The importance of intention in community-engaged theatre work
Why are we doing this?
This is adapted from work originally intended for my doctoral thesis, examining my community-engaged theatre work with Queensland Music Festival.
Part two, which will look at the role of playwrights specifically, will be published next week.
‘I want to get very, very clear.’
The voice at the other end of the phone is serious. That’s unusual. Sean is typically very light-hearted. He’s on speaker, and we are gathered around a plush boardroom table, listening. After a moment for added gravitas, he continues:
‘What is our intention?’
Silence.
Beside me, the producer clears her throat before replying. ‘Yes, that’s a question worth asking. We’ll ask Liam when he comes in.’
Liam (not his real name) is the CEO of the major performing arts organisation for which Sean and I are currently working (I’m writing and Sean Mee’s directing). Liam authorised and programmed this project, so he should have an answer to Sean’s question.
It’s the very beginning of this project. This isn’t Queensland Music Festival (QMF), but we’ve been hired because of our achievements with them. We’re to create a large-scale community event. But Sean has just effectively punched a philosophical hole in the wall.
Why are we doing this?
Ten minutes later, Liam rushes in from another meeting. We summarise our conversations, which haven’t departed from primary logistic and operational concerns. We haven’t made it to artistic discussions because we hit a dead end with Sean’s question, which he repeats for Liam now.
Liam pauses and leans back in his chair.
‘That’s worth pondering,’ he says eventually. ‘We need to get clear on that.’
There’s no cohesive answer by the end of the meeting. The production is only two months away. The question doesn’t appear again in our production meetings in the following weeks.
The event came and went without anyone understanding why the hell we were doing it in the first place.
What was our intention? I don’t know.
So if Liam didn’t have a clear artistic reason for putting the work on, why did he program it in the first place?
There are easy answers, just ones he didn’t feel free to share in that meeting. The production was a plus for the organisation because it gave them a ‘community’ event. It was a visible demonstration of their connection with locals. As a state-subsidised body, it helped them fulfil their charter.
To put it bluntly, they were doing it because they had to.
Don’t get me wrong, the show was a success. At least, it was successful…until you ask what successful means. It engaged with the community. Hundreds of locals were on stage. There were thousands in the audience. Because of its size, it felt significant.
But the lack of a clear intention meant a dramaturgical hurdle that was difficult to overcome. In the rush to get the event on, I offered a half-arsed thesis in the show’s opening moments. Sean and I didn’t have time to move beyond that first draft. The resolution of that thesis was to be answered within the show’s musical climax: a set of songs from a big-name Aussie music star.
But the star, while kind-hearted and wonderfully talented, was time-poor. So they attended a sound check an hour before the event and performed an isolated set of four songs. This didn’t matter to Liam, who wanted a big name to give the production an aura of legitimacy and some marketability.
This intention was successful because it was clear. The star gave the show a great poster image, and everyone loved their set on the night. But an attempt to integrate them into the show was always doomed to fail. Because they were a ‘star’, it felt wrong to put them at any other place aside from the final half, around the end of the night. Dramaturgically, audiences expect a show’s ending to tie to its beginning. It answers a question that has been asked. But the star was left to do what they do – that’s what audiences had paid for – so no great dramatic arc took place.
My thesis, stuck in the first draft, never made it past a sketch the show gestured to in the first few minutes.
Out of everyone on the creative team, the playwright must address a project’s creative reason for being.
And look, I’ll be frank – no one cared. Everyone had a lovely evening, including me. But Sean’s persistent question pin-pointed something that is fundamental to the playwright’s mission in any community production. Out of everyone on the creative team, the playwright must address a project’s creative reason for being. In the aftermath of this particular event, I wondered why they had bothered hiring a playwright in the first place. I certainly felt redundant by opening night. I detected a hint of anxiety from the producer, provoked by Sean’s question. I sensed that the event didn’t have an artistic intention, and there was a small hope that a writer could create one out of thin air.
But in community performance, this is a mistake. Playwrights with a Vision (with a capital V) are implicitly tied to a hierarchy that places them at the top. The show’s intention must come from the community itself. Unfortunately, as we’ll explore, this is often well out of the playwright’s hands and is already determined when a commissioning agreement is signed.
I was asked on board this project just two months before show time. Relationships between all the major players had already been set. I infer that the producer, sensing a hollowness to the production overall, sought a writer to give the evening shape. If I did my job correctly, I could provide some nice words and a rough outline for the music, but I could never fix the underlying problem. It was too late…and it wasn’t my job.
