AGPA 2014 and The Great God Pan: Conducting Rehearsals from a Group Therapeutic Perspective

Rehearsal Challenges

Similar to most therapy group schedules, we rehearse just one time each week. This past Sunday’s rehearsal posed a number of challenges.  Three actors were absent—illness, out of the area, and meeting an editor’s deadline, respectively.  The musician was joining us to begin the process of cueing the music segments.  Most notably, we were in an alternative rehearsal space for the first time.  Our regular rehearsal space was unavailable.

Group therapists are skilled at managing disruptions to emotionally complex group processes. Specifically we know how to work empathically to understand their meaning and recognize their impact on the group’s members and their collaborative work.Preparing a play for presentation poses the extra theatrical challenge of understanding how the disruption may also be linked to the dramatic action of the play.

Location Change

Group therapists know that a location change has impact.  If a group member so much as chooses to sit in a chair different from the one typically chosen, the domino effect on everyone else can cause quite a stir.  Themes such as competition, sibling rivalry, privilege, past losses, accountability, entitlement, seeking new perspectives, aversion to change, thrill seeking and sexual attraction may emerge in the process of exploring the group members’ experience of such a ‘small’ occurrence.  The impact of moving to a whole new group room could take months to fully comprehend! Ideally, the process of reflective thought and introspection has the potential of leading to a deeper understanding of relational and small group dynamics.

So I took seriously the possibility of negative consequences resulting from my decision to conduct the second-to-last rehearsal in a new and foreign space.In an effort to ameliorate the impact of the disruption, I gave weeks of notice to the one-time location change, offered reminders along the way, provided directions and my cellphone number for late-arrival access, had the room set up in advance, brought bottled water, and stood guard at the door on the lookout for arriving actors.  But still… every move was nonetheless unfamiliar—and uncomfortable. “Where is the bathroom?  The room is too small.  Oh, shit, I forgot to bring coffee. What, no coffee cake? There are three entrances to the building!Which one will people use? Did we just get locked out?  I don’t have a key, do you?  Where are the others? Where do I sit?” 

Group members understandably felt some increased level of anxiety and thus an increased dependence on the leadership to create safety and familiarity.  We were ‘forced to make’ countless micro-recalculations, consciously and unconsciously, all of which took precious brain and heart power that we did not really have to spare, on a snowy, cold Sunday morning.

Name the Beast/Stay Positive

 Once all the actors were finally in place, I offered, “Last week we had a very organized, planned, scene-by-scene rehearsal—with coffee and cake provided.  I am making an effort to repeat that approach again this week, but I can already tell we’re going to have to improvise our way through much of this morning, as best as we can manage. Without coffee.” Name the beast. Stay positive.I hoped that would be enough. But I wished I had brought coffee!!

Three Group Dynamic Adjustments

Firstly, I found myself involving the actors more actively in giving feedback to the musician about what worked best from their perspective, which I supported whenever possible.  I also found myself soliciting the actors’ guidance in how to proceed with the scene study. “I have some new thoughts about this scene since our rehearsal last week, I’m sure you do too.  Would you like to share first, or would you like to hear from me first?” “Are you ready to try the scene again?” While these are not untypical statements for a director to make, in retrospect, I think I felt a stronger need than usual to keep the actors involved and focused on the immediacy of the task.  The task was a dependable source of familiarity and comfort.  I similarly gave the musician ‘center stage’, sitting next to him, extending as much encouragement and space as I could to allow him to take the lead in cueing the music. He is a gifted professional, but human like the rest of us.  His skill and familiarity with the collaborative process of working with actors helped put us all at ease.

The second noteworthy dynamic emerged in the debriefing segment. The demands of the rehearsal left us with only 15 minutes to check in with each other about the mornings’ work.Barely minutes into the debriefing, I found myself reactively protesting a facilitator comment that I felt went beyond the boundary of his role and function, and, I felt, ran the risk of shutting down the lead actor emotionally.  On another day I may have let the comment pass, (and have), but today the myriad of other disruptions activated me to take a more protective stance. My gut reaction to openly challenge the facilitator in front of the actors was risky business, but saying nothing felt ever more fraught. The experience left me unsettled for the rest of the day, and it was not until the next morning, after a night of frenzied dreaming, that I realized the parallel to the “dangers” dramatized in the play, The Great God Pan. I felt some relief, and frankly a bit of vindication, by making the connection between our experience and the play.

Parallel Processes

In one of the scenes we rehearsed on Sunday, Doug, the father of adult son Jamie, confesses a family secret to his son.  When Jamie was 4, his parents (Doug and Cathy) had sent him to stay for two weeks in the home of Dennis Lawrence, an acquaintance who was the father of a 4 year-old playmate of Jamie’s.  As the play opens, grown-up Jamie learns from his childhood playmate, (now grown up Frank), that Mr. Lawrence is, and has been since their childhood, an alleged child molester.  Frank was a victim. Jamie may have been a victim too. 

