Performance Studies, Service-Learning, and the Staging of Community

As a discipline within the field of communication, performance studies emphasizes the necessity of community-centered inquiry with aims toward social justice and the sanctity of every human being. Surprising, little study exists joining performance studies goals with the compatible practices of service-learning. This essay connects performance studies goals with service-learning functions. The first portion of the essay addresses ethical questions involved with integrating service-learning into a performance studies course. The discussion then shifts to a description of two successful service-learning projects; both projects took place in an introductory performance studies course. The essay concludes with a reflection on the value and challenges that accompany the use of service-learning within a performance studies context.

Prologue

Trying to explain what I do for a living to my father-in-law sometimes leads to an awkward conversation.

"Yes, I teach three courses."

"How often do they meet?"

"About three times a week."

From the other side of the kitchen table, the hard-working farmer and truck driver from the upper Midwest crumples his forehead as he sips his coffee. I self-consciously stare at the floral print on the tablecloth. He doesn't say anything, but I can tell that he's wondering what I do with the remaining forty to fifty hours of the workweek. Without being asked, I interject, "Preparation takes a lot of time…ah…I also serve on committees, advise students, and do some research."

"Oh," he says politely. The "research" part clearly doesn't go over well. He knows that I'm not working on a cure for cancer, or arthritis, or a way to finally put an end to quack grass. Through his politely dismissive facial expression, I hear him thinking: "The kid's got a Ph.D. in theatre for God's sake." I watch this sweet, intelligent, good-natured father-of-my-bride resist the temptation to roll his eyes.

Boyer (1996) helps put this awkward conversation into a larger context. After years of explosive growth, Boyer observes that universities face the erosion of public confidence stemming from a perception that higher education no longer serves as a vital center for the work of a nation (p. 11). Boyer notes that this has not always been the case. The most of 350 years, higher education served the larger purposes of American life—from colonial colleges that prepared civic and religious leaders, to Abraham Lincoln's historical Land Grand Act that linked higher learning to the nation's agricultural revolution, to the GI Bill of the 1940s that raised the education expectations of a nation (p. 11-12). This ability to connect intellectual pursuits with mainstream concerns seems distant in today's higher education. As recognized by Boyer, the university system currently suffers from perceptions that it is disconnected, elitist, indulgent, impractical, and deliberately confusing. (I can only imagine my father-in-law's response if he were to read a typical passage from a professional journal.) It is not surprising that this disconnect between educational institutions and everyday life, as argued by Boyer, creates "a growing feeling in this country that higher education is, in fact, part of the problem rather than the solution" (Boyer, 1996, p. 14).

Clearly, steps must be taken to reestablish higher education within the community. Harkavy and Puckett (1994) call for scholarship to return to a mission orientation that advances the concept of academically-based community service (p. 139). Several pedagogic strategies lumped under the title of "service-learning" or "academically-based service-learning"¹ aspire to this purpose. In his preface to Service Learning, former U.S. Commissioner of Education and Vice President of the Ford Foundation, Harold Howe, defines service-learning as "an educational activity, program, or curriculum that seeks to promote students' learning through experiences with volunteerism or community service" (Howe, 1997, p. iv). Howe then offers a minor rewrite to scripture, stating, "a briefer statement might go back to the Bible: 'Love thy neighbor' and learn by doing it" (p. iv). In short, service-learning reestablishes higher education's connection to community by embracing ancient, holy, and tested forms of conduct. In a difficult time of shrinking budgets, rising tuition, and anti-intellectual backlash, service-learning scholarship may offer one of the best available means of restoring community faith in the work of higher education.

Service-Learning and Performance Studies: A Statement of Purpose

Boyer's lament concerning the lack of connection between higher education and community sounds strange to a performance studies audience.² Current trends in performance studies emphasize cross-cultural communication and performance as a tool in the creation of empathy. Conquergood (1985) extols "dialogical" performance as a hopeful means of cross-cultural communication (p. 10). Similarly, Pelias (1991) eloquently states, "Empathy allows performers to escape their solipsistic worlds, to make human contact, to be members of the human community" (p. 151). An increased emphasis on community engagement also shows itself in the widespread appropriation by performance studies practitioners of the theatre of social change theories and techniques of Augusto Boal and Jeff Wirth. Indeed, both in terms of philosophical and curricular goals, performance studies shares a great deal in common with the community-centered emphasis of service-learning pedagogy.

