. The information you gained and experience of the piece will impact that choice.

Risk - a situation involving exposure to danger, or in the case of a game, the loss of points, rewards, or status.

Risks in Small Hat have to do with losing resources (points), or failing to experience the whole space. Failure to participate in the piece could also result in feeling left behind, or cheated out of the story.

Cutscenes - A cutscene is a sequence in a video game over which the player has no or only limited control, breaking up the gameplay. Cutscenes are used to advance the plot, strengthen the main character's development, introduce enemy characters, and provide background information, atmosphere, dialogue, and clues.

The video game form of scene/gameplay/scene/gameplay reminds me of the musical theater form of scene/song/scene/song. In Small Hat we will move the narrative primarily through songs and gameplay, with very few static scenes between characters. When the actors speak they will usually be addressing the colonists directly.

Items – Objects which play role in the story. The might contain clues, unlock elements of the story, offer powers or privileges.

Items in games remind me of props in the theater world. How can we use objects interactively to transmit the narrative?

Score - In games, score refers to an abstract quantity associated with a player or team. Score is usually measured in the abstract unit of points, and events in the game can raise or lower the score of different parties. Most games with score use it as a quantitative indicator of success in the game, and in competitive games, a goal is often made of attaining a better score than one's opponents in order to win.

Every Colonist has a score in the context of the piece. How you value that score is really up to each individual. Players may choose to work hard to achieve high score and the associated rewards, and players may opt out of the system and choose other ways to spend their time.

Playtesting – This is an idea in games that you have to play the game in order to gauge its effectiveness. Is it challenging? Too repetitive? Too easy? Interesting to both expert players and novices? Factors of the game can be tweaked and adjusted according the to subjective experience of the playtesting.

Playtesting is the game design version of workshopping in theater. Playing a game and identifying its weaknesses is an incredibly important part of designing a functional and enjoyable system. As we develop Small Hat we will need to constantly be trying out ideas on audience even from the very earliest stages. We will have to figure out the specifics of playtesting a musical.

Skill  and Chance – This is a polarity that is present in many games. There is a randomizing element (dice or cards) but also a system of rules which can be employed though a player's skill.

Both skill and chance will show up in our piece. Specific strategies will allow Colonists to achieve higher and reach greater depths of the world. But the randomizing elements will add unexpected outcomes.

Level -  In a video game a level is the total space available to the player during the course of completing a discrete objective.

In Small Hat there are 4 levels of play. The first level is available to everyone. The second and third levels are available later in the piece, through high achievement or cunning. Each level allows for a greater understanding of the narrative.

Check out a track from the show below:Thanks César for sharing. For other posts from our other R&D Group artists, please click HERE.

INSIDE LOOK: Death Project 2013 Investigation: Crime Scene Cleanup

Our Artistic Project Manager, Meridith Friedman, recently spoke with Doug Baruchin, owner of Island Trauma Services, a New York based Crime Scene Cleanup Company. With over 25 years of experience, the staff of ITS are experts in Crime Scene and Trauma Scene Cleanup Service. You can find out more about Island Trauma Services, Inc. HERE.

"We usually know what happened. Um, we'll get a call saying, oh this was a homicide,  and sometimes I'll look on the internet to find out, ok, homicide in Queens or Brooklyn or New York City, just so I have an idea of what I'm going to see before I walk in. Because no matter how many times I do this, walking across a threshold every time is a little bit of like, you know, what am I going to see. 

I remember the first one that I did was an elderly man. He was about 78 years old, and he put a pillow in front of his face and shot himself on Easter. And I remember thinking, you know, my God this is what you hear about. Suicide rates increase around the holidays. And I remember seeing this scene, and this poor man who was alone, I don't know why he was sad, maybe he lost somebody, but it got me. That I took home with me. 

I do know that New Yorkers, especially Manhattanites, are very resilient. And very, I can handle this. I've had several people come into the scene with me in New York City. Other people, “I can't go in that room; I don't want to be reminded.” Some New Yorkers I found were very curious, even about somebody they were related to. “So this is where they died, what is this stuff?” This is a conversation I never want to have with somebody. “Oh, this is, you know, probably his blood, this is where his head was.” 

