Way of Water Blog

by Jesus A. Reyes, Creative Director

I love staged readings. I find them to be exciting – at least they can be. So, when Caridad Svich asked if EAST LA REP would consider participating in her “scheme” to present staged readings of her play The Way of Water, I immediately said yes!

I love staged readings because I’ve had some of the best times directing staged readings. The art of the staged reading is so particular and not any actor can pull it off. Actors in staged readings have to be extremely confident and flexible. They have to be courageous and be ready to put their ego aside. These actors have to rely on their technical skills 100% and you can always tell when an actor is not having fun during a staged reading.

The staged reading, be it in-house and private or for public consumption, is a great way to take risks, to hear new work, to hear new actors, to stretch the imagination muscle of actors, directors and audience alike. When I lived and worked in the Bay Area I was so fortunate to be on the directors’ roster for Jim Kleinmann’s company, Playground. Playground is an amazing opportunity for Bay Area playwrights to master the art of the 10-minute play but also for the actors and directors to have fun and support the text. Annie Stuart is the casting director for Playground and had an incredible sense of the actors that can pull it off and roll with the staged reading process. With a days notice, the actors and director have only an hour and a half to digest, discuss and stage a reading before a paying audience that evening. It’s exhilarating to work with the playwright in the room and the actors, all just going for it.

I admit that I was moved to work on The Way of Water because of the sense of responsibility to put the work and words out there that were inspired by the 2010 BP oil spill. To present a play that took the devastation and immediate aftermath of this event and gave life and voice to four characters affected by it. To make it work for EAST LA REP we wanted to tie-in Los Angeles and during our initial conversations of the play, we found out about high toxic levels in the nearby community of Huntington Park. So the plan was to take part of the public “toxic tours” that a local organization conducts and perform excerpts of the play to complement, to connect and to inform the tour participants. As a company we had always been pretty good at performing outdoors and site-specific and this was a great next step to that process. To work with an organization  and a community in a more direct way then just offering comps or half-price admission. For the first time we would be on the front lines. Then it didn’t happen.

The opportunity fell through but we were committed to be part of this important international scheme and had to figure out how to proceed. The obvious choice was to present a traditional staged reading at our home venue. Then the idea came, to take the excerpts and film them as monologues, The Way of Water Project was born. We pulled together a diverse cast of seven, a cast that represents some of the diversity of East Los Angeles. From the get go we told the actors that they did not have to memorize their lines, some did, because they are very committed, but it was not necessary. I wanted to capture that staged reading rawness from live performances and put them on film. I absolutely love the craft in progress, as actors look at their pages and make choices. Bold choices, interesting choices, dangerous choices. They dig deep into their experience and use what they have to tell the story. It’s risky but so much more of the moment. I wanted us to capture some of that on film so we emailed the actors their sides a day or two prior to the scheduled filming and went for it. Two, three takes is all we filmed for each. We discovered that the prayer that was sung originally didn’t quite gel with the footage filmed afterwards, so we re-shot it. We discovered that one of the monologues was more effective if we split it into two. Each and every actor involved gave their time and talent to this project. The director Alejandra Cisneros along with each and every actor we asked to participate was chosen because of their strength and willingness to jump off the staged reading cliff with us.

Something that was also new to us was premiering the shorts on our group Facebook page. Because EAST LA REP is in the midst of changing its model from a theatre company to a creative center, it made sense for us to try something new, something unknown. We still get emails and posts from people telling us that they loved the video they saw and can’t wait to attend the reading. Sorry, that was the reading. Once all eight shorts premiere, a full-length version that ties all the shorts together will be featured. This full-length version will also be new for us, a new way of telling the story that is a full-length play via social media.

Last night, I was at a play and ran into one of the actors that participated. He mentioned how he wished that maybe, the actors should have been off book. He pointed to one of the actors that was completely memorized and how effective that was for him. I replied that indeed, that actor’s work, along with the one or two other actors that were memorized, was very good, and for the full-length version it will be such an interesting balance of storytelling, but, his work along with that of the actors that were not off book was just as effective. The way each actor committed to his words. The way each actor made choices. The way each actor found rhythm and language. The way each actor looked down at his script when he/she needed to and stayed in character – that was amazing – that is theatre – this is the one way to get a sense of what live theatre is like but on a screen. The Way of Water Project was not to be a film or a documentary; it was meant to be a staged reading on a small screen.    

I just posted the fifth short out of eight, so we are sort of half-way to the finish line. I thank Caridad Svich for asking EAST LA REP to be part of this incredible experience. I thank her for being incredibly brave to let us take excerpts and re-arrange her play. I thank her for allowing us to take the poetry, drama and politics of her play, The Way of Water, and letting us share it online. I must also thank my cohorts at EAST LA REP for their continued support in this time of transition. Finally, I thank the creative team that made The Way of Water Project so memorable, director Alejandra Cisneros and the actors, Carla Valentine, Anthony Aguilar, Blake Kushi, Raquel Sanchez, Juan Ramirez, Lynn Haro Martinez-Arvilla and Juan E. Carrillo. Oh, and extra special thanks to all those brave ones that go mano-a-mano with the staged reading.

Jesus A. Reyes, Creative Artistic Director, EAST LA REP

The Way of Water by Caridad Svich was read at East LA Rep on April 21st, 2012 as part of its Necessary Conversations Series, directed by Alejandra Cisneros.

 

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by Caridad Svich

"Oh, environmental plays," a UK playwright-colleague said to me during a Winter Writers Retreat at the Lark Play Development Centre this past, mild December in NYC, "they're bloody hard to write." A few weeks later another UK playwriting colleague and I email about our ongoing twinned passions of art and activism, and go back and forth in our correspondence on the inherent risk and non-monetary value that these passions can engender in the process of art-making . It's now April 2012 and the two-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill disaster is making headlines with a plethora of lawsuits, cover-ups and a nasty and enormous health scandal affecting the US Gulf region. I'm sitting in a practice hall in NYC in workshop with my new play THE WAY OF WATER, which is, in effect, set in the heart of the devastating aftermath of BP's environmental disaster, and looks at the lives of four characters whose very lives and livelihoods are damaged by the complex fall-out of the spill and the even more complex, layered threads that link lack of health insurance, poverty, and racism in the economically strapped fishing towns along the coast of Louisiana.

We discuss with a talented quartet of NY-based actors how waves of convenient cultural "amnesia" seem to maintain what has often been described as a "culture of forgetting" in US society, wherein disasters go viral and lose their "cache" time and again to make room for the next disaster scrolled on the media waves of a computer screen. The conversation in the practice hall turns again and again, when we're not tracking emotional arcs in the script or looking at newly posted articles about new findings in the US Gulf of shrimps with no eyes surfacing in the waters, to what theatre's role can be in a thorny US theatrical landscape that is driven in both the commercial and not-for-profit sector on the vagaries of real estate and the out-moded subscription-audience model adopted forty or so years ago by the regional/resident theatre system. Again, the issue of how to address environmental damage and issues of sustainability come to the fore as we work on the depiction of four fragile lives caught in an equally fragile eco-system.