Regrettably, this shared emphasis of preserving and serving community has yet to translate into much cross-fertilization between performance studies and service-learning pedagogy. As illustrated by the recent National Communication Associations sponsorship of Droge and Murphy's Voices of Strong Democracy: Concepts and Models for Service Learning in Communication Studies (Droge & Murphy, 2000), many focus groups within the larger discipline of communication actively embrace service-learning. Unfortunately, performance studies practitioners seem show to make the connection.³ Perhaps this reluctance stems from the belief that they are already doing service-learning, that performance studies at its core is a service-learning activity. Unfortunately, this reasonable if narrow view fails to acknowledge the ways in which a well-articulated service-learning framework might enhance a performance studies classroom project. The following narrative essay is designed to unite two should-be bedfellows. The essay divides into three parts. Part one addresses some ethical questions involved with selecting a service-learning project. Section two consists of a project description, or a "thick description" (Geertz, 1973) of two successful service-learning projects; both projects took place in an introductory performance studies course. Part three reflects upon the value and challenges that accompany the use of service-learning in performance studies. As an overall approach, this study corresponds with Scales and Koppelman's (1997) appeal that the cause of service-learning can best be advanced if teachers are "exposed to examples of successful service-learning programs" (Scales & Koppelman 1997, p. 132). Ideally, this process will spawn additional applications, improvements and uses for service-learning with a performance studies context.

Some Thoughts on Getting Started

My first encounter with service-learning began in near ignorance. While attending faculty orientation at Calvin College, I listened to the coordinator of service-learning at Calvin College give a presentation on possible applications of service-learning in the college classroom.⁴ Wheels immediately began turning regarding a possible application using an existing oral history assignment in my performance studies course. For this assignment, students conduct and tape-record interviews, create transcripts from one or more of the stories, then "restore" the original performance into the form of a dramatic monologue. Through repetition I learned that the assignment works best when the oral histories share a common theme. For example, one semester, students collected "holiday stores"; another semester, the project centered on stories dealing with family rules; on another occasion, students collected and performed religious conversion stories. From these experiences, I observed that a common assignment adds cohesion and unity to the overall exercise while also yielding noticeably richer performances. By the final performance of a semester, all class participants seem to understand considerably more about the given topic or type of experience. Because of its tendency to focus on a given community, using service-learning in conjunction with the oral history assignment appeared an ideal way to generate a common pool of interview subjects. Furthermore, as a student of performance studies, I found the ethnographic and community-focus of such an assignment intriguing.

In my first meeting with the representative from the service-learning center, I energetically explained all of the ways a service-learning component would strengthen my oral history assignment. After patiently listening to my comments, the representative politely asked how the project would benefit the community? To my embarrassment, I had never directly considered this question! I had fallen into perhaps the most common pitfall of service-learning: focusing on the curricular benefits ahead of the actual service component. Kinsley (1994) firmly prescribes that student's service-learning experiences should center on "two firm anchors." First, the service experience should be "directly related to academic subject matter," and second, students must make "positive contributions to individuals and community institutions" (my emphasis) (p. 14). Similarly, Ward (1997) laments that poor planning and short-term thinking often result in a condition in which "service-learning recipients end up getting less out of the service relationship than do the students" (p. 140). My oversight also raises provocative questions concerning the ways in which many of us in performance studies address the topic of cross-cultural engagement; I return to these questions in the "Reflections" portion of this essay.