Doug with a fellow ITS technician

I look at the people in Newtown, and how they all came together and supported each other and that's just...beyond anything I've ever done. We actually did call the school to offer to go up there and help them out for free, because it's just, you know, anything you can do to help somebody like that get back together is a huge thing. One of the hardest things to do is to move past what happened while everything is still there. You'll never go into that bedroom again and look at it the same way, but until it's at the very least cleared out, you can't really move past anything."

Thanks Doug and Meridith for sharing! Check back here every Thursday for a look inside our investigation into death, dying and the afterlife in NY. Stay tuned for details on a June performance date!

INSIDE LOOK: Death Project 2013 Investigation: Talking About Suicide

Our Project Dramaturg, Deepali Gupta, recently interviewed journalist Cara Anna, a former foreign correspondent in China, and a suicide attempt survivor for upcoming project about death, dying and the afterlife in NY.  Cara founded the “Talking About Suicide” blog of interviews with other outspoken suicide attempt survivors and edits the new “What Happens Now?” blog for the American Association of Suicidology for those who've had thoughts or actions of suicide. Check out the "Talking about Suicide" blog  HERE, and the "What Happens Now?" blog HERE.

See below for excerpts from Deepali's interview with Cara, where she reflects on her personal experience with suicide, and what prompted her to connect to other survivors.

Cara at airport before leaving for China

"I sent out a resignation email, I went to my apartment, gave everything to the cleaning lady, packed a backpack, and then just set off. I went to the airport and I just stood there looking at the departure board for like, what seemed like an hour, and I was like, 'I don't want to go anywhere.' I love to travel, and here I am looking at like, connections from Beijing to like, everywhere in the world, and I'm like, 'Uh, I don't want to go anywhere, I'm dead.' So, yeah, I went to the hospital, got myself sleeping pills, got anti-vomiting medication, got wine, and there was an abandoned village outside Beijing that I had hiked through, and it was cold, it was February, there was still snow on the ground, and I'm like, 'I'm gonna go there.' And so I hiked up there and in China, people are everywhere and there were two people hiking, and I'm like, 'What the fuck, can I never get a place to myself?'

I was like, 'Well you have to do it before dark. You'll lose your nerve or something, so you just have to do it, just do it.' So you just sort of lay out 1, 2, 3 at that point. I took the stuff, I drank the whole bottle of wine, apparently, which is a first, um, and lay down, it was like, 'Okay, the cold will take care of the rest.' And then, even before opening my eyes, you know how you can see light through your eyelids, that was the next thing I knew, and even before opening my eyes, I'm like, 'It's dawn. Okay. Now what do I do.'

Cara's photo of a memorial to the dead after 2008 earthquake in Sichuan province at a school that collapsed

So I said, 'Well, I'm a journalist, it seems pretty natural to me to just find other people who have been through it. Is anybody talking about it?' So I started the blog, started interviewing people, found people who were out, and just talked to them—just like, the first conversation was so sweet. It was a woman, and we were so nervous talking to each other, it was like we were breaking some sort of rule. 

Cara with her nephew

It's like, should we be talking about this? Are we gonna get in trouble? And it was just a very huge relief, finding out that, wow, she sounded really human and normal and happened to have a bad, a really bad experience. Um, and I've talked to about 40 people so far, from five different countries, and nobody has been rambling, nobody has burst into tears, nobody has had to even take time to collect themselves—nobody's raving, everybody's just like, 'Yeah, this is me, this is my life, I have dogs, I have cats, I have a grad degree, I'm a psychologist, I work on a crisis line, I'm a lawyer, I'm an artist...Hi!' What is so horribly scary about us that nobody wants to talk about it?"

Thank you Cara and Deepali for sharing. Check back every Thursday for a look inside our investigation into death, dying and the afterlife in NY. 

Meet the R&D: A. Zell Williams

Here's a post by R&D Group playwright A. Zell Williams. His project for the Group is "an investigation into how people's views on racial identity effect their actions in child rearing. The play will look behind the time-honored "White parents/Black parents" jokes of Cosby, Pryor, and Rock, to reveal the effects of spankings, groundings, and when accepted norms stray beyond punishment and into child abuse." For more about him and the Group, click HERE. Many thanks to Zell for writing this post for us.

