Damn Good Theater – What It Is And How To Get It in Blue Lake, California: Thoughts on The Dell'Arte Company

October 2002

Community-based or grassroots theater can be good only when it is driven by a mature theatrical philosophy. Hear "good" as: effective, compelling, and appreciated. Time and again, successful theater artists within the field of grassroots theater reveal that their essential drive is to make theater. What is particularly interesting is that the reverse may also be true – artists connecting deeply with a specific community through the art form of theater may be essential to a mature theatrical philosophy. The reality of these statements could establish an undeniable and highly valuable standard of excellence for the field.

The Dell’Arte Company players put on outlandish clothes, grossly deformed noses and outrageous fat suits. They fall down a lot and tell stories about everybody in town. They make human beings out to be pretty ridiculous. They work hard to do this, practice a lot. They make it look easy.

Most people in Blue Lake, California, think Dell’Arte is crazy. A lot of Blue Lakers have come to love their clowning actors, but they still think they’re crazy. After all, they started a professional theater ensemble, a permanent group of actor-artists who make their living creating and producing plays, in a redwood logging town of 1,200 on the north coast of California. Worse, when the founders of Dell’Arte moved into town in the mid-1970s, the logging industry was in a pitched battle against the national environmental movement. The logging industry provided the only jobs in Blue Lake, whether directly employing loggers themselves or service and support employment of teachers, grocery clerks and barkeepers. No logging, no town. That connection was universally understood.

Right off the bat, Dell’Arte started staging jokes about the logging-environmental struggle. Here came hippies, with grants from the government, making jokes about salmon poachers and forestry agents. And they didn’t get killed. And they didn’t just get away with it. They became surprisingly, unexpectedly successful. Not only did they find and build an audience, they’ve become a pillar of the community – loved, respected and deeply appreciated. They’ve raised families. They’ve established an ensemble and an international school for physical comedy respected in all corners of the theatrical world.

Interviews with the artists in this project substantiate that their experiences – creating, researching, organizing, teaching and living in Blue Lake – are the essential foundation for a mature theatrical philosophy, which the leadership of Dell’Arte articulates as well as it practices. They center their artistic philosophy and vision on a concept they call "Theater of Place: theater created by, for and about the area in which you live." Their full statement is a vision of extraordinary standards and thoroughly practical application.

Talking about Theater of Place, Joan Schirle, co-artistic director of the ensemble, reveals just how practical this all is – how the artist makes her art.

It is basically a mirror image of this little town that we live in. The piece we did last year included a very thinly veiled set of characters based on the Blue Lake City Council. That was made with some input from individuals, asking them to actually contribute pieces of their own dialogue, which was incorporated into the play. It was also based on what has been a dominant issue here for many years, which is the results of the use of this land over a long period of time, and what the generation now has to face, both in terms of the loss of resource and the fight over the last remaining resource… Our position has not been to side with one or the other, but to reveal the kind of complex human web that underlies that. Fear.

Schirle puts her finger right on the matter. Though the conflict sets up sides that are very real in the community and must exist clearly in the theatrical representation, the artist’s real focus is the humanity of the situation. Schirle’s description reveals an artist’s curiosity and relentless spirit of inquiry.

In the "Korbel" series fear is at the heart of a lot of it. Fear of change. The change is inevitable. It is how a community can work together. The "Korbel" series, each year that it was done, reflected an issue that perhaps threw additional light on that. One year it brought in the idea of militias, which was a big thing in the United States that particular year. Another year brought in the idea of prejudice within the community of transgendered people, of foreign people. Then the last one we did dealt with kind of the relationship of the citizens in town to the city council. It didn’t have a particular issue, it was more of an exploration of local types of people.

It is easy to imagine how the theater that Schirle describes resonates with the people of Blue Lake who are interviewed and quoted in this project. It is fascinating how the responses of the community people interconnect with the impulses and intentions of the ensemble members. The interconnections made through the interviews of this project are a testimony to the viability of this theatrical relationship.

Reading interviews with Michael Fields, managing artistic director of the ensemble, one gains further insight into the practical aspects of Theater of Place. His description of a new project tells of a cross-cultural dialogue that is fraught with misunderstanding. At this point in their development, Fields expresses trust in the approach and yet careful caution.

It will be about the building of the casino here in Blue Lake. We’ll follow it from ground-breaking through to operation, interviewing four or five people on video documentary over the course of the project, having Native American presentations, and then we will develop a play based on it. That is classic theater of place to me. We called it the Detalian Project. "Detalian" means the beads that were used to gamble with in the Native American tradition. The woman at the Blue Lake Rancheria, our partner, the woman who is building the casino, she loves the title. The Karuk guy who is doing the videoing said it was like calling Indians niggers. We are stepping in a lot of shit with this, but I think that is very interesting. That is another aspect of reflecting the community back. Not as "this is the way it should be," but reflecting that conflict back.… I think we have agendas in that way, too, in terms of shaping this place in a way that we feel would be more conducive to more of that kind of back and forth.