It’s boring and not particularly sexy. Still, artistic success depends on the arts managers – those who program, produce and set up critical relationships before the artists step in to create an event.
I want to tell you about three key experiences. We’ve just talked through the first. The ‘Liam Project’ is an example of what happens when an organisation’s intention is purely commercial and of the ensuing futility of employing a playwright. The second will talk specifically about ‘The Logan Project’, where there were a series of conflicting intentions. The third, titled ‘The Gladstone Project’, will discuss a project where the intention was clear and consistent.
Together, the case studies present some critical learnings on intentionality and its importance in determining a high-quality outcome. More broadly, these projects help define a playwright’s role in a community production and why they are necessary (or may be unnecessary for some).
I want to try to answer the question: why we are doing this?
The Logan Project: Connecting people, not organisations
A July evening in 2015. I’m on a football oval looking at a stage about a hundred metres wide. Over seven hundred community participants are singing their guts out. A hundred of them are on a specially constructed orchestra platform. Another hundred are primary school age. The diversity is spellbinding: Indigenous Australians, Pacific Islanders, Afrikans, Middle Easterners, and more.
This was The Logan Project, which we now know was the largest community production undertaken anywhere in the world. It was the subject of a feature-length documentary, which aired on Australia Day the following year. So, as I was watching the show’s final moments, I felt the familiar, unsettling presence of a television camera pointed directly at my face. They’d been following me all week. I smiled at the stage, hoping my expression was wonder and satisfaction.
Internally, I was shattered and disappointed. This show didn’t feel right. I’d had a stone in my shoe for the entire process that I expected to disappear. But now the show was done, and I’d never found a way to get that stone out.
Every artist has a project like this – or probably many. The awful truth is that the irritation never disappears. There’s a terrible, nagging sensation that haunts you long after the curtain closes.
We didn’t get that one quite right.
The Logan Project was only my second outing with QMF. It took me another five or so years to articulate what had happened. I was young, eager to please, and overwhelmed by the scale of the project. But as I went back to interview my colleagues about the show, I was stunned by how identical our testimonies were of that time. We all felt like something was wrong, we all felt utterly overwhelmed by the scale, and we all felt like we could do nothing but plough on ahead.
But we all realised that the show’s intention was unclear.
For the QMF projects and many community-engaged projects, the first set of relationships begins before artists appear. These are relationships between organisations. In the case of The Logan Project, a relationship was forged between QMF and the Logan City Council.
In Australia, this is common. Performing arts organisations are often tied to government institutions. For community efforts like QMF productions, the shows receive support from all three levels of government, but the partnership with the local council is the first and all-important. Besides funds, the council is the key to a feast of resources that can be supplied in-kind: a venue (including toilet and waste hire), rehearsal space, security, and technical equipment. Before any artists are employed, QMF senior management embarks on a lengthy conversation with the local council. This dialogue may take years before everyone feels excited about committing to a large-scale art project. The mayor of the town and the Executive Director and Artistic Director of QMF shake hands. From there, QMF delegates the project to one of its producers, and a writer and a director are hired.
Among the countless particulars engulfed in that handshake is complete artistic trust in QMF artists to deliver a production that the council will be happy with.
Easy, right?
In reality, it’s astounding how often this doesn’t go wrong. Working and reflecting on The Logan Project revealed how much it depends on this one relationship. Several years after all was said and done, I interviewed many team members, including senior arts managers from QMF. Upon reflection, I realized two flaws in the relationship with the council affected the script and my job in several ways.
Logan is an urban centre about forty-five minutes southwest of Brisbane, tucked behind the Gold Coast. It’s a large council area that sweeps high-end mansions in the north (close to the highway that places them neatly between Brisbane and the coast) to housing commission estates and low-cost housing in the west. But those earning half a mil a year are forgotten when you say the word ‘Logan’ to anyone in Brisbane or Gold Coast. It’s the butt of cruel jokes. Uber drivers would refuse to take me there for night-time rehearsals.
Unsurprisingly, the town has an inferiority complex. Race plays a huge role. Logan is the first resettlement centre for many refugees. There is an anecdotal statistic that I’ve never been able to back up: Logan has more racial diversity per square metre than New York. Walking through the town centre, it’s easy to believe.