Over the course of my life, I’ve gone back and forth on whether I ever want to have children. Many of my reasons for avoiding kids are selfish. Having been one of six and seeing my parents struggle to make ends meet made it hard to understand why anyone would reproduce. Other reasons have been practical. In the past eight years, I’ve lived in California, Chicago, New York, and now Philadelphia. Each move has been inspired by an opportunity to develop my career as a writer. It’s not the kind of lifestyle that I would wish on any family.

However, one of the biggest hurdles to the thought of children is how I would be as a father. The few years I spent living under my father’s dominance were life-altering in ways that I still don’t fully comprehend. He was, as the saying goes, “Old School.” He believe that being a man meant gaining experience and knowledge in things as varied as how to drive stick, to how to operate a handgun.

On top of that, he was also a black man that came of age in the early seventies. His family was poor and many his friends were being sent to Vietnam to fight for a country that treated them as less than a full citizens. He was (and rightfully so) angry and active.

Unfortunately for my mother, sisters, and I, his anger didn’t stop at the door to our home. He loved us as much as he could, but he disciplined us the way his parents disciplined him. And to him, this wasn’t just punishment for wrongdoing, but training for how the world would bear down on us as young black people in America.

This country is, indeed, a fraught place for black youth. Tragic incidents from the Trayvon Martin case in Flordia, to the violence afflicting Chicago’s South and West Sides, to the police shooting of Oscar Grant in Oakland remind us of this regularly. But America today is leaps and bounds better than the nation my parents were raised in. Their struggle, and that of those before them, made it possible for my generation to progress faster than any other.

There is a history of jokes by comedians from Bill Cosby to Eddie Murphy to George Lopez about the way kids of color are reprimanded. No matter what race, it is always contrasted by the severity of the punishment in comparison to the way that white parents admonish their breed. In the jokes, there is usually a reason for “spankings” or full-on beatings that is connected to their cultural identities. The neighborhood they lived in was rougher or the church told them it was the way to go about child rearing.

But we live at a time where the popular belief in professional and popular psychology is that spanking is itself a form of child abuse. It is almost by definition abusive, but the action of spanking is a product of a child’s poor behavior. And as much resentment as we have for the way my father raised us, my sisters and I have noted that many of the successes in our adult lives were rooted in a clear understanding that misbehavior would not be tolerated.

It seems that parents aren’t allowed to even entertain the thought of spanking anymore. It still goes on, but when I address the issue with friends who have children they say that it isn’t a part of any discussion. Spanking has become the pornography of parenting; it is something everyone assumes someone else partakes in, but no one they know. ...Right?

I have 15 nieces and nephews. Of the 15, 4 are biracial (black and white.) Of the 4, their mothers would smack their hands when they were younger and touched things they were told not to or “tap their bottoms” when they didn’t do as they were told. I have seen many of the 11 others spanked outright (though nothing compared to what their mothers and I faced.) I have wondered if this split in their choice of punishment is connected to their relationships with their partners. Are their white counterparts uncomfortable having their children spanked? Does it conflict with the way they were raised? And what does it say about my sisters who employ corporal punishment?

The change in this country’s views on race affect us in great ways on a national level. But the small ways it is changing how we build families is as compelling to me. By the end of my time with The Civilians, I hope to bring you a play based on the experiences of people dealing with these issues. And that it will make you question how you see your role in shaping the next generation of citizens.

Thanks again for this incredible and thoughtful post, Zell. For posts from our other R&D Group artists, please click HERE.

Share Your Story!

Remember that time we did a cabaret all about death? (If not, take a listen to our three podcast episodes from the performance: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3!) Well, the topic hasn't gone anywhere, and we're getting back into it. We're excited to announce the launch of a new interview-based project exploring the many aspects of the subject of death, dying, and after-life in New York. Our investigation will include a variety of spiritual, cultural, professional, and personal perceptions about death and dying as a universal human experience. We'll be working on a full-scale production using a large number of the collected interviews.

So we are currently speaking to many different people specifically in NY about their experiences with death and we are looking for your contribution. Are you now, or have you ever been, dead? Is your cool aunt a medium? Is there a ghost in your house? If you deal with death in your profession or if you have a surprising personal story about death, we would love to hear from you! The only requirement is that you live or work here or that your story relates somehow to life (and death) in NYC.