After further discussion, we decided that a theatrical performance of the students' oral history monologues in honor of the participating community might serve as appropriate way of accomplishing the service element of the assignment. The concept of performing as a sign of tribute or as a living offering dates back to the very origins of art: it can be seen in everything from prehistoric cave paintings, to court performances in Shakespeare's England, to free concerts in Central Park. Our hope was that this same spirit of homage and community engagement would translate into the performance of oral history.⁵ Admittedly, the motive of celebrating a community through performance poses ethical questions. While the individual lives of community members are surely worth celebrating (as would be any individual life), is it always responsible to celebrate a community? What if the community is victimized and decimated by dominant power structures? To what degree does celebrating the community celebrate the victimization? Again, aided by information from the following project descriptions, I return to these questions in the "Reflections" portion of the essay.

In addition to making sure the service-learning project enhances curricular goals while genuinely serving the community, a conscientious instructor should also devise his or her project with a strong reflective component. Shumer (1997) argues that "reflective practices need to be important and intentional elements of sound service-learning projects" (p. 28). Similarly, Kendall (1990) addresses the student directly. She states, "The highly individualized learning that you're doing in the community requires time for reflection so that you can take a look at what you're doing, relate it to yourself, and generalize from it to other experiences" (Kendall, 1990, p. 85). Kendall then lists three primary strategies to bring about reflection. These strategies include requiring students to keep journals detailing their experiences, meet regularly with community supervisors and faculty advisors, and interact frequently with other service-learners (p.85). Ideally, a reflective component similar to Kendall's model should run through an entire service-learning project. At the outset, the instructor should determine methods of reflection that best service the "highly individualized" demands of his or her project.

Project Descriptions

In the spring of 1997, my students collected oral histories from volunteers at Holland Home, an extended-care facility in the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Every spring, the administration of Holland Home has a luncheon at a local church to recognize the eighty or so volunteers who contribute to the successful operations of the facility. As part of the festivities, my students performed a compiled script consisting of the oral histories centered on the theme of volunteerism. In addition to providing the entertainment for the luncheon, the thirty-minute production served as a means of recognizing and celebrating the contributions of the volunteers. The second oral history/service-learning project took place in the spring of 1998. In this instance, students collected oral histories from residents of an economically depressed section in downtown Grand Rapids known as the Heartside neighborhood. The residents who participated all shared a connection with Heartside Ministries, a local Christian non-profit organization that, among other things, provides Christian ministry, addiction counseling and vocational training to the Heartside community. Guided by the desires to give voice to the struggles, triumphs, and persevering spirit of the Heartside residents, students organized oral histories into a complied script and performed the script at a luncheon given for members of the Heartside community at a coffee house in the neighborhood.

As a method of systematizing and clarifying an often organic and chaotic process, this essay attempts to merge service-learning with oral history performance in four stages. These stages include "Coming Together," "Collection and Incubation," "Classroom Performance," and "Community Performance." Far from a prescriptive regime, this model is intended only as a rough guide for future service-learning applications. Indeed, since every service-learning project is unique, successful applications rely on the virtue of flexibility. This said, the first stage describes two examples of "coming together" that may serve as helpful strategies. The first example involves contact initiated by the instructor with a community representative, while the second describes the delicate task of introducing students to their community partners.

Stage One: Coming Together

After deciding on a service-learning project that enhances curricular goals and makes positive contributions to the community, the next step is introducing the project to the students and to the participating community members. This step should be performed thoughtfully, as a certain degree of skepticism and uneasiness may run through both groups. In some cases, the special qualities and needs of individual projects may dictate the method of introduction. For example, in the Holland Home project, I carefully explained the service-learning component to my students on the first day of class. The next class period, a service-learning representative gave a short overview of the service-learning program at Calvin College, including such things as how to record hours for a transcript record and methods of transportation the students could use to visit the field site. Following this presentation, the Volunteer Coordinator from Holland Home gave a short presentation documenting the history and mission of the institution, the types of volunteer work performed there, and the kinds of people who serve as volunteers. The project began taking shape two weeks later when an energetic group of Holland Home volunteers visited the classroom. Warmed by introductions, explanations, and refreshments, volunteers paired with students. This initial meeting provided them an opportunity to introduce themselves to one another. I also instructed both parties to use this time to schedule a second meeting in which students could accompany volunteers in whatever service they provide for Holland Home.

