Theatre of witness Carlie Daggett

In the chapter “Aging” within Teya Sepinuk’s book about the theatre of witness, one of the principles that Sepinuk utilized was “Finding the gold”. In this chapter the author depicts her first experience creating a piece of theatre about the subject of aging. Sepinuk took out an ad in the newspaper and the four people who showed up were her collaborators. The author facilitated group discussions, improvisations, dances, songs, and even various visual art projects surrounding various consequences or subjects of aging, for instance the topic of losing one's lifetime partner. IT was through one of these exercises that Sepinuk “Found the gold” of this piece. Sepinuk describes one of her performers Abby Enders, who happened to be a fixture in her community, she was fiercely independent and infectiously vivacious. Sepinuk led the group in discussing how their homes were heated as children. These particular folks tended to heat their homes with some form of wood. Abby mentioned that wood warms a person twice, “once when you chop it and once when you burn it”(20). So Sepinuk suggested that Abby bring in some wood for the next rehearsal. Abby came in the next day with blocks of wood, as requested, and an 83 year old woman chopped the wood with a large axe, just as effortlessly as she did when she was a child. It was an athletic feet that completely dismantled her image as a “Sweet little old lady” and showcased her as the strong capable mature woman that she was. As a result the image of chopping wood, and telling stories around the fire became an integral symbol within the production.  

The authors of many of our readings seem to create their work outside the typical artistic hubs of Los Angeles or New York city. All this has left me questioning, what is it about a lack of traditional spaces that allow such work to exist? Would the production Sepinuk describes in this chapter even have been possible in Los Angeles? My theory is that a lack of options and convention aids in making a production unique, and genuine, because you are forced to rely on the people around you and the story you are creating. Perhaps that’s the secret of it all, pure humanity, and nothing else.