I Am a Washing Machine

So, thanks to this organization at the University of Iowa called Art Share, I’ve been doing workshops on playwriting for sixth graders at two different elementary schools. For my first workshops, I was helping the kids create a script for a puppet show that would be presented in front of an audience of their peers.

Now, these kids were insane. They all were kind of depressed, and mostly ADD. They couldn’t handle even the simplest tasks. I tried to bring things in for them to look at, I tried to get them to think on a deeper level, but they couldn’t get past making snide comments and silly jokes, which ended up with us writing a play about two friends who work in a Bacon Factory, which is destroyed by an evil person named Chuckles… In retrospect, this sounds like a fun and interesting idea, but at the time, it was hard to get the students to concentrate long enough to try to get them to answer simple questions of—How do we know these characters are friends? What is the moral of our story?

I tried different tactics, asking them about their friends, fights they’ve had with friends, what makes someone a good friend… All to no avail. I doubted my teaching abilities and my abilities as a playwright… It’s too easy for me to wail on my abilities, I should work on that…

Finally, my time was finished with them. I moved onto a group of three girls: Juju, Jordan, and Emma. Before I met with them, I asked their teacher to have them answer several questions about their writing: What kind of writing do I like? What am I good at? What do I need to improve? What do I want to learn? After going through their responses, I set out to teach these three girls how to write.

The first day, I had them look around the room and write down ten objects they saw. Then, they were to choose one of those objects and write five characteristics about it. We then chose one of the objects to work on together as a group. There was this sky blue, glossy, glazed mug with a periwinke daisy on it. Under this small daisy were the words “Have a Nice Day.” I scooped up the mug, had them sniff it, touch it, look at it from all sides and describe it as intricately as we could. Many of the words I used to describe the mug, were those the students came up with. Other descriptors were: “A blue that feels like relaxation, smooth as glass, heavy like a small rock.”

I had them think about when they woke up in the morning, what woke them up, what their room was like, what they were dreaming about, what their room felt like. I told them to try and use a simile in every sentence to help us “be there” in the environment. I have to say, these girls are literary minded. This assignment was “old hat” to them. They provided some of the most simple and beautiful images for their mornings. I gave them an assignment to bring in a picture of themselves “doing something.” I left the elementary school with an excited anticipation for the next time we would meet, but with also some fear that I wouldn’t measure up to their expectations.

In our second meeting, we displayed our pictures and told the stories behind them, what the event was, who else was there, what was happening. I had brought my portfolio of pictures from productions I directed, acted in, and written. I showed them stills from Coe’s production of The Crucible, asking them what the story was. They identified the judges, who was on trial, who were the witnesses, they came up with a story for those moments. I showed them pictures from my play Dialogues with Lars and had them try to decipher the story from the series of photos. They got a sense of the relationships, though the details were wrong. I explained the real stoy, which actually helped me clarify what was at the core of the play and made me want to revise it… Yet again…

I gave them pictures I’d cut out of Time and asked them to write a story based on the pictures. They have such vibrant imaginations, and they were able to retain that sense of detail we had cultivated from the week before (though I’m sure that specificity was something in them already). I gave them an additional picture to write a play about as an assignment. I gave them a quick rundown of “play format” and sent them off to create.
The scenes they brought today were simple, not very complex, but very clear and still very detailed. I asked one of the girls to describe how she had come up with the idea she wrote about. “Well, in the picture, the ground looked wet, like it had rained, but it had dried up. I started in the morning with the rain before the picture. I’m not finished yet, I haven’t gotten to the problem yet.”

The problem? I went to the tiny, moveable chalkboard, squatted and wrote: “Characters, Problem.” Problems were integral to plays, I told them. Then, and I’m not sure why (perhaps too much time with David Hancock), I said actually this is a play right now, me talking to you. And they said, “Yes, you’re a character.” “And we’re characters.” Or, you’re an audience. “That’s true! It depends how you look at it.” And the best plays, I told them, blurred that line that allowed an audience to watch a play, but be involved and be a part of the show. Plays exist in our imaginations, you know, I said. I was afraid I’d lost them, but they were leaning closer and closer as I explained.

“Let’s look at ‘character’ and break it down. What makes a ‘character?”” Where a character lives, where a characters from, boy/girl, a character’s parents, what a person has, what a person doesn’t have… Who is a character? A person, an animal… “Anything!” I told them. “I read a play where a washing machine sings, where the moon sings (Caroline, or Change). But in a play, I could stand in front of an audience, dressed as I am (a button down shirt tucked into jeans) and say, ‘I am a washing machine’ and people would believe it.”

“People will believe anything,” Juju said, laughing.

“In the theatre, they do. In a movie, if you want a talking washing machine, you have to have a real washing machine and then move the lid to make it talk. But in the theatre, I can stand there and be a washing machine and the audience makes me a washing machine with their imaginations. Movies give you all the answers and do all the work for you. In the theatre, you get to do more and have more fun.”

I couldn’t believe that my lecture was turning into such a deep, conceptual discussion of the theatre, but what amazed me was that these two girls (Jordan was sick) were with me step by step. Even when I moved into discussing character “wants” and “obstacles,” they were with me. “What does a character WANT? And how does the character TRY to get it? What gets in the character’s WAY?” They scribbled in their notebooks as I dusted my fingers with chalk, scraping theories on the board.
Then, I sat down with them, and we read the first scene of Caryl Churchill’s Far Away. Emma played Harper and Juju was Joan. I read the two stage directions. They laughed, they became curious, they wanted to know more about the play. I asked them, “What does Harper want?” To keep Joan from learning the truth. “How does she get what she wants?” Lying, offering blankets, telling Joan to go to bed. “Does Harper ever tell the truth?” I don’t know. She makes Joan promise not to tell her parents, which means that Harper doesn’t want her brother or sister to know what is happening. That is a real secret. Can you tell us what happens?!

I left them in an excited state, they groaned when I said we were finished for the day. They smiled when I told them that I was giving them hard assignments, the same assignments I give when I teach “college kids,” I said, “And you’re doing great with them.” I gave them two assignments to accomplish over spring break: 1. Listen to a real conversation and turn it into a play, and 2. Write a play with no speaking. “I know these are hard assignments—“
Emma closed her notebook, “We like hard assignments.” She smiled and jumped up. I promised we’d finish Far Away and off they went.

Did this really happen? Did I just teach Far Away, a play I didn’t learn until grad school, to sixth graders? And they understood it! And they loved it! And they wanted more of it! They wanted copies of it! They wanted to show their parents!
I’m still trying to process how it happened. How was I able to tell these kids exactly what I felt about theatre and have them understand? How did they connect? And how do I replicate it? This has been amazing for me as a way to define and reinforce what I’m doing, especially at this time in my career when I’m nearly exhausted in grad school, afraid of the future, and gearing to throw myself at the world at large with my plays. When I get down, when I get lost on my way, I can close my eyes to my fears and remember those lit up eyes when I explained that I could stand on stage and say, “I am a washing machine” and have people believe me. And maybe I can start believing it myself.