So, in the mirroring of their community, Dell’Arte provides a place for conversation, for "back and forth," about matters people care about. The conversation is based on people the audience recognizes, feels familiar with, but the conversation carries with it values and conflicts we all typically duck, shy away from – fear of change, cross-cultural interactions, social mistakes and forbidden words that reveal prejudice and other human faults.

Something extraordinary begins to be apparent. These are the things a democracy implies, but with which people in a democracy have to contend in order to accomplish the mutual goals of living together. By making its theatrical creations, Dell’Arte has become a part of the democratic process of contention and resolution in Blue Lake. By careful artistic purpose, the theater that Dell’Arte makes is an expression of the human and social forces at play in their community.

The ensemble’s careful self-awareness, their disciplined commitment to deep learning about the people and community with whom they live has resulted in their maturity and their clarity of vision. This is the base for their success and the source of the pride with which the citizens of Blue Lake claim them as their own.

Twenty-five years since their arrival in town, everyone can see that the Dell’Arte players had more than redwood-sized ambition, Paul Bunyan courage and an incredible amount of Pollyanna hope. As one of their fans, a guy named David who talked with the project interviewer at the Logger Bar in Blue Lake, said, "They are just damn good theater."

Charlene Sanders, a second-grade teacher, puts it another way, "One really nice thing about the community, too, is Dell’Arte kind of being the heart of Blue Lake." This is a strong metaphor. She’s not saying that the theater is in the center of Blue Lake (though Dell’Arte is smack downtown). She says Dell’Arte is the heart of Blue Lake. For her, the theater actually expresses the inner feelings, the strongly held beliefs, the fears and dreams of the whole town in which she lives and works. Ron Brunson, retired post master and 30-year resident of Blue Lake, refers to Dell’Arte in the same terms. He says that without the theater, the town "would be deader. A lot deader. It may be totally dead." For the people of Blue Lake, Dell’Arte has become integral to who and how they understand themselves to be.

In a one-industry town, when that industry goes under, the fear of dying is real. Dell’Arte doesn’t just tell jokes for small-minded reasons of making fun or getting a laugh. Dell’Arte uses its comedic skills to release unspoken truths, truths that the town knows but can’t or doesn’t say. This is heart’s blood for a community. Commonly held truths, publicly acknowledged and celebrated, could be considered one of the basic elements of human community. To tell the truth and be heard, to remain consistent with the community’s experience, even when revealing secrets is the function of good theater. The Dell’Arte Players and the citizens of Blue Lake understand this in very specific and real terms

Peter Pennekamp, a longtime fan of Dell’Arte and an executive of the Humboldt Area Foundation, identifies one specific example of astonishing import. Referring to one of Dell’Arte’s plays, he says,

"Korbel One" was the most powerful in part because it is about the decline of the paternalism of timber. … I don’t think anyone [had] actually articulated that the issue of timber decline wasn’t just jobs, but a whole notion of being taken care of by an industry. That was the first time that had been raised. It was raised through drama in ways that were very emotional for people and went right to local politics. Very powerful stuff.

The public nature of revealing truths through a play is for Pennekamp the key ingredient. He says,

That those issues got to be a part of public discourse meant that the way people saw the timber industry changed. … Within about two years the timber industry had fallen off their perch. Totally different reactions. People saying that they had always known that we were fouling our nest, and that it is time that we took better care of things. Pacific Lumber was going so extreme that almost everyone abandoned any hope of supporting them. They were the model, that paternalistic model. So, the art and what was happening in the community coincided in a way that public perception changed."

Pennekamp points out that the public and the artists, all together as a whole, know that the truths that the Dell’Arte artists express in their plays come out of their community. The artists don’t create the truth. They express it at a time and in a way that it can be heard. This, however, is no "simple" coincidence. It is the result of years and years of the artists’ commitment to the town, the whole community, as well as to their craft of theater making. The makers of the plays heard the truths in their research, as they listened to people in their town, their region. Over time, they built a trust that allowed people to talk with them, to share private thoughts. The skills of the players allowed these truths to be heard for the first time in a public way. This, then, can be understood as the point of theatrical skill and one of the essential hallmarks of good theater.