The parallel of sending the actor playing Jamie (and the rest of us!) to an unfamiliar ‘home’ to rehearse put me squarely in the symbolic position of Doug. I had made the decision to send us to this strange place, and it was a risky one.When the facilitator ‘took liberties’ by making comments that I felt were ‘out of bounds’, I reacted by protesting. As I reported in an earlier blog posting, the play inevitably ‘gets inside us’, and begins to emerge as we react to the contingencies of rehearsal.  This was one such occasion when the trauma of the play and the contingencies of the rehearsal converged.

Group Therapeutic Goals

Making these kinds of connections between the play and our small group dynamics is a central part of our work together as an ensemble, uncomfortable as it might be at times.  One of our primary learning goals is to understand the dynamics of the play through the emergent “parallel processes”arising out of the dynamics of the acting ensemble.  Today we furthered both the theatrical goal of preparing a quality performance and the educational goal of recognizing the links between the play and our work.  It was a good day.

Unfinished Business

The third noteworthy dynamic has yet to be recognized and fully explored.  I will meet with the consultant/process observer (John Dluhy) Friday, when we will have a first chance to compare notes about the rehearsal in our weekly consultation. Bearing witness to these kinds of group processes is very demanding work, emotionally and intellectually.  Without an acting part or directorial responsibilities to discharge some of his own activated emotional response to the rehearsal experience, the consultant is left ‘sitting with the experience’, and at some emotional risk.  Our weekly consultations provide each of us with a chance to ventilate, expand our clinical and theatrical perspective and offer support and guidance.  John’s vast experience and gifts as both a group therapist and an actor makes him uniquely suited for this demanding assignment.  I am grateful for his perseverance and commitment to our project.

Upon further reflection, one other interesting—even disturbing—feature of Sunday’s rehearsal now stands out in my mind.  One of the actors brought his camera, fitted with a telescopic lens, to take pictures of the rehearsal, some of which are included in this blog posting.  The request to take pictures was made a few weeks ago and seemed ‘innocent enough’ at the time. But in the small, windowless, unfamiliar rehearsal room that we don’t usually ‘reside in’, and having some guy silently, but intently taking pictures ‘from the shadows’, felt a little creepy.  But it didn’t quite register at the conscious level at the time, so I didn’t think to say anything.  Looking back, I feel differently. When I associate to the camera’s intimate relationship with child pornography, I get chills. My empathy deepens for the parental characters Doug, Cathy and nanny Polly. The awesome responsibility of real life parents for noticing what dangers lurk around their children, often visible before their very eyes, is humbling to consider.

A Telephone Rehearsal

The next day, Monday, I conducted a telephone rehearsal with the actors playing Jamie (YavarMoghimi) and his mother Cathy (Barbara Keezell).  The scene they share is actually played ‘on the phone’, so the cellphone conference call format was eerily “in vivo”.  Still sensitive from the day before, we spent most of the time facilitating a shared discussion about the scene.  Their one reading of the actual scene brought us all to tears.  Poignantly, we each had to ‘admit’ this to one another, as the opaqueness of the telephone allowed us the option of keeping this emotional fact to ourselves, if we chose.

So much transpires in so many different and interesting ways through this experience of preparing a play for performance.  My respect, admiration and gratitude for the talent and sensitivity of the playwright, Amy Herzog, the actors and our consultant grow week to week.

Next week we have our final dress rehearsal before heading off to Boston.

Epilogue

On Monday afternoon I conducted an individual therapy session with a successful lawyer and businessman with whom I’ve been working for a few months.  Late in the session, he paused, and then abruptly revealed that on a shopping trip to a local mall with his ten-year-old son over the weekend, they had both witnessed a mother kick her small child in anger. Hard. She was with her husband and two other children.  “Did you see that Dad?” asked the son. “Just keep walking”, the father protectively replied, upset by what he saw, but not wanting to get involved.  When the two got home, the son told his older sister and mother what happened, clearly upset.  The father overheard their conversation, but said nothing.  In our ‘unpacking’ of the experience, the father told me, “I didn’t want to confront the woman. And I looked at her husband. That could escalate into a mess.  But frankly I really wanted to do something.  The woman assaulted her child, and nobody did anything”. 