When I was brought on The Logan Project, the town was in the shadow of a fairly spectacular publicity blow. A fight had broken out in a residential street, and it had ended with two families belting each other and the police momentarily struggling to maintain control. Phone footage had gone wild, so the nightly news led with it, labelling it a ‘race riot’. One family was Samoan, and the other was Indigenous. The story survived a couple of news cycles, and Logan’s reputation bottomed out.
It was clear from the get-go that the council didn’t want us reflecting on the ‘race riot’ explicitly – not that I would have ever chosen that route anyway. The talk around town was that it was a domestic dispute that had gotten out of hand, and the media had blown it out of proportion. Still, even in the most superficial conversations with community members (police, church elders, teachers, students, social workers, gigging musicians), it was impossible to avoid the topic of race. As I began my preliminary conversations with people, two unified messages began to emerge:
As a community, we could do better talking about our differences.
As a community, we are concerned about the effect of the town’s reputation on our young people.
I wrote an initial outline. In this sketch, the show was structured episodically. In one episode involving the participation of dozens of young people, I suggested a modern-day Romeo and Juliet tale, in which two young people from families that didn’t get on fell in love and confronted their parent’s fury.
In response, the council raised red flags. The Romeo and Juliet story freaked them out. They raised objections to all the other episodes, including having a homeless character (poverty and class were major issues for the town) and the portrayal of young people struggling to find a job (at the time, Logan had one of the highest youth unemployment rates in the country).
‘It really is our preference,’ read one note, ‘that we avoid all conflict altogether.’
All conflict altogether?
That’s a tad limiting for a playwright.
It became clear in the pursuant drafts and interactions with the council that our artistic intentions did not match the council’s wishes for the exercise. Tourism Department heads started popping up in meetings, something we haven’t encountered before or since on these shows. Tourism for the council needn’t be involved – we’re not marketing the town to people from outside it. We’re not selling anything. This is a show for the people who already live here.
If this was the first flaw, the second ensured this miscommunication could never be effectively managed.
Logan City Council, by its nature, is big. Its hierarchal structure meant that our meetings were frequently with people we hadn’t met before. Our access to senior figures in the council was limited. Every aspect of the production involved lengthy e-mail chains with multiple stakeholders and countless opinions.
This is different from my experience with other productions. Gladstone Shire Council, the Isaac Shire and Mount Isa City Council are less than half the total size of Logan City Council. In each of those smaller productions, we developed warm, collegial relationships with the mayor and CEO of the towns. Because of the size of the places, we’d frequently run into senior figures at the pub for dinner or the cafe for breakfast. We developed enough of a personal relationship that we could have helpful ‘off the record’ conversations (What’s the history of this dance academy? What politics aren’t we privy to within the choir? Can we get these two people to share a scene? What’s the history there?). If we had a problem, it was quickly solved with a phone call. Everything was a shortcut.
In these instances, the relationship is more than a handshake. It was a working friendship. But these types of connections depend entirely on the relative size of the organisations interacting. Logan City Council was too big to foster this type of connection.
I do not blame the council or wish to paint them as some corporate machine but rather to illustrate a point essential to all community work. Community partnerships come from connecting people, not organisations. An initial outreach from a relatively unknown performing arts organisation to a local dance school, church or council will always start as a formality. But the best indicator of results for arts outcomes, in my experience, comes from a relaxed but professional relationship between people. Again, we’ll talk more about this process in the following chapter.
So, how did these two relational flaws (the council’s size and the mismatch of intention) impact the writing?
In accordance with the council’s wishes, all conflict was implied. The two brothers who guided us through a cavalcade of Logan talent (who were almost certainly homeless and unemployed, not that we mentioned that) argued about halfway through the show. Even re-reading the script now, I can’t tell you just what that argument is about:
TIM ROB! You ALWAYS do this!
ROB What? I was just having fun.
TIM It’s always having fun with you, you never take anything seriously.
ROB Come on mate.
TIM When are we gonna get out of here?
ROB You don’t like it here?
TIM We just hang out here every day, paying for coffee with five cent pieces and getting ourselves in trouble.
ROB It’s great.
TIM It’s a loser’s life. And I don’t want to be a loser.
ROB So suddenly this isn’t good enough for you? Got big ideas in your head.
TIM You don’t get it.
ROB What’s your problem, exactly?
TIM You want to know what my problem is? You.
ROB Grow up Tim.
TIM I am. Maybe it’s time you grew up too.
ROB When we were kids you weren’t like this. We used to have fun.
TIM Well, someone’s got to think about the future. There’s a new way.