This specific comprehension of a relationship between the artists and the community exists with equal clarity on both sides of the equation. Jim, an audience member interviewed by this project, says Dell’Arte has become

… one of the pillars of the community now, not only because they are good artists. I think that is secondary. They have become that because they are good people. The plays are built on local issues, they treated all sides. In theater you need conflict. In community, if you are going to represent conflict, you have to treat all sides of the conflict with honor, dignity, and careful thought, which is rare these days. That is another thing I want to say. The principals have really tried to be fair in their presentation. I think they are harder on their own than on anybody else. That is the way you have to be. The community really respects that. In 20 years, it has turned around 180 degrees. No doubt.

In this thought Jim makes a leap, connecting "good people" traits to good theatrical practices. It is a leap that might be the envy of the professional critic, because the critic so rarely gets a chance to know the artists the way Jim and the rest of Blue Lake know the Dell’Arte players. Jim’s praise, nevertheless, reveals a requirement of fairness, honor, dignity and careful thought that is a critical standard commonly held by many of those interviewed in this project.

Confirming Dell’Arte’s intimate relationship with Blue Lake, Gene Supka, the proprietor of the Logger Bar down the street from Dell’Arte’s theater, recognizes that the value of their plays lies in the fact that the audience from Blue Lake "knows the secrets behind the laughter." Supka’s imagery reaches into the substance of the comedic form itself. To put the secrets of a community into the public forum and allow laughter to be shared by all, fairly and with respect, is the very essence of good comedy. It is this capacity to allow laughter and tears to spring from hidden secrets brought public that the ancient Greeks recognized as the healing power of the art. The comedians and philosophers of antiquity, so revered by scholars and critics, would share a grin of recognition with Blue Lake’s barkeep.

This success has been achieved by great hard work on all sides. People in town tell stories of encounters between Dell’Arte actors and townspeople that reflect amazing cultural adjustments – personal, communal and economic all in the same breath. Pennekamp highlights the reality that the economic changes occurring out of Dell’Arte’s presence and productions have come with cultural and social changes that affect everyone just as much.

People recognize and appreciate that these changes require specific sensitivity and effort from the ensemble. Person after person praises the company for finding the balance between speaking truth and not alienating segments of the community. They are proud that Dell’Arte models characters in their plays after specific people in the community, in part because Dell’Arte openly acknowledges those sources. Of course, the performers are also extremely deft in the execution of their art. Much to their local credit, Dell’Arte is known to have even asked community members to play themselves in certain shows. In one particular case, two women, each prominent activists but on opposite sides of the timber/environmental issues sang the duet "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better," with rewritten lyrics around local political topics. The public moment was recognized and remembered throughout town – two people from hostile political perspectives working together. The performance allowed the town to reconsider established alliances and conventional perspectives.

Their honesty and integrity, combined with highly trained artistic skills, produces a form of theater that Dell’Arte’s audiences recognize as powerful. People in Blue Lake describe this power in terms of the supernatural. When astonished beyond comprehension people have always attributed that to unknown forces. The magic of the Dell’Arte Company – the public revelation of privately hidden human truths, demystification of local secrets, transformation of commonly held perceptions, laughter in the face of communal struggle, the infusion of joy in the environment of fear, building healthy community through lasting partnerships – this magic is the result of well-tried practice.

In fact, the Dell’Arte Company is a treasurehouse of resources for those who would like to do similar work in their own communities. First, of course, is Dell’Arte’s own training program through their school, the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theater. Their international reputation and the constantly high level of excellence in their students is testimony to the quality of this educational institution. Beyond or aside from their formal training programs, the passion and commitment of the ensemble members is such that they are interested and willing to offer themselves and the documentation of their history as resources for those of similar mind. Their expertise extends to all aspects of the artistic enterprise.

The extensive interviews of this project provide a wealth of information, beyond the scope of this essay. The reader is encouraged to review the interviews in their entirety. The reader should also know that the ensemble is more than open to inquiries, internships and other forms of sharing. One could spend a good deal of time learning from this ensemble. This essay, nonetheless, cannot be complete without some mention of specifics of good theater practice at Dell’Arte Company in Blue Lake.

What they have learned over their long history the senior ensemble members teach in their school. The students work in the community as part of their training. A week’s curriculum is balanced with serving food at the Grange’s free Sunday breakfast program and other similar community-service programs around town. The students are taught that they can relate with their community in many ways, not simply as actors. Dell’Arte’s understanding about how to relate could breathe life into the despondency of dreary green rooms in theaters all across the country.

Marya Errin Jones, a former student in the school, states that flexibility is one of the things she has learned working with Dell’Arte. She describes flexibility as "trying to get a hold onto your own ideas, and claiming them whether they are right or wrong. Fighting for them. Not fighting each other, but fighting for the idea." It is remarkable that flexibility in this school for physical theater, with all its muscle stretching and body bending, is a concept of vision and cooperation, a principle for the development of plays through a group process. The artistic skills and craft that are taught in the school are the very practices that have welded the Dell’Arte Company into a durable and fertile ensemble. Daniel Stein, director of the School, teaches certain permanent principles that describe exactly what the ensemble members do every day, and have done since they first began their company: Be available to what was happening, in the now. See and hear and respond with honesty. Apply the lessons of good art making to the practice of good citizenship.

