Freewheeling

Perishable’s probing Constitutional

February 20, 2007 6:05:44 PM

REACHING OUT: Sawtelle [center] and other participants in An Exercise for the Body Politic.

Think of it as speed dating the US Constitution. That’s how Vanessa Gilbert describes Constitutional: An Exercise for the Body Politic, the free theatrical civics lesson that Perishable Theatre is presenting at the self-described “research and development theatre” (February 28 through March 4 ).

It’s not up on a stage but rather brought down to earth. When you walk into Perishable’s black box space, you’ll see 10 tables, some with documents on them, all with a person at them, and surrounded by folding chairs you’ll soon be sitting at. You will be handed a map that will guide you to seven other tables for your own personal journey. As with venturing into the tangles of political discourse at large, no two participants’ experiences will be the same.

The idea is for you to walk out an hour later with some fresh ideas about the document that America’s Founding Fathers came up with for us, our ground rules for civic harmony.

“This performance is a way to, hopefully, pull away people’s political agendas and create a space so that we are engaging with one thing: the United States Constitution, research around it, influences on it, and some peoples’ very qualified personal responses to it,” Gilbert says.

The Perishable Theatre artistic director tossed on her desk a thin sheaf of papers that was not a script but rather a “score” for the performance, a walk-through for other theaters that might do their own productions. It specifies that the performers at each table conduct “a research project of their own choosing into some aspect of the Constitution, its history, interpretation, and role in American political culture.”

Gilbert is pleased at the diverse perspectives of the “very qualified” participants she managed to recruit. “We have someone who is not a naturalized citizen here, from Nicaragua, one of our interns going to college. We have a Wampanoag visual artist. We have an African-American spoken word artist, a Puerto Rican actor. We have a 70-year-old activist.” Respectively, they are Gilberto Cuadra, Deborah Spears-Moorhead, Christopher Johnson, Belanger Peralta, and Bernice “Bunny” Bronson. Four draw from political experience: Lieutenant Governor Elizabeth Roberts (March 1); Cliff Wood (February 28), a member of the Providence City Council; Andrew Sawtelle, a program director for the regional American Friends Service Committee; and Jeff Toste, who ran for State Senator in 2004 and 2006 and was the co-chair of the Green Party of Rhode Island. Dancer/choreographers Nikki Carrara and Peter Deffet have also signed on. They will speak about their research projects, inviting comments and interaction. The sub-subjects under the Constitution banner will range from the philosophical origins of the Constitution and the lives and experiences of the signers, to a board game about the constitutionality of war.

“It’s hard to divorce it now from its interactivity,” Gilbert says of the production. “Originally, we never really determined it would be as interactive a performance as it is.” The set-up is more like a café than a theater, she notes, where you might find yourself getting into an interesting political conversation with a stranger.

The project started germinating in the fall of 2004, when Gilbert offhandedly remarked that she’d like to do a theater piece about democracy. Gilbert was freelancing as a director in New York City at the time. The conversation was with Juliet Chia and David Evidence Morris, scenic and lighting designers who collaborated with Gilbert to bring the project to fruition at the HERE Arts Center in the city. It was subsequently performed at Williams College in Massachusetts, and at a workshop in Providence last December.

They received some interesting responses from those audiences. “We had feedback that they thought it was going to be boring but it wasn’t,” Gilbert recalls. “Someone else said they were really bored at one table, but they started thinking about how useful that was because government isn’t always exciting. I loved that! That was one of my favorite responses. Mostly people were just hungry for a little more information, which I think is a fantastic way to leave an audience.”