Dr. Diane Howard's Publications

Writing and Performing Autobiography
On-Site and Distance

Christians and Theatre Journal
Fall/Winter, 2000-2001
 

Copyright © 2000
Diane Howard, Ph.D.


University of Mary Hardin-Baylor
Department of Communication and Dramatic Arts
Performance Studies Division

(This article was first given as a presentation for the
Performance Studies International Conference in Wales, April 11, 1999.
It was also posted on the conference site.  In an expanded form, it was published in 2001
in the Christians and Theater journal with sample photos and scripts
and given as a presentation at the CITA conference.)

As performers of autobiography, my performance studies students and I at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor are reenacting and making history as pioneers performing pioneers (Howard, 1999). This leading work in performance of autobiographies has been beneficial for both performers and their audiences. It has been both educational and therapeutic for them. It has facilitated many valuable insights, techniques, and skills. First, it has encouraged a close study of history and aggressive research from first-hand sources. Further, performance of autobiography requires careful study of character, crafted skills of scriptwriting, perceptive consideration of non-verbal communication, attentive study of voice, careful selection of appropriate performance frames, and effective engagement of audiences.  Finally, performance of autobiography over videoconference equipment has facilitated the marketability of performance studies majors as they learn to perform and communicate in an empathetic way to audiences at a distance over cameras (Howard, 2001).

Each performance studies student at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor must develop a performance of autobiography. These one-person, autobiographical productions are performed for distance audiences, as well as for on-site audiences in theaters, museums, schools, churches, and performing arts, cultural, historical, and civic organizations (see Solo Repertoire). Performance Studies students begin the process of producing one-person, autobiographical performances by choosing historic characters, who display fascinating, multi-faceted, paradoxical, or ironic characteristics. The students search for characters who struggle with universal issues and who significantly develop over time. They watch for characters whose stories reflect universal truths. Often, these characters are pioneers and role models who struggle with sociological and cultural barriers (Howard, 1996, 2001). Often these characters effect the beginnings of the removal of these barriers. Performance studies students look for characters who are ethnically diverse. Finally, the students search for characters with whom they can empathetically bond.

Once the students find fascinating, multi-dimensional, historic characters, the students study the historical setting of the characters and their personal writing, such as their autobiographies, diaries, journals, and other writings, which reflect the truth about the character’s real nature and struggles. Sometimes close, second-hand sources, such as interviews and biographies, by writers who know the characters personally, provide interesting insights. These close sources enable the students to present real, human dimensions of the character. As the students develop understanding of the character, they are able to begin to develop a script.

The script is driven, created, and built out of empathy with the character. The student playwright can write scenes with emotional impact, after he or she has listened to and understood the character. The student writer of performance of autobiography incorporates words and communication style of the historic character, which gives the language of the script uniqueness, color, and intensity. Further, since "character is action," as stated by Eugene O’Neil, dramatic action comes through conflict and desire in characters. The writing of the script begins with a crisis in the characters’ wants, which are counteracted. The opening scene prepares the audience for what is to come. What is to come is foreshadowed.  With the focus always on the character, the student playwright develops a script, which enables the character to show his or her struggles. The script is written for action.

The student playwright is careful with dialogue. He or she must know where the problem or tension is for the character. The student may write brief narrations, which can inform the audience; but primarily the student playwright writes scenes, which visually show the struggles of the character. These scenes are ones of crisis and significant action. The script is a structured work of art, which includes a beginning, foreshadowing, discovery, incidents, crisis, and denouement. Each scene has rising action, a climax, and falling action. The entire performance also has rising action, a climax, and falling action. Being character driven, the script enables the character to speak for himself or herself and to reveal his or her subtext through action. The motives, objectives, desires, or wants of the character are at the center of the performance. The student playwright knows what is at stake for the character. And the stakes must be high, as the audience is more engaged when they are high.

The student playwright knows the point of view of the character. He or she reveals this about the character by the way the character expresses his or her thoughts and by action. The script reveals the answers to the dramatistic questions: Who am I? What do I want? Where am I? Why am I here? When is this taking place? What is my physical life? What are the stakes? How badly do I want this? The student playwright reveals the conflicts of the character with nature, himself or herself, and with others. These conflicts are revealed through non-verbal and verbal communication. The student writer, performer must consider the internal conflicts, desires, motivations, interpretations of the characters and narrators, personae, as well as external issues such non-verbal communication, visualization of the personae, pantomimic dramatization, and interaction between personae and the audience.

In writing a script, student writers must consider non-verbal communication dimensions such as kinesics, proxemics, tactile communication, and object language, especially in the communication of the subtext of personae. Student performers of autobiography must consider how the personae will reveal themselves through gestures, movement, posture, facial expressions and so forth. Writers, performers must consider how the personae’s use of relational and environmental space will reveal their conflicts, desires, and motivations. Performers of autobiography need to consider how the personae would reveal themselves through touch and handling of objects.

Student writers, performers must consider what the physical appearance of the personae should be and how it will reveal them. Students of performance of autobiography must consider how the personae would use physical business, activity and movement to reveal their subtext and relationships with other personae and the audience. The producer, performer of autobiography must carefully plan costumes, props, and set and analyze how these will reveal personae. Characters react to their worlds according to their interpretation of events. The interpretations of the characters are revealed through their bodies, as well as through their voices. The writing of the language of the script depends on the voice of the characters and narrators.