Thousands of miles away, Pat the Dog Playwrights Centre and the University of Waterloo are collaborating on a site-responsive reading of the play in a reflecting pool in the Kitchener-Waterloo City Square in Ontario, Canada, whilst at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, the University of Tasmania in Australia and Aberystwyth University in Wales, different drafts of the script are being read (accent adapted) with a mix of student and faculty actors. Blog posts from these and other venues taking part in an international reading scheme for the play come in via email to the respective laptops of a dramaturge with us in NYC in the practice hall, and another dramaturge (working remotely long distance). Most of the blog posts are written either by actors, educators or practitioners and their reflections circle again and again on how, despite the fact that BP and the anniversary of the disaster have been making headlines these last few weeks, precious little awareness has made its way into the corridors and dressing rooms of theatres at the university and not-for-profit level. In fact, most of the reflections contain a similar refrain: "How can theatre-making address environmental issues, and what kind of effective change is possible after witnessing a play?"

The word "mobilization" is used in its noun and verb form throughout many of the blog posts, and as my four actors, director and dramaturges wrestle with the finer points of script revision, clarity, and the crafting of emotionally resonant moments - the nuts and bolts of any work room devoted to new writing - the word threads its way through our practical conversation and into the chit-chat of coffee breaks and the ubiquitous habit of checking voicemail and text messages on our mobile phones. We ask ourselves, in effect, if it's even possible for theatre to be a Mobile/mobilizing force in the era of an already-waning Occupy X movement in the US. After all, this is a Presidential election-year. Stump speeches flood the primaries with sound bytes and empty rhetoric, diffusing the complicated and necessary national conversations that need occur regarding, among many other issues, health care, oil drilling, fracking, and the continued voracious plunder of oceans that do not belong to us for the sake of pocket-deep multinational corporate investments and the byzantine top-down levels of "minor" corruption and lobbying that allow convenient lies to be disseminated and variously "accepted" by a variety of multi-platform media outlets. One petition signed, a line in a script read out loud to a roomful of people - what change, real change, is possible? Is it futile to even think about? Is the age-old (seemingly) question of the validity of theatre-making's civic engagement at odds with the immensity of the big ol' world itself?

The actor playing the role of the Jimmy, a fisherman eking out a beggarly living on the Louisiana coast as he suffers from exposure to toxic solvents and a toxic environment, sits down on a folding chair in our NYC workshop, and rests his head on the work table of our practice hall. He utters the word "politics" and the catch in his voice is urgent. "What interests me in this play, in plays, is the politics," he says. Soon, our discussion turns to what we think of when we say the words "political theatre," especially in the US. Creeping into the conversation one of US theatre's "dirty words," rears its head. It is a word bandied about quite often pejoratively by administrators, marketing folks, and even within the creative personnel of our wide-ranging industry.

The word is "darkness." It is a word that tends to send shivers down some people's spines in this field, as they try to pitch plays to their constituents and disguise "darkness" in blurbs and press packets with any number of adjectives in order to obscure its visceral presence. Darkness, even in dark times, or the intimations of a jangling, upset theatrical universe where not every question is answered by the theatre-makers and/or presented in pop-friendly forms, is the dirtiest of dirty words next to the word "politics" in US theatre. Will the world presented on stage be too bleak? Will we run the risk of alienating the audience? And if we indeed want the audience to mobilize, to feel empowered to at least try to effect a measure of change within their local community, what tools can we offer them through our storytelling in order to instill the possibility without wrecking all reasonable hope altogether?

A recent New York Times article in the Arts and Leisure (Sunday 22 April) was actually devoted to the subject of darkness in plays in lieu of the Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, a text that is being met by a new generation of theatre-goers with a mixture of awe and mild shock at the "depressing" nature of the piece's downwardly spiraling story. Has US theatre, for good or ill, and time will be the judge of that, retreated from the portrayal, without exploitation, of the troubling nature of much of the lives of those who live in the US in order to instead "do good?" In this "doing good" is theatre's potency as a live medium of expression, as a meeting place and communal gathering of strangers, being castrated? What new lies get told in this "do-gooder-ness" and what markings on theatre's pages are left unsaid in the fear of losing an audience?

These are questions that playwrights committed to expressions of the body politic, who work in the stacked desk of US theatre's economy, contend with on a daily basis, Even in a practice hall, in a workshop, where the focus is on the text, its intentions, and how it can indeed further engage with the difficult and beautiful stuff that makes up our world. The urgency felt in the actor's voice when he utters the word "politics", as he sits on the folding chair giving heart and soul to the work for very little pay, resonates outside the practice hall and into the streets of NYC, as my collaborators and I wind down after a long day of tough, merciless and compassionate creative decision-making. The air is crisp and a sudden rain chills what has been a remarkably pleasant spring. An email comes in from colleagues in Kitchener-Waterloo, as the site-responsive reading of THE WAY OF WATER has come to an end. The temperature there had dropped immeasurably and the performed reading had to be moved mid-stream, indoors, into City Hall, of all places, where the local arts presenter offered a dedicated audience coffee to warm them up, and the play continued under the glare of fluorescent light. My collaborators in NYC alight on their separate paths, to their separate subway trains, to Brooklyn, Bushwick, and Inwood. We say our good nights and promise to gather again tomorrow for another day of work. Precious time is all we have, and our workshop will soon come to an end. I think about how one audience was figuratively mobilized in Kitchener-Waterloo because of the vagaries of an intemperate environment, and I think about how "politics" and making theatre can huddle us around all kinds of honest, fearless, and vulnerable places of darkness and light.

The Way of Water by Caridad Svich will continue to be read in the next few weeks at the following theatre companies and universities: American Stage Theatre in St. Petersburg, Florida (4/28/12), University of Alabama-Birmingham (4/28/12), Alameda Theatre Company (4/29/12), Mile Square Theatre (4/29/12), CalArts New Works Festival (4/29 and 4/30/12), Main Street Theatre (4/30/12), Rosemary Branch Theatre (5/6/12), English Theatre, Berlin (5/13/12), Firehouse Theatre Project (5/22/12) and Ensemble Studio Theatre (5/29/12).

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KSFR-FM Radio Cafe interview with Mary Charlotte Domandi and The Way of Water ensemble, broadcast Wednesday, April 18. link to podcast http://www.santaferadiocafe.org/podcasts/?p=2391

Teatro Paraguas presents a staged reading of THE WAY OF WATER a new play by Caridad Svich which focuses on the lives of two Louisiana couples in the aftermath of the BP Gulf oil spill in April 2010. Over 50 readings are taking place around the country and the world in April. 8:00 pm. Free, donations welcome.

