How do I experience power and powerlessness?
I.
The first thing that popped into my head is my powerlessness in the face of war with its destruction and annihilation. Military powers persist at war. Few have the power to survive it.
Only chance leaves me out of wars. I feel powerless to stop them. I feel powerless even to affect the news blackout that hides the worst of the atrocities. I fantasize that a crowd of Americans or a mass of Quakers from around the world could stop war if we were willing to become human shields. I recall the photo of one man stopping a line of tanks in Tiananmen Square—if he stopped them. I recall the journals of Rachel Corrie, the American women standing on a porch of a Palestinian house. She was mowed down by a tank. Would it have made a difference if more people had been willing to defy and die? It made a difference in Gandhi’s India. Non-violent people were beaten and shot and killed on the way to gaining home rule. And they won. Much fewer people died than would have died in a war. Those who died in this non-cooperation effort turned powerlessness into power. The cost was their lives. Could I do that?
No. I don't have the courage to defy bombs, tanks, guns, or even the commands of a tyrant. (Well, I might have the courage to defy the commands of Trump, if he stops tampering with free speech. Time will tell.) Right now I experience power only in the manipulation of words, regardless of whether or not I write in an acceptable form, or spend time shaping the artistry of my expression. But often the words sit in my computer rather than go public.
Two people here remind me how to have empowerment in public. They have stepped into crowds of protestors holding signs and chanting. Week days, they sit at the spot where the driveway of our retirement community meets a 4-lane avenue. They hold up signs so the issues stay in the minds of the people driving home from work. They count the beeps of supporters. I have joined them twice so far. The mood is cheerful, though the need for action is serious. I felt empowered on that corner. Again, I am merely using words, but using them publicly makes a difference between feeling empowered or powerless.
II.
Thinking about this led me to reflect on the part of my life I spent as a director of educational theatre (at five collages SUNYA, UC Berkeley, Wells Collage, The Collage of William and Mary, and Bucknell University). I was rarely the person who performed, but in rehearsal I felt the power to shape scenes and to empower students to find their roles, relationships, and objectives. I think I revealed their power, a large use of courage in a small environment. I came home each day satisfied, fulfilled. The finished art had power, too, in public performance. But I am very aware, as Plato and Augustus Boal remind us, that no one can think that playing a soldier or king on stage makes them a soldier or king in life. My backstage empowerment in the role of director does not transfer into performative courage--power--outside the theatre.
Once though, in a production I helped to shape called “It is Better to Speak,” my collective of theatre activists took the drama from the stage to the street to give energy and encouragement to anti-war protestors (at the Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice). We built a play with a juxtaposition of scenes of powerlessness with scenes of hope, using material that we gathered from activists across the USA--their poetry, songs, anecdotes, and newspaper articles. Even those watching, therefore, helped to create the play. We didn’t tell a story so much as build and then release tension scene by scene about the proliferation of nuclear weapons and how weapons were used in the past. We sometimes narrated and sometimes danced the material, finding moves to enhance the words we were saying, particularly those from survivors of Hiroshima. The brilliance of the material was that it travelled reshaped, depending on which performers were available. In the audiences, we saw tears. After the performances we were often thanked for the depth of the experience. I would love to participate in street theatre again.
We took the title of the production, "It is better to speak" from Audre Lorde's poem “A
Litany for Survival.” Speaking out of her experience as a Black woman and
lesbian, she said:
. . . when we speak we are
afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid
remembering
we were never meant to survive.
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