Please send us a brief summary of your story or shoot any questions you might have to projectmanager@thecivilians.org and we'll be in touch about setting up an interview with you. As we are creating a verbatim theater piece, we would record and transcribe the interview; and you can absolutely choose to remain anonymous.

We are looking forward to hearing from you! Thanks so much!

Meet the R&D: Carly Mensch

Here's a post by R&D Group playwright Carly Mensch, who is currently in Tanzania working on an investigation for her new play. For more info about our R&D Group, click HERE! Many thanks to Carly for writing this post for us!

Mambo Civilians,

Greetings from the Evangelical Lutheran Hotel in lakeside Bukoba, Tanzania. Thousands of miles of rusty-red roads and banana plantations from the nearest theater. In other words: prime real estate for a Civilians’ style investigation.

I am in Bukoba chasing a ghost.

Some background: My boyfriend and I first came to Bukoba in 2010 to research his PhD dissertation on a bizarre footnote in Tanzanian medical history. During this month-long trip, we met a guy named Raymond who became not only our translator and guide, but also our friend and older brother. He was ambitious, dynamic, charismatic, opinionated—a former professional soccer player and teacher who could opine for hours about the problems of the region and his plans to fix them. He was well-traveled—with friends from The Netherlands, Finland, Belgium—and helped start a handful of NGO projects in the area. He also lived a very dramatic life. His stories sounded like James Bond adventures—with tales of fighting bad guys in Siberia and sleeping in ice holes in Finland.

Raymond in 2010 after buying a mushroom from the side of the road.

His life-story could have filled ten blockbuster movies. And then, in December 2011, Raymond died. We learned through an email. It was sudden and surprising. Raymond was only 38.

Soon after, we learned details about his lifethat were shocking and confusing. We got angry. We got sad. We got curious.

Cut to the present.

I am back in Bukoba, talking to anyone who knew Raymond.

Why?

Why investigate the life of a man who wasn’t famous, made no major contribution to society, and died relatively unnoticed?

Why single out the life of this man, this individual, to mine for larger meaning?

And what business does the theater -- a live and predominantly Western medium – have to do with a dead African guy?

For now, I have more questions than answers.

But, as in the beginnings of most projects, it’s not about answers.
It’s about listening.
Here are some snippets from my adventures in listening.

MEETING ONE: RAMADANI KING

A coffee shop, Bukoba style. On the ground in front of a concrete building painted with 7-Up ads, a man crouches over a piping hot metal kettle on a portable coal-burning stove. This is Hamza, who runs the place. In this alley-cum-curbside-nook, he serves coffee to a small entourage of regulars, all old men, who sit on low wooden benches covered with flattened cardboardboxes. My boyfriend and I tell him we are waiting for a man named Ramadani King. Hamza laughs. “Yes. There is a King. And his name is Ramadani.”

The coffee shop, empty one morning.

While we wait, a shoeshine cleans the red dust off an old man’s shoes. The little Turkish style coffee cup is so hot it burns my hands. A drunkmasai teenager tries to get us to buy him a soda.

Ramadani King rides his signature Vespa.  In the background: Hamza's

Ramadani shows up on a Vespa wearing a flamingo pink Oxford shirt and a leather satchel. He’s about 70, has a gap between his front teeth and speaks with a deep, gravely voice. Ramadani gives us big hugs—he has met my boyfriend before, entertained him at his house. He was a family friend of Raymond’s and once studied sociology. (Raymond called him the smartest man he ever met.)

Ramadani King on the footbridge to his house

This coffee shop is Ramadani’s haunt. He is even distantly related to Hamza, though it is hard to tell in a culture where everyone calls each other “brother” and “cousin” and “mama.” Ramadani tells us about Raymond’s funeral in his homevillage of Muruku: “So many people. People from all over the world.” It was a Catholic mass, even though Raymond was lapsed.

Ramadani tells us what he knows, but reminds us that he is from a different generation than Raymond. “He had many, many friends his age. There were three boys in the town who would follow him everywhere. I think they worked for him. You should find them.” 

So—with a few leads—we let the conversation meander. He tells us about poverty in Kagera region. About his own poverty. About the boredom of old age. At the end, we run off to another meeting; Ramadani refills his cup. He will most likely sit here for the better part of the day.


Later, I write in my little grey notebook: “Deep voice. Funeral. Who could play R.K.?”