 

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by Aditi Brennan Kapil

I had the privilege of experiencing The Way of Water as it was being created, hearing installments nightly in our Lark Play Development Center Winter Writers Group. What struck me first about Caridad's play was the gorgeous, authentic, poetic language in which her characters lived their lives. I was already completely in love with them when I discovered that the world was rotting away their food source and their bodies. That's the gift of this play, Caridad's ability to anchor something as large and incomprehensible as environmental disaster in the humanity that both caused it and is being destroyed by it. To see us all as part of this greater organism, it's powerful, it's gorgeous, it's chilling.

Aditi Brennan Kapil is an actress, writer, and director of Bulgarian and Indian descent. She was raised in Sweden, and resides in Minneapolis, MN. She has performed extensively in the Twin Cities and around the country, her writing has been nationally produced to critical acclaim. For more of Aditi's current projects, check out her website. 

 

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By Wendy Mortimer, Director and Associate Professor

When Caridad invited us to be part of the International Reading Scheme, I immediately said, "Yes." Because it was Caridad. The way she uses language to explore and reveal the edges of human relationships, our relationship to the earth and to our ancestors resonates in ways that are universal. Add to this the possibility of offering a strong example of theatre for social change, and adding our voices to the larger global issue of the right to access of clean water... and it seemed like the perfect storm.   Due to limited resources and an already overloaded production calendar, we opted for the reading to reach the university community rather than focus on outreach to the local community. The reading was simple, with actors using only the language to bring the characters and their unimaginable realities to life in the space between each other and the audience.    The many actors, directors, designers, stage managers, theatre education majors that attended the reading were shocked to hear about the ramifications of the efforts of the "clean-up" and struggled to match this new knowledge with what they'd been reading in the papers.    Since the reading, students have been asking about how they can be a part of NoPassport and other socially aware theatre movements. And though the reading didn't reach into the larger community, it was heartening to hear students respond so fully to the writing, articulating how the imagery, truth, and depth is the type of text they'd like to work with. To a generation of actors that tends to focus on getting cast more on giving back, this proved to be a project that planted seeds in every single young artist in the audience... of what theatre can do, what it can reveal, the action it can inspire. This reading allowed students to look with new eyes at the country they thought they knew. There are ripples now where the water was once still.    And that is a great, great thing here in rural Indiana.    I cannot thank NoPassport enough for this piece, their extreme generosity in opening it up to the community in the form of this reading scheme, and for the development of a company with a laudable mission statement.    I look forward to future reading schemes that will undoubtedly allow us to create more interdisciplinary relationships and also reach into the local community.    In regards to the actors involved, it is the strongest work I've ever seen them do. The rhythms in the text, the intricacies in the relationships both onstage and when speaking of ancestors brought out in the actors a vibrancy that held the audience for the entire length of the reading. It was thrilling to see/hear them soar - focusing only on the language (no light cues, set, sound - just the words into the space).    Thank you, thank you, thank you for the opportunity to reach towards the upcoming generation of BFA students - for broadening their definition of possibility in the arts.   The Way of Water by Caridad Svich, was read at Ball State University on April 23rd, 2012, directed by Wendy Mortimer. Tags: The Way of Water Blog Posts

by Vern Thiessen, Playwright

This past December, it was my great privilege to work together with a group of playwrights at the Lark New Play Development Centre's winter retreat.  Within six sessions spread over a short period, each of us created a play and shared it with the others. The group was diverse and the work eclectic.  One of those plays was THE WAY OF WATER. Every week (and sometimes twice) I bore witness not only to Caridad's play being created, but also to a world unveiled, to lives unravelled, to secrets unearthed, to dreams broken, to change taking hold. Watching that play being born was - and remains - a profound theatre experience for me. Perhaps because of the time lag I experienced between scenes, I became obsessed with the play and its people. I thought about them, worried for them, dreamt about them and wondered what would happen to them between readings.  I am not a fan of serial television. I don't get "hooked" on shows as a rule. But Caridad's play lured and hooked me, like the fish the play's characters are so desperately trying to catch. And like the oil to those fish, I too became infected with something, not poison, but an outrage that I rarely feel in the theatre. LIke an Ibsen or Churchill play, THE WAY OF WATER asks difficult questions, not only of its characters, but of its audience. The questions still linger with me.  I will never look at a stream, a river, a lake, or an ocean the same way.

Vern Thiessen is one of Canada's most produced playwrights. His plays have been seen across Canada, the United States, Asia, the United Kingdon, the Middle East, and Europe. Website:  http://www.vernthiessen.com

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by Georgina Escobar

I got an email from Caridad early this year in which she introduced me to this project and asked, ‘would the National Theater Institute be up for staging a reading?’ Sure, I thought. Not really knowing the scheduling and ends and ways of the National Theater Institute…   But I read the script and loved it. Immediately, I hurried down the steps of the old Hammond Mansion at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center to the little office at the end of the hallway. “NTI”. Known for their infamous slogan “Risk. Fail. Risk Again.” My solitary days at the O’Neill consist of being on the third floor with the rest of the Literary Office team. There, surrounded by books, acting as guardians of text and words, we seldom see the inner-workings of our sister entities on campus. I felt it was necessary to create that bridge. I took the script to the Artistic Director and she assured me it was something wonderful, for a great cause, worth doing and very fitting to NTI’s aesthetic of surprising the students and the community with bold new play readings from writers-in-residence, or in this case, Caridad Svich.   The National Theater Institute is a conservatory of theater in which twenty to thirty students submerge themselves in the solitary grounds of the Eugene O’Neill for thirteen weeks to study theater. They work seven days a week, a minimum of ten-hours a day refining their skills in acting, directing, playwriting, movement, voice amongst others.  Because of the intense atmosphere it also breeds a sort of silent community that is palpable when you first set foot on the grounds. I believe this was probably what happened to Caridad when she first arrived, an honorary guest to her reading of “Way of Water” on Earthday weekend. You would expect a natural fuzz and buzz to follow such great combination, but this is the O’Neill. People here love the intimate. Our audiences expect rough, expect process, expect breakthroughs.   That was exactly what happened on that Saturday. The actors met for the first time a few hours before lunch-time. The script had been slightly re-written after a reading at the Lark, so I was literally handing them material as they walked through the door. I was nervous. In all honesty I believed this was an NTI event. I had passed the torch, and given them my Mexican blessing—which consists of making the sign of the cross mid-air as if casting a sort of minor magic. But it is common amongst this community of artists for us to always think as collaborators. I jumped in. I wanted the reading to show the words, I wanted the actors to convey the message, I wanted the audience to be as moved as I was when I read it. I wanted the audience to walk out of there and say: I want to make a difference and I don’t know how. Then I wanted them to go out and research and get informed, and find ways to pay attention. I wanted this piece to change their world.    And just like that catholic gesture cast upon them that day, the reading proved itself to be a form of minor magic itself. It cast its own charm. The actors, reading it for the first time where possessed by the immaculate crafting of the cadence and beats and rhythms and moods. The audience danced along. The intimate Dina Merril Theater (a black box that is actually a BLUE box due to its initial venture into becoming a Television/Film studio) transformed itself into the world of the play.   Between acts, I stumbled outside and asked my friend and Literary Manager if he could moderate the talk-back, he does it every summer within our Conferences. ‘No’ he said, ‘You can do it.’   But I wanted to know everything! Moderate? That sounds nothing like me. I wanted to ask Caridad about her process, about character construction, about impact, about the future of this campaign, about her thoughts on how theater can change the collective consciousness on environmental awareness. I wanted to know it all. When the time to ‘moderate’ came, all the questions seemed to sum up into one: “Why Now?” and immediately I made quick eye contact with Caridad and I could have sworn that within both of us the answer was “Well. Why NOT.” She elevated the simple answer and allowed her audience into the world of her plays, reaching out to some far back and speaking of the importance of revisiting forms of writing that were present early on. She spoke of the importance of being aware of our worlds crisis’ at all times, because we are artists, because we are creators, because we are alive. This was better than a cup of hot chocolate on a cold winter day for the NTI students. This is what we crave: to be told that all of us are connected and have a sense of purpose. I could feel their bodies lean in as Caridad spoke of the creation of character and her journey as a writer. Then people asked such things as ‘what’s next?’ ‘will this be presented in those affected communities’ and ‘how do you know when to let go of something you’ve written.’ The questions and conversation varied and the intimate blue-box felt suddenly like a campfire.   Jorge Luis Borges states in the last line of one of his poems; “Everything happens for the first time, but in a way that is eternal. Whoever reads my words is inventing them.” That night we met up with some audience members at the local Dutch Tavern and it was evident then as it was at the theater, this piece will go on to change people, and as it happens simultaneously with colleges and communities around the world, this message and those words will happen for the first time, but in a way that is….eternal.   Georgina H. Escobar, M.F.A Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, Literary Office   The Way of Water by Caridad Svich was read on April 21, 2012 at the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center. Tags: The Way of Water Blog Posts