ROB What about the old way? You can’t forget about where you come from.
TIM Maybe some of us want to.
Rob is a goofball and is satisfied being a goofball. Tim wants more for himself. Tim is aspirational. Rob is lazy. Rob cites his laziness as a kind of pride, ‘why bother trying to change when I’m content with where I’m at?’. Tim is far from content.
The relationship, for me, is confused – just as the show was. It reflected a common troupe through regional towns across the world: yes, we’re proud of this place, but we’re also desperate to leave. It was the least confrontational point of conflict I could find.
The two characters eventually reunite, but because I was internally unclear about the dramaturgy of their separation, their forgiveness of each other was similarly toothless. Tim returns to the stage a few songs later, confessing he just grabbed a soft drink and returned.
TIM I was stupid before. I guess sometimes I just want a change, you know? I want to know that we can do better.
ROB Yeah, well. I guess I’m just sayin’ you should be proud. If you’re ashamed before you even start you’re buggered.
TIM Yeah.
ROB There’s a lot here to be proud of.
TIM Doesn’t mean we can’t try to be better.
ROB Yeah, alright, alright.
I’m not being facetious when I say this is the entirety of the arc of these two characters through the show. The show itself transforms through music more than the characters do – music can be more challenging than dialogue ever can. But as a playwright, I spent the process stuck in second gear. I felt I was unable to move because the intentions were confused.
The Gladstone Project - Sharing a vision
Gladstone was my first massive community gig. It was my first time working with QMF. Before accepting the gig, I sat in the director’s office for several hours, attempting to wrap my head around what these works were and how I could contribute to them.
By the time I came on board in Gladstone, the production was well and truly underway. Producer Marguerite Pepper and director Sean Mee had already spent several weeks in the town. QMF had spent months talking to the council before that point. With a little less than twelve months before show time, I landed in town and slipped right into meeting local performers interested in being involved. Sean had a clear dramaturgical provocation (if not for immense economic interest, what is Gladstone?) and even a suggested structure (what some would call ‘there and back again’, à la Alice in Wonderland or The Wizard of Oz). I accepted the assignment without blinking and got to work.
I didn’t realise it then, but the process that followed was unflinchingly smooth compared to some of my later work. Through a draft or two, I arrived at a clear arc.
A young boy, George, turns up in town with his family in the 1960s when a big aluminium boom is on. For the audience watching the show in 2013, it was similar to their 21st-century natural gas and coal boom. But George, ten years old, takes one look at the place and declares it a dump. A magical journey ensues into the heart of a fantasy Gladstone, where he slowly learns of the town’s merits. To do so, he must journey to a giant mine, which is overseen by a tremendous dragon. But George is brave. He wants his dad back, he tells the dragon. He misses him.
As the show came together in the final rehearsals, I was suddenly aware of how provocatively the work was. The main character walks out on stage and says the town is rubbish. He then travels to an explicitly evil mining company, dodging a hundred and fifty hi-vis zombies (local high schoolers) before facing off against a dragon who has kidnapped the boy’s dad.
Did I mention several local mining companies and industries sponsored the show?
The show was a hit. The sponsors loved it.
Because the intention was clear in every aspect of the work.
Compared to The Logan Project, the council was tiny, and Marguerite was able to strike up a close working relationship with the mayor, who showed little interest in even seeing a script or an outline. But even before all of this, the relationship and boundaries set between the Gladstone Shire Council and QMF were clear. Similar to Logan, the community was in a time of strife. There was massive insecurity around the inevitable ‘end of the boom’. Resources and infrastructure were stretched to the limit; the population was exploding. House prices were up…but they knew it wouldn’t last forever. The council wanted to give locals a morale booster, allowing them to celebrate where they lived beyond economic interest.
Several miracles happened with that clear-headed intention (importantly, internally focused on the community, not externally on how the community was perceived). The full cooperation of several sponsors was made through personal relationships, not organisational ones. Local small businesses loved supporting the community and were more motivated to join in on the fun. It meant we built trust within the community, particularly when they met us and could develop a personal relationship with Marguerite, Sean and myself. That trust allowed me to write the script necessary to achieve QMF and Council’s aims.
With aligned intentions and a team of just the right size, everyone, including me, was trusted to do their jobs.
Next week, I’ll discuss how playwrights and producers can work together to ensure shared intentionality creates community-engaged products with high-quality outcomes.
inspirational, interesting, cautionary tale.