A photo of Ramadani King with another friend of Raymond's named Happy

MEETING TWO: WILLIAM

William runs Bukoba’s one and only tour company—Kiroyera (“Bright Sun”) Tours. His office is on the beach, near the local fishermen and ferry dock, where he has also built a handful of traditional “bandas” for tourists to sleep in. ($5 a night!)

William at his tour agency

I meet William because he once started an NGO called BUDAP that Raymond was involved with. BUDAP teaches handicapped locals (often polio victims) how to make drums and other handicrafts to sell. Raymond and William were friends, drinking buddies. Even though Raymond supposedly drank William under the table, often staying out til 2 or 3 in the morning downing tall glasses of Serengeti.

(They’re also two of the only young guys in the town who speak perfect English. Usually it’s the elders who were educated under the British system who speak fluently.)

William sits in a leather swivel chair facing a laptop and a miniature Tanzanian flag. On the wall is a photo of him with two friends: the sons of arch-enemies Ugandan Generalissimo Idi Amin Dada and former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere.

I describe the project to William. That I’m trying to collect stories about Raymond for some sort of ambiguous writer project. He nods, says “Yes, okay” and then proceeds to tell me the chronology of their friendship.

He talks much of Raymond’s charisma. His popularity. William described most people around here as shy, especially around outsiders. Raymond, however, was different. He was confident to the point of brazen –seeking out every foreigner who passed through Bukoba. (William called him a “fly trap,” which sounds a little nefarious, to me. But maybe it’s one of those lost-in-translation things.)

“What made him like that?” I ask.

William’s response: “He was just like that.”

William gives me some more leads. He shows me photos of Raymond’s funeral, naming as many people as he can. I start getting the sense that I am losing Raymond—getting further and further from the tumultuous rockstar personality I remember, reducing him to mere anecdote.

Raymond was a great storyteller, often weaving fact and fiction into an entrancing tapestry. The stories about him, however, are far less exciting. Normal. Black-and-white. How do I deal with this?

Because really, the best person to tell the story of Raymond is… Raymond.

MEETING THREE: RAYMOND’S FATHER

We visit the Mukwenda family farm in rural Muruku, where Raymond is buried in a small flower-lined plot about a hundred feet from the house.

Mr. Mukwenda answers the door with a frayed pink-checkered towel wrapped around his waist and three white plastic razors in his hand. We learn his wife is away visiting her sick mother; he is all alone.

He seems caught off guard, embarrassed. We apologize for not sending notice of our arrival (we didn’t have his number) and offer him a meagre loaf of bread. He invites us in. He recognizes my boyfriend immediately. “I have been expecting you to return.”

We offer sporadic words of comfort and condolences. Sometimes we trade small-talk (“How is America?” “Cold.” / “How is your stay in Bukoba?” “Good.”), but most often we lapse into long silences. 

Above us—wasps fly in and out of nests adorning the ceiling.

And there in the corner, looking down on us all, is a photo of Raymond. He has on a very serious expression and wears a hat that reads: “FINLAND.”

At one point, Raymond’s older brother Edmund wanders into the room. He is wearing Raymond’s signature army vest and cargo pants. He doesn’t say much; just sits in a chair in the corner.

We returned the next week to find Mr. Mukwenda in better spirits. With Raymond's brother Edmund.

After what feels like hours, we bring out a handful of photos of Raymond—the true purpose of our visit. Mr. Mukwenda flips through them. One photo is a close-up of Raymond, smiling, holding a giant mushroom he has bought from the side of the road. Mr. Mukwenda puts down the photos; he turns quiet.

We try to ask him a few questions, but it seems pointless. Even though it’s been a year since Raymond’s death, he has the air of a broken man.

Before we leave, he tells us, “There is nothing more bad than to bury a son.”


My project, put most simply, is about life and death. About loss and legacy. Family and friendship. I may be thousands of miles away from the nearest proscenium, but the stories I'm finding hit close to home. It's a refreshing reminder.

Okay, the internet cafe clock is winding down. Off to do some more listening. Next on my list: a former teammate of Raymond's. Good thing I played soccer as a kid.

- Carly

Bukoba Town, Tanzania

Thanks again to Carly for writing this post and sharing her investigative process with us!