 

by Henco Jacob

"Being a part of a reading of this nature reminds one of the devastation and social implications such a tragedy has on an environment and its inhabitants, not only when the tragedy occurs, but long afterwards when we have all forgotten and have continued with our own lives. The important theme of speaking out and standing up for what is right and not to let life just continue on its ‘merry’ way should become ingrained into our everyday lives. It was a privilege to be a part of this international undertaking."

The Way of Water by Caridad Svich was read at the University of Pretoria, Main campus, on April 13th, 2012 at the Lier Theatre, Marie-Heleen Coetzee, director.

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by Christina Soracco, stage management student at Indiana University of Pennsylvania

The way I got involved in this project was both, in my opinion, bit random and perhaps a stroke of luck for both Jason and myself. I had initially contacted Prof. Chimonides with a project of my own, as I am a playwright just starting out, and was asking for help with what was to be the second workshop for me. This turned into one of those you scratch my back I'll scratch yours sort of deals. I was of course thrilled to help Jason. When Prof. Chimonides first came to me looking for help for IUP’s reading of Caridad Svich’s The Way of Water I initially thought that it would be fun, and a nice thing to do. I would be helping Prof. Chimonides out with one of his projects.

A couple of days passed and I heard nothing and then he sent out about 10 e-mails to me. Most of these were just correspondence e-mails but two or three really started me on, what I now consider to be a journey, this project. Those e-mails contained first and foremost the script, which I consider to be the body of this whole project and then also the No Passport website and the Indigogo website. I perused the sites in my free time that day and couldn't wait to read script, which I did later that night. It was beautiful. Heart wrenching.

We read through the script with the whole cast the night before. In my opinion that was moving in itself. They were really able to immerse themselves in the characters they portrayed and played very well off of each other. So will actually I asked them if they read through it before together over the weekend. Of course they hadn’t but it being my first experience with something like this I was pretty amazed. On the night of what I refer to as the official reading, they read it even better. My naïve-ness led me to believe such a thing was not possible, I'm glad they proved me wrong. Watching them once again interact with each other and with the inclusion of the audience was something that was just incredible to me.   Talking about incredible the line that stuck out to me the most was the last line on page 91 “Man can't get sick in this country.” This is also found on the indigo go website and just reading it alone before I read through the script I thought it was talking about our ability as a race to prevent sickness among ourselves. Obviously this was incorrect and that was made clear after I read through the script. But Jimmy's words mean to me, is that in their line of work, which has been turned upside down by the oil spill and the chemicals that were distributed, they can't afford to get sick. If they do they lose everything.   This really struck a chord with me because it's so hard to believe how heartless and how willing these big oil companies are to look other way. In my opinion, their job is not even close to being finished. They have ruined the livelihoods of countless numbers of families along the coastal region they're acting as though everything is just fine, that's just messed up.   I guess it's me getting a little bit off topic in that last paragraph. We have a talkback at the end of our reading and some parts of people's families lived in the affected regions. Should the person who spoke said that her family reunions in the last couple years sounded a lot like the script. We all laughed at first, because, I'm guessing, of, the language. We’re so far away from it up here in Pennsylvania that it's for and to us at whatever we talk of rednecks this is kind of what we imagine so in that way it was humorous. After the initial response, which might’ve lasted all of five seconds it got very serious. The atmosphere in the room changed as reality settled in. I think that everyone walked away from this perhaps with more than they bargained for, but when it's about spreading the word of something so important I think we did a good job.   I have come out of work with this project, not only with something I can add to my resume haha, but with a deeper understanding of many things. The first and foremost being a critically deeper understanding of the effects of the BP oil spill. I also learned partly what sort of time and effort goes into spreading the word, getting people to show up, getting the community involved, finding actors and overall just getting this thing up and running. This was a great experience for me and I am honored to be part of something like this. I think it really shows us how easily things can be forgotten, and held something like a play can enlighten us so much.   The Way of Water by Caridad Svich was read on April 10th, 2012 at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, directed by Jason Chimonides.  Tags: The Way of Water Blog Posts

20 April 2012

Two years ago today, an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil platform killed 11 men and initiated the largest marine oil spill in history, with roughly five million barrels released from the Macondo well, with roughly 4.2 million barrels pouring into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

To provide factual information and curricular resources about this disaster, the National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE) and our Council of Environmental Deans and Directors (CEDD) have created the Online Clearinghouse for Education And Networking: Oil Interdisciplinary Learning (OCEAN-OIL) a free, open-access, peer-reviewed electronic education resource about the Deepwater Horizon disaster. 

www.EoEarth.org/oceanoil

 