The Heartside orientation began similarly with short presentations to the students early in the semester by the service-learning center and the director of Heartside Ministries. The director anticipated that he would be able to field approximately ten residents willing to participate in the project. As a result, we decided to double-up and assign two students to each resident. This choice lead to substantial changes in the process elaborated in the "Classroom Performance" section of the essay. Instead of meeting on the college campus as was the case with the Holland Home project, Heartside residents and students met in the fellowship room of Heartside Ministries. This location provided the residents the security of a familiar setting and allowed the students the opportunity to visit an unfamiliar neighborhood. When only three residents initially attended the meeting, I questioned the viability of the assignment. But, as the hour progressed, several more arrived. In the end all but one group (two out of twenty-two students) found partners. Although the overall reception to the project was a positive response, a few residents did express concerns. One middle-aged man wanted assurance that no medical experiments would be performed on him. Another younger and angrier man wondered why he should give his stories away to "a bunch of kinds who have no idea what I'm going through." Such questions were useful in that they helped clarify the assignment, as well as force both the students and myself to continually reevaluate our purposes and motives. By the end of the session, everyone shared a clearer sense of the project, and all but one resident agreed to participate. We then divided into project groups with just enough time for students and residents to introduce themselves and schedule a second meeting. With everyone possessing a better idea of whom, where and why, the meeting concluded and I drove my students back to campus.

Stage Two: Collection and Incubation

The intention guiding this second stage of this essay, "Collection and Incubation" is to provide the reader with hard-earned insights into some of the logistical and ethical issues that may arise during a service-learning project. Initially, the discussion foregrounds the intricacy of scheduling meetings between students and their community partners. The discussion quickly shifts, however, from logistical to ethical concerns with a chronicle of examples of complications that first showed themselves during this second phase of the service-learning projects.

After introducing the service-learning component, the course as a whole temporarily swerves away from the oral history assignment in favor of a unit on poetry. During this three to four week period, students meet with their community partners on their own time, record interviews, and select possible stories from the audio tapes. In the case of the Holland Home project, students accompanied volunteers on their service work. These visitations included everything from spending time in the Holland Home beauty shop to observing pet therapy in action. Conversely, students involved in the Heartside project used this liminal to interview residents either at Heartside Ministries or at a coffee shop in the neighborhood. Some students chose to attend religious services with their residents at the chapel located at Heartside Ministries. During this phase of both projects, I kept up with the developments by asking for progress reports at the beginning of classes and by monitoring journal reflections. For the most part, however, students functioned independently during this portion of the assignment.

Based on my experiences with service-learning projects to date, the highest percentage of "unplanned" events take place during this incubation period. For example, one student involved in the Holland Home project expressed concern that the content of the oral history he collected did not meet the "goals" of the assignment. When I asked him what he meant by this, he told me that a large portion of the oral history revolved around the fact that the volunteer, a retired woman in her seventies, did not feel appreciated for her efforts. She told him how certain residents of the home cruelly criticized her clothing and her overall personal appearance, and how this behavior often caused her to leave her desk in tears. The Heartside project also generated some difficult questions when two students working together collected an oral history from a man who confided to them that he struggles with an addiction to pornography.

Understandably, these students wondered if they should include these aspects of the narratives in their transcripts. Indeed, the degree to which either of these difficult issues should appear in the final performance text symbolizes the ethical dimensions accompanying an assignment of this type. In such cases, a service-learning facilitator must carefully weigh the service components of the final performance against the curricular goals of the assignment. In the case of the Holland Home volunteer, we decided to include the difficult portion of the interview. We did so because the volunteer wished it, and because her negative experiences in many ways defined her overall feelings about service. In the case of the Heartside resident, we chose not to include his struggles with pornography in our final script. We based this decision on a concern for the resident. When the students mentioned his addiction in a later meeting, he appeared shy and embarrassed, as if he felt that, in an unrestrained moment, he had revealed too much of himself. The fact that the discussion of pornography composed a relatively small portion of the overall interview helped in the decision. Still, such choices are not easy, nor should they be. As Conquergood (1985) wisely predicts, "performance does not proceed in ideological innocence and axiological purity" (p. 2).

