America's Last Taboo
Canvassing unfamiliar territory, a playwright and performer learns that class can't be dismissed.
By Anne Galjour
Galjour with Hopkins Center education and outreach director Joe Clifford, at a You Can't Get There from Here talkback (photos by Kawakahi Amina)
Class \'klas\: one group of a usually society-wide grouping of people according to social status, political or economic similarities, or interests or ways of life in common.
—Webster's Third New International Dictionary
I instinctively said, "Yes!" when Margaret Lawrence, the programming director at the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College, called me on the phone to invite me to write a theatrical piece. The piece was to deal with the subject of class—that socioeconomic rating scale that we in America are usually loath to discuss, or even recognize. It was also to be set in a part of the U.S. with which I (Louisiana-born and raised) was thoroughly unfamiliar: the Upper Valley region of New England.
Once I hung up the phone, I got scared. I knew nothing about class. I thought of it as an academic subject one might study in a university's social sciences department. If I were asked to identify with any group, I would immediately say I am in the "artist class," moving with some social fluency among my peers: artistic colleagues, funders, administrators, Cajuns, academics, etc.
I have always been a goal-setting person. Over the years I've achieved some goals, while others, such as financial security for retirement, still seem far away. But my goals have always been predicated on the belief that I could achieve anything I set my mind to. In the course of working on this project, I would come to understand that, like the stories I tell, this belief is a fiction.
What I would learn in the next two years is that class is America's last taboo. It's in front of us every day. It is revealed through codes of behavior. It affects our pocketbooks, opportunities, beliefs, values and, most important, how we think—even our capacity to hope, to plan our future with some assurance that our goals are within reach.
My association with Margaret began with a chance meeting at a Theatre Communications Group convening in Pittsburgh in 2006. It was there that she mentioned to my friend David Dower, who was then the artistic director of Z Space Studio in San Francisco, that Dartmouth was in the early stages of a Class Divide Initiative, funded by a grant from the Association of Performing Arts Presenters Creative Campus Innovations Program, a component of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. The initiative was designed to explore issues of class and socioeconomic injustice through the lens of the arts. For three years the New Hampshire college's Hopkins Center was to become a hub for a serious and constructive inquiry into a topic that permeates every corner of U.S. society, including the school itself. (It is important to note that more than half of Dartmouth's students receive financial aid and that the majority of the college's employees cannot afford to live in Hanover, where the Ivy League campus is located.) The comprehensive initiative would involve artists from all disciplines alongside every college department—all the way up to the provost's office—and bring programming to the surrounding community. The college's theatre department planned to stage The Grapes of Wrath, and visiting artists over the course of the initiative would include the vocal ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock and director Peter Sellars speaking on "Arts in the Age of Obama."
Margaret explained to David that she was looking for an artist willing to spend time at Dartmouth and write a show set in rural New England. It would be the centerpiece of the initiative. She had gotten together three other presenting partners: Arnie Malina at the Flynn Performing Arts Center in Burlington, Vt. (which later signed on as co-commissioner), Gail Nunziata from the Latchis Theatre in Brattleboro, Vt., and Jonathan Secor from Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams.
With Z Space on board as a development partner, David passed to Margaret a copy of my Cajun-inspired solo show Hurricane. This play is based on the Louisiana bayou culture and the community I grew up in and know down to the marrow of my bones. What truly scared me about Margaret's assignment was that as little as I knew about class, I knew even less about Vermont and New Hampshire. When David asked me, "What do you know about New England?" I answered honestly: "All I know is that Anne Wells from Valley of the Dolls was from there." He said, "Don't tell the people at Dartmouth that." And I never did.
The first thing Margaret did, in August 2006, was to bring David and me to the Hopkins Center and introduce us to the consortium partners. We participated in a mini-workshop given by Felice Yeskel from the Massachusetts-based organization Class Action. Felice's powerful exercises are designed to provide the language and techniques to dialogue with communities about class and economic inequality, and I incorporated them into all of my residency activities. (There is information about many of these tools at www.classism.org.)