OCEAN-OIL resources now available at www.EoEarth.org/oceanoil include:   •       National Commission Reports on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill- all of the 30 official reports and many background papers •       Articles (160+)  hyper-linked, encyclopedia style •       Teaching resources (30) including games and teacher guides •       Glossary (400+) related to oil spill causes, impacts, clean-up, and prevention •       Acronyms (LPG,  PPM,  ROV,  VOC) (75+) to help decode the language of oil spill science •       External links (100+) to  government sites, image galleries, news sources, industry, environmental groups, education, and journal articles •        Photo galleries: Images by renowned photojournalist Gary Braasch and others •        Deepwater Horizon by the Numbers: Publication-quality graphs •       Videos (280+) •       Databases - Statistics, technical diagrams, maps, and other data   The OCEAN-OIL website is seamlessly integrated into the Encyclopedia of Earth (www.eoearth.org), which is a free, peer-reviewed, searchable collection of content about the Earth, its natural environments, and their interaction with society, written by expert scholars and educators. The site is designed to be a resource to faculty members and other educators who may use the incident in their teaching.   The project is a partnership among NCSE, CEDD, Louisiana State University and Boston University. The project is funded by the National Science Foundation.   For more information, contact: David E. Blockstein, Ph.D. Executive Secretary, Council of Environmental Deans and Directors Senior Scientist National Council for Science and the Environment 1101 17th St. NW #250 Washington DC 20036 202-207-0004 direct 202-530-5810 general 202-628-4311 fax David@NCSEonline.org www.ncseonline.org Tags: The Way of Water Blog Posts

by Sarah Fogarty, graduate student at University of Nebraska at Omaha

On April 10th in coordination with the graduate seminar course Women by Women, we held a staged reading of Caridad Svich’s The Way of Water.  We had a small but very interested audience, comprised of students, faculty, and community members.

My experience with the play began earlier in the semester, during the first few weeks of classes.  A fellow graduate student told us about the reading scheme after Caridad sent an email to her and our professor, Dr. Cindy Melby Phaneuf.  We had the wonderful experience of producing another one of Caridad’s plays, 12 Ophelias (a play with broken songs), in December at UNO.  Cindy also directed Caridad’s play Alchemy of Desire/Dead Man’s Blues this past summer for the Great Plains Theatre Conference, so we have enjoyed a close relationship with Caridad and jumped at the opportunity to be involved.

Cast as Neva, I was initially drawn in by the beauty and rhythm of such self-described, “back of the woods” people like the Robichauxs and Skows.  There are so many stereotypes of such individuals (I am all too familiar with country bumpkin stereotypes being originally from Kentucky), that I think is hard for dramatists to paint them as anything more than caricatures.  But this was different; I immediately connected with each one of them, especially Rosalie, who I felt for so much that I was afraid my heart would break.

For me, the play wasn’t so much about the issue of the BP Oil Spill; it was more about the way that we, as humans, deal with a disaster, of any kind.  During rehearsals, we discussed how people try to learn as much as they can about their current situation, even if they have very little formal training in the subject.  All the characters became actively involved in learning about their situation and devising solutions on how things might be fixed.  When I was little and my grandpa was dying of cancer, I remember my father and mother painstakingly remembering the details of what the doctors told them, thinking that maybe if they understood what was happening biologically, it might make them feel better.  But the science of it never makes it more human; it just distances us from our soul.

The moments that affected me the most were between Jimmy and Rosalie; especially when Rosalie describes the sweater that Jimmy bought her at Target: even though it was too expensive, he bought it anyway because he knew that she wanted it.  Even the not so tender moments between Rosalie and Jimmy were heart wrenching, when Jimmy accused Rosalie of spending money on lipstick at the Dollar Store, or when he accused her of mismanaging the finances when he was in the hospital.  Rosalie goes on to describe the lengths to which she went to make ends meet, though in the end, it wasn’t enough.

In a post-reading discussion with the graduate seminar class, we extended our discussion of how this play can live in many different worlds. There are startling similarities between the oil spill and mountaintop removal in Eastern Kentucky and Appalachia where coal mining companies have literally been blowing the tops off mountains with little concern.  It is amazing to think of how little the cost of not only our Earth, but also animals and other human beings means to these large companies.  And we, by relying on coal and oil are contributing to the problem.  When will it stop? Will it ever stop? Is there not anything that can be done about it? “Just keep on the keep on” Yuki says to Jimmy, but is that enough? Can it ever be enough?

This play is full of strong emotions as well as unanswered questions.  Sometimes I think it would have been easier if I hadn’t read it, then I wouldn’t feel so conflicted inside:  what can I do about this? Anything?  Is it any of my business? Is it a hopeless cause? Even though I hate that I am conflicted by this, it makes me feel a greater appreciation for the human spirit and mother earth, and I am motivated to help protect them: Ignorance isn’t always bliss, even though it wants to be.

The Way of Water by Caridad Svich was read on April 10th, 2012 at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, directed by Dr. Cindy Melby Phaneuf. Actors included Zack Jennison (Jimmy), Thais Flait Giannoccaro (Rosalie), Colt Neidhardt (Yuki), and Sarah Fogarty (Neva). 

Tags: The Way of Water Blog Posts

"Oil from Deepwater Horizon spill still causing damage in the Gulf 2 years later, scientists say"

article by Craig Pittman, Times Staff Writer. In Print: Sunday, April 15, 2012.

 

"On Florida's Panhandle beaches, where local officials once fretted over how much oil washed in with each new tide, everything seems normal. The tourists have returned. The children have gone back to splashing in the surf and hunting for shells.

Every now and then, a tar ball as big as a fist washes ashore. That's the only apparent sign that the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history tainted these sugar-white sands two years ago.

But with an ultraviolet light, geologist James "Rip" Kirby has found evidence that the oil is still present, and possibly still a threat to beachgoers.

Tiny globs of it, mingled with the chemical dispersant that was supposed to break it up, have settled into the shallows, mingling with the shells, he said. When Kirby shines his light across the legs of a grad student who'd been in the water and showered, it shows orange blotches where the globs still stick to his skin.

"If I had grandkids playing in the surf, I wouldn't want them to come in contact with that," said Kirby, whose research is being overseen by the University of South Florida. "The dispersant accelerates the absorption by the skin."

As those blotches show, the gulf and its residents are still coping with the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which began with a fiery explosion aboard an offshore drilling rig on April 20, 2010. Read More. 

Tags: The Way of Water Blog Posts

 

Daniella Topo: How soon after the Deepwater Horizon BP Oil Spill did you know you wanted to write a play that responded to this event?

Caridad Svich: As a citizen, I was, of course, deeply affected by Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill. I have great affection for the U.S. Gulf region, especially since part of my life growing up was spent in Florida. Watching the news footage of the devastation to the ocean, the wildlife, the birds, and the human beings was and continues to be heartbreaking (because the devastation is far from over). I was outraged and heartbroken. And still am. However, I didn't know I would write a play set in its aftermath. Not immediately. At the time I simply, as a concerned citizen and eco-activist, followed the news stories in mainstream media, social media and online. I traveled and wrote and listened and took notes. Early in 2011 I started to write a series of poems related to the many health and environmental issues the disaster effected. Again, not thinking the poems would transform into a theatre piece. I was just writing because I needed to do so. I wanted to engage my art somehow with the complexity and enormity of the issues, and give back spiritually and emotionally in solidarity with the people most devastated by the disaster.