A significant portion of Dell’Arte’s regular work involves art-in-the-schools programming. One can hear the same praises for this work as Dell’Arte garners for its production work. Their philosophy of long-term commitment and constancy makes their work stand out to teachers, children, parents and outside observers alike. Senior members of the ensemble teach in the schools. Furthermore, the same members of the ensemble are the in-school instructors for six or eight years running, without a turnover. This is quite unusual, compared to most artists-in-schools programs where new young artists travel through classrooms on single-appearance schedules, used all too often as short-term career stepping stones rather than long-term commitments to children, school and community. The Dell’Arte ensemble artists talk regularly with Blue Lake teachers about the school curriculum. They integrate their in-class theater projects with the teachers’ needs. They have developed a deep professional relationship — a "conversation," to use Michael Fields’ apt word, of real significance. Children recognize the value of working with artists who know them, who can build on the children’s own assets and who can draw out new skills from students they work with over time. Parents view the Dell’Arte ensemble artist in the schools as an important adult figure beyond the usual mix of parents and teachers. The children know the artists around town, outside of school, as adults who will speak with children from a place of shared experience, shared knowledge.

It is worth a final moment to touch on the realm of Dell’Arte’s administration. Consistent with their theatrical approach, their administration is rooted in collective collaboration. There was a time when everyone did everything at Dell’Arte. That time has passed. The organization has become more layered as it has become larger, more successful. That story is an exploration of how power can be shared amongst people with common intent and differing capabilities. The company has become good at this careful yet effective style. The structure of the organization is based on what the ensemble members call the "Hub." This structure defines how power is shared through several specific people, emanating outwards to include all who associate with the organization.

Many ensemble companies use this form, each one uniquely defined by the immediate realities of the people and community involved. At Dell’Arte, the seven members of the Hub elect the company’s board of directors, which only meets once a year. In response to this project’s survey, the company states: "Abandonment of traditional board of directors reflects locale and the fact that staff ended up doing everything anyway." Michael Fields astutely points out that when the organizational structure is not "normal," not what people are used to, it is important to make the structure especially apparent and available.

I think in ensemble theater, in particular, it is easy to get stuck in both individual patterns of relating to each other and holding on to history and letting that determine current practice. Both of those things are dangerous. Because [Dell’Arte] has gotten larger there has been also an influx of new people working here who don’t understand naturally the history and the kind of jargon of those who carried it around. So we needed to make the structure more transparent, more clear to people. How things work.

This is the kind of conscientious sharing that has made Fields known to be "easy" to work with, open to try anything, a willing partner. The overarching principle of this kind of structure is nonhierarchical power distribution, while acknowledging and utilizing the function of leadership within the organization. Joan Schirle talks about the nature of this in terms of a careful mix of removing ego from compromise and removing compromise from vision. She equates her vocational discipline with religious vows.

How do you be in and of the world, and of your time and of your field, and still hold to these ideals [of collaborative, ensemble process] that are practically monastic in a way? If you take them that seriously, they are. There are the orders of people who usually band together around religious ideas or strong political movements. I don’t think we take ourselves that seriously, but, if you look at things, there is that.

The personal disciplines implied in their art work and their school work, as well as in Dell’Arte’s organizational and structural strength and flexibility are the result of growth over many years. This project allows only a brief glimpse into the stuff and substance of this remarkable theater ensemble. They are worth much more. Whether touted for their magical accomplishments or their monastic disciplines or their cooperative collaborations, the Dell’Arte Players provide us with a rich expression of damn good theater.

Robert H. Leonard is associate professor in the Department of Theatre Arts at Virginia Tech where he teaches directing and improvisation. He brings 30 years of experience as founding artistic director of the Road Company, a nationally recognized theater ensemble (1972-1998) based in Johnson City, Tennessee, which created and produced two dozen original plays reflecting the history and issues of the Upper Tennessee Valley and Central Appalachia. Leonard served as a site visitor for WagonBurner Theater Troop for "Performing Communities," and currently serves as a member of the national board of Theatre Communications Group.

References

All unattributed citations are from this research project and can be found in the online interviews of "Performing Communities: The Grassroots Ensemble Theater Research Project."

PERFORMING COMMUNITIES
Carpetbag | Cornerstone | Dell'Arte | Jump-Start
LAPD | Pregones | Roadside | WagonBurner
Commentaries

Original CAN/API publication: November 2002