Together we also planned a tour of Hurricane that introduced me to communities in the Upper Valley region. Rural working-class New Englanders met my rural, Cajun, French-speaking characters who, like them, live close to the land and value family, neighbors, community—and who, like them, are experiencing a disappearing landscape and the devastating impact of economic progress. We formed a bond. Many of the people who later participated in story circles and interviews for my new piece had come to the performances of Hurricane. For several of them, it was the first time they'd attended the theatres where it was performed.
I chose to follow the lead of Octavio Solis, who had employed story circles to develop his play Lethe with California's Cornerstone Theater Company. Ellen Sebastian Chang, a Bay Area director and resident sage, suggested that I bring five-by-seven-inch note cards to the circles and have people write about secret beliefs or truths. Joe Clifford, the outreach and arts education manager at the Hop, arranged separate story circles with senior citizens who have lived in the region all of their lives; high school seniors; residents of low-income housing; church groups; Dartmouth students; and Dartmouth service employees. I also interviewed local farming families. Arnie, Jonathan and Gail sent notices out from their theatres: "Calling All Old Timers and Newcomers" (a distinction that is a big issue in New England). With additional assistance from intern Lisel Murdock, we convened 12 story circles in all, which were recorded and transcribed.
In the circles we not only got to experience what we all share, but as a group we gained a quiet awareness and respect for the differences that emerged. I learned that people are generally not comfortable openly discussing class and cultural issues. We do not like being labeled as belonging to a particular class. When statements about class were made in these circles, I often saw listeners set their jaws, shake their heads or cross their arms and legs. However, when I got participants to write about incidents in which they became aware of their class or experienced discrimination based on class, or to write their secret beliefs concerning class and culture, they poured out their truths in aching detail. Across the socioeconomic spectrum, these cards revealed, there are intense feelings of discomfort, insecurity and sometimes shame.
During one circle that included people from varied socioeconomic strata, a young woman who comes from a family of multigenerational wealth said something that struck me as an unexpected revelation: that she feels isolated and privately ashamed for having so much. In another group, the owner of a taxicab company said he believes there is some mysterious code—body language, perhaps, or ways of talking and dressing—needed to ascend the social ladder. He feels that there is some mark on him that tells his customers, "I'm not at your level," even though his business is good. Such remarks drove home for me that class is not just a socioeconomic issue—it affects all of us on an emotional level.
In fact, during these circles I came to realize that, I too, have been defined by my working-class, rural Cajun roots. The characters and settings of my plays—indeed, the very choice to be a writer/actor and move from the South to San Francisco—were all tempered by my need to transcend the way I was defined by my Louisiana community. Like most of us, I am a code-switcher. I speak one way at the university, another way among my friends—and back in Louisiana I speak like a Cajun. No matter how far I've come, deep down inside I feel like I'm just a girl from "down the bayou." Most of the time I feel like I have to hide that to be taken seriously.
Through the story circles and note cards I found the poetry of the human voice, found characters and learned about their conflicts and circumstances, and began to understand the stakes not just for the Upper Valley region but for our nation as a whole. It was the first time in my writing career that I would apply social science to the products of my imagination.
A story began to take shape for my new solo show: There was a couple living on a hillside who had been working for 100 years and still couldn't retire. Next door to them was their nephew, an erstwhile farmer with two fingers missing, who was forced to sell the family's land and live in a rusty trailer. Next door to him was a "newcomer," a nurse who was struggling with her mortgage payments. Cleaning their houses was a single mother living in low-income housing, working and going to school to be a teacher so she could own her own home and have security. There was another "newcomer," a real estate agent who couldn't afford any of the houses he was trying to sell. Finally, a title came to me: You Can't Get There from Here.
The production was developed and built at Z Space in San Francisco, with a March 2008 visit back to Dartmouth for a two-week workshop. Z Space managed both of the tours, negotiated contracts and fees, and later produced the new show in its new home at Theater Artaud. (In spite of shrinking resources, Z Space's Lisa Steindler and David Szlasa managed to pay me fair fees for the run of the show.) David Dower helped me to bring the landscape of the story into focus. When he was unable to continue with the project after taking a post at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., Jayne Wenger took over as director and dramaturg and challenged me to go deeper into the experiences of my characters. For instance, when I tried incorporating some of the sweeping turns that had worked effectively as scene transitions in Hurricane, Jayne pointed out that New Englanders have a more reserved movement vocabulary. In delicate and meticulous fashion, she brought together all the elements: Laura Hazlett's costumes, Dave Malloy's regionally evocative sound design, John Mayne's fall-sampler set and technical director Jenny B's richly colored lighting design.