Then in the late spring of 2011 I wrote a play called GUAPA, which is set in Texas and although it is not about the oil spill, it is chiefly about characters living through poverty, engaged with activism, and dreaming big dreams about how they can affect their communities and environment. As I was writing GUAPA, I realized that it was the first in a quartet of plays set in the U.S. south and southwest, and that actually the poems I'd written and initial research I'd conducted about the oil spill was the next play to be written. In a sense, one play flowed directly from the other, although in the case of both, I'd been thinking about the issues and region, in and out of disaster, for a long time. The necessity to write The Way of Water stirred up. The characters started speaking to me and wouldn't let me go.

DT: You have done a considerable amount of research about the Spill and its impact on the residents of the area. In what ways is the play based on research and in what ways is it inspired by artistic license?

CS: The play is not theater of testimony. It is not docu-drama. It is a poetic transformation based on real events. In this I would say, it is not unlike, for example, how colleague Lynn Nottage re-interpreted research to create Ruined, or how colleague JT Rogers crafted The Overwhelming, based on research on the Rwandan genocide.Two notable examples of many in a field where there is extensive precedent for this kind of storytelling. That said, the play merges layers and levels of research with my own take on the situation in the Gulf region, and the impact the disaster has had on men and women who have been tenders of the waterways their whole lives, whose very livelihoods indeed depend on the ways of water, and whose environment, even before the 2010 spill, was already being affected by ground water contamination, air toxins and more. In the play, real events are woven into the fabric of events I've dreamt up as a writer. Poetry, politics and a human story are at the play's core. Here is a love story between people and their environment, between men and women, between friends, and between children and the legacies into which they have been born. The complexities and contradictions of being poor in America is also a strong thematic and concrete thread in the piece. You can't talk about class and race (and post-race) without talking about money in this country. They go hand in hand.

DT: How is the play still evolving/developing?

CS:Until a play gets into rehearsal, it is always in evolution. And it is only when it gets into rehearsal, unless for some reason you're writing a drawer play, that it continues its life as a breathing, moving work of theatre. Even after a first production, a play evolves. Right now The Way of Water is where it needs to be to walk into a room and play with actors in space and time. The Studio Retreat process will allow us to begin to unpack its layers, explore its humor, its sensuality, its pain, and I hope, also, its unsentimental, beating heart.

DT: The Way of Water is receiving more than 20 readings this month. How did this come about? What are some of the unique approaches various artists/communities have taken to presenting this piece?

CS:When I put together the draft of the play, after months of note-taking and journal-ing and research and dreaming, in the Lark's Winter Writers Retreat, I was simultaneously exhilarated by the writing process, and suddenly weary by what I felt would be the usual next steps for a writer working on a new play: the mailing, the reading, the workshop maybe, another reading, etc. All to the good. Yet I felt such a sense of outrage about the continued score of illnesses (human and wildlife) in the U.S. Gulf, that I thought "How can art engage civically, directly in the moment? How can the conversation go beyond the often rarefied world of new writing and into the much wider dialogue between the humanities and the sciences, between activism and art-making, between the ecology of theatre-making itself and the ecologies in which we live on a daily basis, whether we live land-locked, near water, or somewhere in between? And do so, without waiting. In the moment. Go speak directly with the people."

I spoke to some of my colleagues within the NoPassport theatre alliance (chiefly dramaturges Heather Helinsky and R. Alex Davis) and suggested "What if we knocked on a few doors and asked theatre folks in and out of the academy, far and wide, to give the play a read and thus mark the two-year anniversary of the oil spill and actually get a conversation either going or expanding deeper and wider in their local communities?" At first, we thought maybe five venues would give us a listen. But remarkably, over twenty have responded (and we're still adding venues as the consortium extends into May 2012), within the US and as far as Tasmania (Australia), Wales, London, Berlin, Sao Paolo, Rio de Janeiro (the play has been already translated into Portuguese), and Pretoria, South Africa. Each venue, whether it be Occupy Ashland in Oregon, American Stage in St. Petersburg, Main Street Theatre in Houston, University of Alabama in Birmingham or University of Waterloo in Ontario (Canada), has brought and is bringing their own local stories to the table as they connect with the play and the issues it raises, and the human story at its center. In Waterloo, for example, ground water contamination is a significant issue. The director Andy Houston has decided to stage the play, weather permitting, site-specifically outdoors on or near (as backdrop) a contaminated building site, with which his local community has a very specific and long-standing historical relationship. In Los Angeles, theatre ensemble Opera del Espacio has created a meditation/extraction of the play with their own physical theatre vocabulary - and has ritualized the audience's experience by asking them to bathe their actors in black liquid - despoiling them as the wildlife was despoiled and damaged - to enhance the visceral impact of the presentation. In Australia, the director Angela Miller will keep the play's Louisiana locale but present the piece with Australian accents and connect it emotionally to the people of the many poor coastal towns down under that are living lives not dissimilar than the ones of the characters in my play.

DT: Is this multi-reading scheme model that you would use for other plays of yours? Why or why not?

CS:The last time I endeavored the multi-reading scheme model was with the collaboratively written piece I curated Return to the Upright Position, which was written six months after September 11, 2001. Our goal then was to present the piece simultaneously on the anniversary of the disaster on the same day around the country as a creative act of spiritual healing through theatre. I don't know that every play is suited to or should be suited to such a scheme. The political outrage and compassion that stirred The Way of Water into being is very specific, and while many of my plays have been born out of both outrage and compassion, I think that in the end, each play speaks to how it needs to make itself manifest. When I wrote Iphigenia Crash Land Falls... (a rave fable), I never knew that it would take me to London and Greece for its first workshop in it development phase, but that's where it first found its legs. The Way of Water, like water itself, I suppose, wanted to rise up and connect and flow. I'm grateful to the many, many practitioners and educators who have put it on a raft from one city to another across many miles and continents, and are finding their own ways through and inside it. I'm just following where it goes.