If the script is to include a narrative voice, the student may write a scene from the third person point of view. This narration would include language which is written to tell or to describe rather than to show. The language of the narration would be written in complete sentences, which may be longer than high context, fragmentary phrases of dramatic scenes. The narrative scene could be written to go backward in time, rather than be written to be performed in the present. As well as the point of view of the personae in their scripts, student writers and performers of autobiography must consider many other aspects of voice in the personae in scenes they write. They must consider the historic period, the culture, the status, the education, the dialects, the geography, the physical surroundings, the health, and the credibility of the personae for example. Of the voice of the personae, the student writer, performer must consider if the form of the voice is literary, ceremonial, conversational and so forth. The student writer, performer must also consider the relationship of the voice of each scene with the audience, that is whether or not the voice in the scene is closed or open in nature to the audience. Frames of scenes determine the relationship of the personae with the audience. Thus, the form of the script depends on the frames of the scenes.

Student playwrights use three categories of scenic frames: lyric, dramatic, and epic. The lyric scene is a private scene in which the character is alone revealing his or her thoughts aloud as he or she thinks aloud, prays, speaks to himself or herself in a mirror, speaks aloud while writing in a journal or diary and so forth. The character in the lyric mode uses high context language. That is he or she speaks in a kind of shorthand or fragmented way. Dramatic scenes in which the character speaks to another very familiar person can also be high context. The character in dramatic mode can speak subtly through negotiation, manipulation, or implication with someone he or she imagines on the stage, speaks to offstage, or speaks to as a character in the audience. The script uses low context language with clear, complete sentences in narration in the epic mode, that of the storyteller.

The frames of each scene establish the performer’s relationship to the audience. One-person performances of autobiographies can incorporate some interesting interactions with the audience. The reflective lyric frame provides the most private, vulnerable mode for the performer as character; however it closes off the performer as character from a relationship with the audience. The audience views the scene through the imaginary fourth wall. However, the performer as a lyric character can move through the audience without acknowledging them. The conversational dramatic mode, in which the performer as character interacts with a specific other, also is closed in relationship to the audience as a whole. However, the specific other can be placed in the audience and the performer as character can move through the audience as he or she interacts with the specific other.

The presentational epic mode is most open in the relationship of the performer as character and the audience. The epic narrator can move close to the audience. The audience can become a group of characters. The audience can become people in a scene in which the performer as character finds himself or herself in a social situation. Making the audience characters in a social setting in which the performer as character finds himself or herself can serve to define the character in a social context. Making the audience characters also enables interesting interactions for the audience with the performer. Frames which establish relationships between performer as character and serve to keep the performer as character and the audience in the same place and time strengthens believability in the audience.

Audiences from the various sites of long distance, educational, videoconference performances often follow the performances with questions and discussions of significant topics, which are directed to the performer and other audience members. Often the audience members respond in a vulnerable, transparent way. Many of the comments and questions from audience members are very personally significant. It is almost as if the videoconference configuration encourages an atmosphere of anonymity, which paradoxically encourages questions and discussions which are personal in nature, not unlike the personal questions and discussions among strangers on radio or television talk shows or in internet chat rooms. Performance Studies students are able to communicate human interest and empathy in highly technological communication arenas. They find that performance and communication over videoconference equipment does not depersonalize the performers, the characters performed, nor the audience in the communication interaction. Ironically, often the performers, characters, and audience interact more personally over videoconference equipment than in on-site performances. Further, both on-site and distance performances often incorporate audio-visual elements such as props used as visual metaphors, archival photographs, film footage, period music, sound effects, and voice-overs, which serve to engage audiences.

Performance studies students at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor are able to interface performance studies and mass communication. Corresponding to the revolution in computer technology, there has been an explosion in video technology, such as in the areas of videoconferences, distance learning via video equipment, educational videos and so forth. Performance studies students at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor are trained in skills of empathy and storytelling, as well as in camera presence techniques, for video programming as well as for television and broadcast journalism.

Performance studies students are able to perform to multiple, distance audiences at once over the Bell County Network for Educational Technology (see BellNet). It connects community colleges, independent school districts, and other Bell County entities with each other and onto Texas' largest digital network, the Trans Texas Videoconference Network (TTVN) of the Texas A & M University System. TTVN connects over 90 sites. This videoconference hub connects with other hubs around the world. It facilitates distance learning and interactive communication.

Further, Performance Studies students at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor are effectively working and performing in regional radio and television stations and video production studios. Faculty in the Performance Studies Division of the Department of Communication and Dramatic Arts are striving to produce students who are fine scholars and artists with skills that are practical and marketable. For this approach the program is growing significantly in numbers of students, in artistic output, and is gaining the respect and collaboration of regional communication and artistic institutions.

Howard, Diane "The Relationship of Internal Locus of Control and Role Models in Female College Students." Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at Austin. [Online] Available http://www.dianehoward.com/Dissertation.htm, 1996.

Howard, Diane. Autobiographical Writing and Performing: An Introductory, Contemporary Guide to Process and Research in Speech Performance. [Online] Available http://www.dianehoward.com/publication.htm, 1999.

Howard, Diane. Empowering Students of Color By Involvement in Ethnic Distance Communication Research. [Online] Available http://www.dianehoward.com/empowering_students_of_color_by_.htm, 2001.

Howard, Diane. Autobiographical Writing and Performing [Online] Available http://ali.apple.com/events/mhb/, 2001.