After a two-night San Francisco run to make sure all the technical and artistic elements were in place, we went on the road. Many of the people who came to the story circles and the workshop returned to see the premiere of You Can't Get There from Here at the Hop in November '08 and on the subsequent tour. The show was for them. I did performances at low-income housing and senior residential communities because some of them were not able to go to the Hop due to health or child-care considerations. Betty and Dick Abbot, to whom I dedicated the play, were residents of one of those residential communities. Married for 64 years, and born and raised in working-class families in Hanover, they were inspirations for two central characters. Betty and Dick were beaming when they saw themselves in the show. The performance was my thank-you for all the stories, mac and cheese, johnnycakes and hospitality they had extended to me for two years.
During the time period I worked on You Can't Get There from Here, according to the most recent Survey of Consumer Finances by the Federal Reserve Board, 1 percent of the American population owned 34 percent of the country's wealth. By the time the production premiered in 2008, the housing bubble had burst and our economy had tanked. In such a climate, is there hope of seeing a reversal in what the organization United for a Fair Economy has identified as a 30-year trend of stagnant wages and/or loss of income for the vast majority of Americans?
In the theatre field, meanwhile, bleak economic news for playwrights was delivered in Todd London's new book Outrageous Fortune. [Editor's note: For several reactions from the theatre community to that book, see page 50 of this issue's print eiditon.] The statistics cited there gave voice to what I have been experiencing for a few years now. And yet I cling to a positive outlook. I have to hope that I can somehow find a way to cobble together a life in the theatre in which I am not just surviving, but thriving—though the idea hangs in front of me now like a shriveled-up carrot. It seems as though being a playwright defies all logic. Then again, our collective power of imagination is precisely what is needed to carry us to economic parity with generative artists, producers and presenters.
The impact of saying yes to Margaret's proposal is that I now incorporate class issues in the way I write. Likewise, as a lecturer, I urge my students in the creative writing department at San Francisco State University to read plays and write with a consideration of class perspective. I've noted with interest that in the classes I visited at Dartmouth, when I asked the students, "How many of you are here to make connections?"—in other words, how many were using their school to cultivate social capital—two-thirds of the students' arms shot up in the air. Only half that many students raised their hands when I asked the same question of my students at SFSU, a venerable working-class institution.
I recently returned to the technique of story circles to develop text for The Cinderella Principle, my collaboration with Robert Moses' Kin Dance Company about nontraditional families. The Cajun hamlet where I grew up in Lafourche Parish, a town called Cut Off, is dealing with a massive oil spill. The land is literally disappearing. This summer I will be there in association with the Bayou Playhouse doing story circles to develop Calling All Maw-Maws, a new piece about the culture of working-class people who for six generations have been attempting to preserve a way of life on what's left of this land.
Margaret Lawrence and the Hopkins Center's Class Divide Initiative gave me a gift that keeps on giving: confidence to talk about class. To quote Melissa Potter, a mother, poet and student on whom I based one of the characters in You Can't Get There from Here, "There's a class line. But it's an imaginary line because it's not based on any reality." Isn't it a reality that friends of her three daughters are prohibited by their parents from having a sleepover in her low-income apartment? Isn't it a reality that once her goal of becoming a teacher is reached, most likely she still won't be able to afford her American dream home? If the so-called class line is truly an imaginary line, it should be possible, with a little imagination, to achieve a society where it is erased altogether. But when so few people own the bulk of the nation's private wealth...how can we get there from here?
Louisiana-born playwright Anne Galjour has lived in San Francisco for the past three decades. Her newest collaboration with Robert Moses' Kin Dance Company, titled Fable and Faith, will have its premiere at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco in 2011.
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