We explored other options, most notably calling security or the police, and remaining available as a witness.  I was surprised that this option was both a relief and “a novel idea” to the father.  Upon reflection I understand that his fight-flight response had overtaken him, leaving only a risky confrontation with a stranger or a “just keeping walking” escape. When I suggested he could also revisit the situation with his son, he was again relieved and surprised. It hadn’t occurred to him.  I told him he could share with his son what they might have done differently. He could invite his son to talk about his thoughts and feelings about the incident, and then just listen.  “Maybe I should wait until he brings it up”, suggested his father.  “That’s a very thoughtful idea, and often a good strategy”, I replied. “But in this case you already know from his conversation with his sister that the incident is on his mind. Your “keep on walking” might have sent him a message you don’t want to talk about it. You did feel a need to talk about it today. He might too”.  “Good point”, he acknowledged.

Life imitating art…  Art imitating life…

Bob Schulte

AGPA 2014 & The Great God Pan: The Art of Pairing

Wilfred Bion

Bion  &  Basic Assumptions

The group concept of ‘pairing’comes from Wilfred Bion, a British psychoanalyst who studied how groups develop and why members act as they do, especially in the service of dual goals: task accomplishment and psychic survival. Bion became interested in understanding the impact of small and large group processes from his psychiatric work with wounded soldiers during and after WWII.  He observed survival-inspired strategies (basic assumptions of dependency, fight/flight and pairing) employedby group members to feel safe and protectedwhen faced with the rough-and-tumble demands of task completion within group life. Pairing with another person in an exclusive (Bion thought, ‘sexual’) bond is one such strategy. He imagined the group was colluding with the couple to do the group’s work by (pro)creating a magical solution. The concept is particularly relevant to our thinking about the underlying psychological processes of The Great God Pan.  The play has many pairings, recognizable as couples, pals and parent/child and therapist/patient dyads. All feature intimate relating, but with varying degrees of attunement, attachment, stress and distress—and purpose. While we never actually see the ‘group’ all together on stage, the characters can be thought of as a distressed/regressed basic assumption group. The ensemble of actors playing the characters is more recognizable as a work group. Bion would say all groups have qualities of both a work group and basic assumption group. The group goal is to be enough of both to survive and thrive.

Character Pairs

In the ten scenes of the play there are only a few moments where three characters are on stage together. I interpret this strategy as an effort to avoid group-wide knowledge and painful exposure. This exclusive reliance on pairing is a compelling feature of the dramatic structure of The Great God Pan. Whether intuitive or intentional, the playwright sends a powerful message about survival with her use of dyadic structure.

Jamie and Paige, as an intimate couple, are faced with the prospect of becoming a family group.  Paige is pregnant, and this is experienced as a threat to the couple’s exclusiveness.It might be said that Jamie’s inability to pair with the fetus threatens its very existence.

Jamie and Frank were exclusive playmates as children, and may have been harmed by an exploitative parent.  The arrival of Frank, with explosive news, threatens Jamie’s internal sense of wellbeing, and by extension his relationship with Paige, and potentially his wider circle of familial relationships.

Frank and Dennis (offstage character) are paired as son and father.  Their traumatic attachment bond leaves Frank in the “impossible” position of being harmed by the very person to whom he would otherwise turn to for protection.

Jamie and Cathy are paired as son and mother.  His efforts to please his mother and her desire for him to “just be happy” are often in conflict. Jamie’s reaching out for an empathic and informational response from her, in light of his visit with Frank, is frustrated by her dissociative inability to recall something that happened “so long ago”.

Jamie and Doug ‘act the parts’ of father and son, awkwardly.  Their pairing seems to producemore longing than comfort for either of them.The play offers them a redemptive opportunity to risk more authentically ‘living their parts’.

Dennis Lawrence and his wife (both offstage characters) are paired as a highly distressed marital couple. Her inability or unwillingness to respond with outrage or instrumental action to the harm being done to her son is “complicated”, as acknowledged by Frank.

Paige and Joelle are a therapeutic dyad.  The wounded healer and the healing wounded, mirror each other in comforting and confounding ways.  I imagine this will be painfully familiar to therapist audience members who work with trauma victims.

Jamie and Polly were paired as youngster and nanny. The remembering of Polly “as the best babysitter” captures the protective power of what we call in dynamic therapy, an idealized positive transference. The desire to recreate that kind of protective bond in future relationships throughout life is ubiquitous.

A Question of ‘What If?’

This structural choiceof theatrically dramatizing twosomes generates for me the clinical question: What would it be like for Jamie, or any of the characters, to be in group therapy?  To be faced with the emotional risks of telling their story in the presence of others could feel quite threatening.  Destabilizing. Painful. Redemptive.  Liberating. Relieving. Devastating. The emotional possibilities are complex and many.

Our ensemble of therapist/actors have an opportunity to explore this ‘what if’ clinical question through theirown experience of preparing to dramatically read The Great God Pan for an audience.  Their depth exploration of the characters of the play is intimately linked to their own corresponding, very particular, internal emotional terrain, making the theatrical work ultimately, therapeutic as well. This experience occurs first through the ensemble experience of preparation, second, through their performance for an audience and third, through post-performance process group discussions and written reflections.