 

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On Tuesday, April 10, 2012, the Missouri Playwrights Workshop hosted a reading of Caridad Svich's THE WAY OF THE WATER.  The workshop is very informal, a playwright's salon, if you will, and we bring a general sense of openness and interest in craft which is a bit outside the typical audience experience.  And of course, they're Missourians, or mostly Missourians, so there is always that attitude of "show me" to any work presented at the workshop.  Meaning, you've got to "show them" why they should care about what it is you're trying to say.  We are the "show me" state, after all—and we're just this side of cranky about our drama.   The group was mostly Mizzou undergrads, with a few local writers, and a graduate student or two.    It was more packed than usual, as we have had Caridad as a guest artist in the past, and they love her, and her magic, and really respect her writing.   I think it's safe to say, that Caridad "showed them" - that is, she opened their eyes to the depth of misery that the folks around the Gulf have experienced Post-BP-Oil-Spill: the sickness, the betrayal, the frustration with their government officials and their own ability to change what has happened.  And in our post-play discussion, to basically wrestle with the issues that Caridad raises so eloquently in her play—we all struggled with the kind of paralysis that seems to have happened since the Oil Spill and since Katrina.  Since we're just up the Mississippi a bit from all these events, the students know folks down on the Gulf, have family there, and the awful pain and suffering experienced by Jimmy, Rosalie, Yuki, and Neva was very close to home.   Like the Missourians we are, we wrestled with the dramaturgy of the play, discussed what we felt worked, and what didn't work—hey, we're a cranky bunch of scribblers, ya know—but at the same time, the students were furiously googling all the different sicknesses that have lingered since the Oil Spill, the horrifying effects of Corexit, the lack of protective gear for those who cleaned up the spill, the ghoulish quality of PAH or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons---aspects that Caridad hauntingly recreated with her magic—the vomiting of fish, the orchids of paper and pipe cleaners, the notion that, like the survivors of the Bikini Island nuclear tests, there would be no return to paradise for the good fishing folk of the Gulf of Mexico.   In the end, we were all grateful to have had taken this moment with THE WAY OF THE WATER with Caridad, nearly two years out from the original explosion of the Deepwater Horizon, as this issue will linger for many years, and there are protesters still there—though too few—whose protests still need to be heard.  We need to Occupy these problems; we need to embrace this pain.  Even as BP and all those smiling happy commercials tells us all it's okay to come back to the Gulf, and swim, and eat what's there—it's important that my students had the opportunity to hear a different voice, and a voice that is as passionate and lyric as Caridad's to remind us that there is still many years of work to be done to rectify the terrible poisoning of the Gulf of Mexico, after the disaster of the BP Oil Spill.   Dr. David A. Crespy, Associate Professor of Playwriting Director, Undergraduate Studies Artistic Director, Missouri Playwrights Workshop Co-Director, MU Writing for Performance Program Resident Playwright, First Run Theatre Company, St. Louis Missouri Field Representative, Dramatist Guild, Inc   THE WAY OF WATER by Caridad Svich was read at the Missouri Playwrights Workshop at the University of Missouri Department of Theatre on April 10th, at 7pm. Dr. David A. Crespy, Artistic Director Tags: The Way of Water Blog Posts

Jefferson Exchange Public Radio:The Way of Water 

The play's the thing, and while in this case it may not catch the conscience of the king, organizers hope it will raise awareness of poverty, health and environment in the U.S. "The Way of Water" dramatizes life after the Gulf Oil Spill, and nationwide readings on April 9 commemorate the 2nd anniversary of the spill. Playwright Caridad Svich joins us to talk about the play and the readings.

PODCAST 4/6 Hr 1: First Friday Arts segment + Play on BP spill: "The Way of Water": 

 

 

Tags: Way of WaterThe Way of Water Blog Posts

"We have long believed that theatre is one of the most powerful tools for inciting a communal dialogue about the world we live in, the impact contemporary issues have on our health, and the long lasting repercussions our decisions and actions have on our environment and our evolution as a society. The Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill not only affected those in direct contact with the disaster, but it had national and international repercussions.   Partnering with US Latina playwright Caridad Svich means that the dialogue erases borders and unites us on an international level to talk about the things that matter most. As one of Canada's only Latin American theatre companies dedicated to developing and producing the work of Latin American artists, we feel it fitting to expand our support and create alliances with Latino artists abroad."   THE WAY OF WATER by Caridad Svich will be read at Almeda Theatre on Sunday, April 29th, 2012, 2:30pm at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. The free reading will be directed by Marilo Nunez, featuring: Karl Ang, Michelle Arvizu, Andrew Moodie, and Cherissa Richards.
 

 

Tags: The Way of Water Blog Posts

by Valli Marie Rivera, Director

The reading was well received!  The audience congratulated the good acting and the staging. The audience about of 35 in our 75-seat theatre was engaged during and after the reading enthusiastic in talk back. The reaction in talk back was quite passionate and serious: about what's happening now in the Gulf, about not having a decent health insurance plan for the people who can't pay, about the cover-up with Corexit and how this can effect future marine life and create more health issues to the community.  About what the government is doing.  About what we can all do to make a difference with our environment. About who are you as a playwright and activist. About the multi-reading and participating venues. The audience agreed this was a great idea to create awareness and the keep the conversation going.  If the play will have a full production...All was good! 

I invited the audience to go to NoPassport blog to continue conversation how the reading affected them or just express what's on their mind about the BP spill and it's consequences to the people and the environment.

I am hoping that happens. 

It has been a journey for all of us. A real awakening for sure with the question in our minds: "what are you going to do about it?"

Thank you so much for inspiring us all again with your stories and questions provoked by them!

The Way of Water by Caridad Svich was read at Vortex Theatre in Alburquerque, New Mexico on April 7th, 2012 at 2pm.

Tags: The Way of Water Blog Posts

 

by Megan McClain, dramaturg

On April 20, 2010, BP’s Deepwater Horizon off-shore drilling unit exploded, killing 11 people. For the next three months nearly 5 million barrels of oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico, negatively impacting plant, animal, and human life.  The full extent of the catastrophe’s aftermath is still unknown.  Though the news media’s coverage of the spill has dissipated in the ensuing years, artists and activists continue to give voice to the lasting devastation of this event.  Addressing the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill and its position in a long line of environmental disasters, the Beyond the Horizon Festival presented by the UMass Amherst Theatre Department seeks to use performance to map our changing relationship to the natural world and offer models of community response to ecological crisis.   Developed by a interdisciplinary community of theatre artists, musicians, dancers, and environmentalists, the Beyond the Horizon Festival offers three original devised theatre pieces that use the power of performance to illuminate the interactions between humans and the environment. 

            The first piece, What Have We Learned, uses letters, dance, and song to explore how the BP Gulf oil spill has effected the lives of those in the Gulf and beyond.  To whom it may concern addresses how we struggle to communicate during times of crisis in a world pulsing with the din of suffering, disconnection, and corruption.  The final piece, Nightingale, imagines a post-apocalyptic society in which natural organisms are strictly controlled and shows what happens when one bird throws the whole system into shock. 

            Members of the Beyond the Horizon artistic team are also participating in a reading of Caridad Svich’s new play, The Way of Water, presented in collaboration with NoPassport Theatre alliance and press as part of a nationwide and international reading scheme.  The Way of Water interrogates the BP Gulf oil spill by exposing the continued negative effects of the disaster on the health and livelihoods of those in the region.  This network of readings across the country joins theatre artists in a larger conversation about the hidden and ignored human suffering of those exposed to contaminated water in the Gulf.

            Silent Spring author Rachel Carson once wrote, “In nature, nothing exists alone.” The same can be said of theatre.  Though theatre has been described as the site for exploring the human condition, that human condition is intrinsically linked to the conditions of all other life on this planet.  Theatre gives us a space to play out sites of connection and disconnection. It creates a place to reassess our destructive actions and celebrate the most beautiful wonders of the world around us.  Above all, it offers the chance to rediscover and announce what poet Mary Oliver calls our “place in the family of things.”