Actor and Director Collaboration

Today was our first effort at focusing exclusively on scene study and character development. We established a sequence of scenes to work on and a basic working contract between the actors and the director.  This would be primarily a theatrical rehearsal, with group process explorations deferred until the very end of the rehearsal. Instead we began the process of collaboratively integrating the director’s interpretation of the dramatic action of the scenes with the actor’s interpretation of the characters motives, relationships and modes of expression.

My intent in establishing a clear demarcation between the director’s responsibility for interpreting the play, and the actor’s responsibility for interpreting the character was for many reasons.  But foremost, I want to empower the actors to be the final arbiter of their artistic choices.  My goal is to help clarify the action of the scene—what we call the “here-and-now” in group therapy—and allow the actors to consider how their character would ‘act’ under the circumstances.  We are consultants and collaborators to and with each other: they assist me in better understanding the action from their character’s perspective, and I assist them, in better understanding their character from an action perspective.

Looking Within

In the processing segment following the theater rehearsal, the emotional nature of some of our own pairings operating within the ensemble and leadership team emerged.  Various pairs, (notably the director and consultant,and two actors who work together in a clinic setting), identified interpersonal conflicts related to the convergence of their designated roles and tasks, the emotional impact of the play, their collegial relationships as ensemble members, and their professional roles beyond our theater enterprise.  Whew!

As an ensemble, the actors are able to do theirexploratory work of revealing to each other theirsubjective experiences—of the play and of each other—in a ‘safe-enough’ group context.  Everyone is privy to hear what isgoing on between pairs (and subgroups and the group-as-a-whole), to bear witness, and to offer reactions, commentaryand support. This takes dedicated time, effort, courage, talent, tenacity, clinical skill, empathy, compassion, timing and more than a sprinkle of love and luck.

It is only because the conflict of the drama infects the ensemble and the leadership team—slowly, insidiously, inevitably—that we can experientially learn about group therapy through the parallel process of play reading.  Our way of working is thus part theatrical, part therapeutic, part educational, and part relational.  These multi-dimensions of a play reading process allow us to learn about dynamic group processes thatare relevant to our work as group therapists.

Bob Schulte

AGPA 2014 & The Great God Pan: Musically representing the Drama Triangle

Developing a directorial vision for our presentation of The Great God Pan is a creative and collaborative process. The opportunities to dialogue with the actors, the consultant, musician and discussant are invaluable—variously in the study group or rehearsal hall, in private consultation and even in my fantasies and dreams.  Each collaborator brings a unique perspective, and it’s my job to metabolize their contributions such that a coherent directorial interpretation emerges. Solitude and reflection are key to my personal style and process. I strategically take time out to exercise on an elliptical exercise machine I keep in a spare bedroom at home.  (Imagine cross country skiing, without the snow or cold.)  The rhythms and quiet are well suited to my creative process of thinking and metabolizing.  And yes, I just got off the elliptical…

After meeting with the musician, Tom Teasley, this morning, I have a much clearer vision of how music and sound will fit into the presentation.  Three instruments will, together, form a ‘basic group’ of sound and music sources.  The instruments we selected include are a flute, a frame drum and a hang drum. A few other ‘environmental sounds’ will be created by additional instruments and we hope the actors might be involved in the performing of some of those effects.

Here are links to hear the instruments, as used by Tom in performance of poetry and storytelling. The first is a remarkable ‘Tale of Two Wolves’, featuring the frame drum and the flute:

Next is a beautiful rendition of a Traditional Apache Prayer, accompanied by Tom playing only the Native American flute:

And here is a rendition of ‘Haikus for the Seasons’, accompanied by Tom playing the hang drum.

These three distinctive sounds—the frame drum, hang drum and flute—are well suited to our play. The next step is for Tom to use his own creative process to explore their potential with the script in mind, and in rehearsal with the actors.  We will eventually make artistic choices together with the actors about what works where, based on our shared sensibilities.  It is an exciting process. Music and sound are indescribable contributions to the transcendent experience of the lived theatrical moment.

These three instruments are well matched to the concept of the ‘drama triangle’.  As a reminder, the drama triangle is a term coined to signify the victim/perpetrator/rescuer dynamics that routinely emerge in human interactions. From my perspective the flute is linked to victim position. The frame drum is linked to the perpetrator position. (Listen to the Tale of Two Wolves to hear this duality.) The hang drum is linked to the rescuer position. The person bearing witness (therapists, audience, therapy group members) can also be thought of as a variation on the rescuer role. Representing the victim/perpetrator/rescuer dynamics of the play musically is our goal.  I think we have made a good start and I look forward to bringing the music into our rehearsal process.

Bob Schulte