            The Beyond the Horizon Festival runs April 5-7 and April 10-14 at 8pm and April 14 at 2pm in the Curtain Theatre of the Fine Arts Center on the UMass Amherst campus.  The reading of Caridad Svich’s new play, The Way of Water, will be held at 4:30pm on April 10th at Food for Thought Books, 106 N. Pleasant St. Amherst, MA. For more information visit www.beyondthehorizonfestival.wordpress.com

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Two of the participating institutions: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and UMASS Amherst have used THE WAY OF WATER to respond to their school's mandates to initiate campus-wide discussions about water.  Take a moment to check out these articles published by UNC's University Gazette and The Valley Advocate: 

ACADEMIC THEME LAUNCHED ON WORLD WATER DAY. 27 March 2012

"The things that are wrong with water today are pretty big, and the pressures on water are huge. But it is within the grasp of human kind to use it as a tool for good," said Jamie Bartram, professor of environmental sciences and engineering at the Gillings School of Global Public Health and director of The Water Institute at UNC.

CITIZEN ARTISTS: A FESTIVAL OF DEVISED WORK RESPONDS TO ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER. 5 April 2012. 

The UMASS Theater Department has risen to the deans' challenge by creating three original works that "map and explore our changing relationship to the natural world and offer models of community response to ecological crisis."  Beyond the Horizen  is an exercise in "devised theater," explains dramaturgy grad student Megan McClain, the project's curator. The pieces were co-created by the participants---two dozen students from three of the Five Colleges---using research, found texts and their own words and ideas. This approach, says McClain, mirrors and extends the notion of interconnectedness in the campus wide theme.

We also appreciate Carnegie Mellon dramaturgy student Emily Anne Gibson initiated an article on TheatreManiaU. 

"All in all, this is a project I feel strongly about being involved in. I have a lot of beliefs about theater, but one of them is that it should provide a social commentary. And this most certainly does. I also think theater should create a conversation. And I believe that The Way of Water  will do just that. And I know, first hand, that theater must be communal---this reading series is a wonderful embodiment of that community, and when the play receives its world premiere, I believe that it will create a community out if its audience that can talk, argue, collaborate, and come to new understandings."

Tags: The Way of Water Blog Posts

Dear Actors, Directors and The Way of Water participants:

In my conversations with Cindy Cooper, Managing Editor for On the Issues Magazine, she directed me to the research efforts of Jacqui Patterson. As you will see from her article below, women have been disproportantly affected by the BP Oil Spill. If you are playing the roles of Rosalie and Neva, we hope you find her article particularly moving.---Heather Helinsky, dramaturg

Gulf Oil Drilling Disaster: Gendered Layers of Impact 
by Jacqui Patterson

The Deepwater Horizon Oil Drilling Disaster of April 20, 2010 (the “BP Oil Spill”) is, as the news sometimes tells us, causing grave damage to the waterways and shores, marshlands and bayous of the Gulf of Mexico. Far more hidden is the devastation wrought on the women in scores of coastal communities.

My research and investigations in the Gulf region indicate that while all were affected, the women of the coast experienced differential impacts and unique issues during the disaster and in its aftermath. In this regard, the Gulf disaster fits in with the experiences of disasters worldwide, in which, across the board, women are disproportionately affected.

In the case of the Deepwater Horizon incident, women’s experiences were different from men in four main areas: 1) Care-taking and health; 2) Economic health; 3) Abuse in the home 4) Family stability.  In many ways, women were required to take on new family responsibilities in the wake of the Gulf disaster. From a gender perspective, these are many lessons to bring forward.

Challenged with Family Health and Welfare

In the aftermath of the disaster, people reported many health concerns: respiratory issues, digestive problems, skin reactions and other conditions. With these new health issues on the rise, women’s care-taking experienced a corresponding increase. As is typical in many families, women in the Gulf took on the role of caregiver when husbands, children or other family members became sick.

Furthermore, women faced risk to their own health, especially because of differential effects on reproductive health, as is frequently true in situations of environmental exposure. Veteran toxicologist Dr. William Sawyer, in his analysis of the risks resulting from toxic exposures arising from the Gulf Oil Drilling Disaster, pointed to Toluene and aromatic hydrocarbons as risks for women because they are known to cause spontaneous abortions and severe birth defects in humans and other mammals.

Mental health issues increased, and women reported having to be the pillars of stability and leadership in the family so that members could continue to function.

In addition, women became the spokespersons for families that needed to share their stories and advocate for justice. Recovery workers – most of those who were hired were male -- had to sign contracts saying that they wouldn’t “speak out” about their experiences as part of clean-up crews or other parts of the recovery, leaving the women to carry community voices.

Reliance on public assistance increased significantly in the region due to the disaster.  Women were left responsible for accessing public assistance -- whether it’s because women are viewed as being in charge of household matters, or because of gender based “pride” differentials.  As Mary McCall of Coden, Alabama, shared with me, “And then I’m trying to help fishermen without jobs. I would get in line to get groceries, but them -- being men -- they didn’t want to do that. They didn’t want to say ‘I’m going to stand in line for them to give me groceries’; I did it for (the men).”

Economic Access and Opportunities Shunted

Women’s access to economic opportunities was limited and their experiences in the workplace were compromised because of the Deepwater Horizon incident. The gender of workers in the affected region influenced the degree of economic devastation, the ability to find new work, the percentage of compensation for loss of work in the claims process and experiences in the recovery process.

Jobs that women occupied before the disaster were more vulnerable to being obliterated. Oyster shuckers, crab pickers and chambermaids who I interviewed in my investigations were predominantly women, and they lost their employment. Some boat owners were able to gain revenue from being a part of the “Vessels of Opportunity” program that utilized boats in the clean up, and hotels continued to operate even when occupancy was low. But, employees on the lower rungs of the employment ladder – especially women -- suffered the greatest impact to their earning ability.

Many of the recovery jobs involved manual labor, and women were excluded from these opportunities. At one worksite, managers reported that out of the 300 workers, only 10 were women. Women reported being trained and then not being hired when mass recruitment of crews took place. Several women reported their concerns and were only hired after the NAACP called contractors expressing concern for discriminatory hiring practices. Clearly, the Department of Labor needs to increase oversight in ensuring that contractors do not discriminate based on gender.

In addition, many women reported numerous accounts of workplace sexual harassment by both co-workers and supervisors on various clean- up operation sites.  Contractors must adopt zero-tolerance policies on sexual harassment in the workplace.

Women were also under-represented in the contracts awarded in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon Incident. An analysis of BP Supplier/Contractor Diversity data shows that a total of $181.4 million in small business contracts was awarded; women-owned businesses received only $4.9 million in contracts, less than three percent of the total.  In the future, agencies offering contracts must be intentional about outreach to women owned-businesses.

Please read Jacqui Patterson's article further by clicking on this link to On the Issues Magazine! There's more!

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