Another set of "unplanned" events involved the scheduling of meetings with the Heartside residents, many of whom were homeless and could not be reached other than through Heartside Ministries. Of the ten groups of students and residents who initially set up second meetings in the "Coming Together" stage, only five successfully met during their scheduled times. Working with the Heartside staff, students scheduled new meetings with some of the residents. Still, a total of three groups (six students and three residents) never successfully met. This placed me in the awkward situation of quickly devising alternative assignments for these students. Predictably, student morale toward the project dropped with each unforeseen obstacle.

Although awkward and frustrating, a case exists that these types of complications actually strengthen the case for using service-learning. Schekley, and Keeton (1997) argue that students gain "knowledge-about-the-world" from a service-learning experience in two ways: "confirmation" and "disconfirmation" (p. 38). "A testament to the strength of the process in which learners reshape experience," confirmation occurs when learners' experiences "conveniently match the expectations they have for these experiences" (p. 38). Conversely, disconfirmation involves those cases when learners' expectations do not match their experiences. Sheckley and Keeton report that adult students "learn more from experiences in which their expectations were disconfirmed than form experiences where expectations were confirmed, even though disconfirming learning projects were more frustrating, anxiety producing, and stressful" (Schekley & Keeton, 1997, p. 39).

It follows that students become uncomfortable when collecting oral histories that reveal less than rosy portraits of volunteerism, or depict troubling revelations about their subjects. Even the inability to do something as seemingly simple as set up a meeting may frustrate them to such an extent that they consider academic mutiny. During the anxious moments, we must remember that, through disconfirmation, learning still takes place. In his attempt to articulate the ideal motives behind performance ethnography, Pelias (1991) stumbles upon a theme of disconfirmation. He writes, "Instead of reifying performers' personal ideologies or institutional values, [performers] strive for social consciousness in which others are not rendered invisible (de-realized) or assumed known (over-realized), but are closely regarded, familiarized" (Pelias, 1991, p. 150. In short, through disconfirmation, students gain a richer, more complex, and empathetic understanding that far surpasses simplistic, idealized, and one-dimensional views often carried into a project.

State Three: Classroom Performances

Having completed their initial fieldwork, students now enter the "Classroom Performance" phase of the oral history assignment. This stage begins with a discussion of literature as an oral phenomenon followed by techniques used in the creation of oral history transcripts. The emphasis then evolves into strategies for enhancing live performance. These strategies center on the value of performance workshops of the oral history transcripts, both as solo pieces and dramatic duos.

For approximately three to four class periods, I discuss the oral history assignment in the context of "dialogic performance" (Conquergood, 1985), "natural performance" (Stucky, 1993), and personal narrative structure (Langelier, 1989; Peterson and Langelier, 1997). Showing and discussing selections from the video tape of Anna Deveare Smith's Fires in the Mirror⁶ helps students envision the kinds of performance possible from this assignment. I give students the option of a traditional transcription style, or a more poetic approach that utilizes the principles of prosody and graphemics discussed in the earlier unit on poetry and utilized by Smith in her scripts. After working through the above material, the class moves into a series of workshop performances followed by a round of final performances. With or without a service-learning component, this basic approach works well as a means of generating meaningful and innovative oral history performances.

The fact that students who participated in the Heartside project worked in groups of two forced a modification the above approach. Instead of performing solo pieces, students explored techniques of bifurcating their oral history narratives. To help this process, I introduced different options for dividing the single narrative into two voices common in chamber theatre style scripting. Yordon (1997) offers some useful pointers in this area, particularly in her chapter on creating chamber theatre scripts (p. 99-153). One option involves dividing the narratives as settings change. In other words, students simply change the speaker when the story moved to a new location. Another approach involves switching speakers based on shifts in time. This method essentially creates a narrator anchoring a story in the present, while the second performer plays both the past and the future. In yet another possible approach, students divide narrative along Labov and Walesky's (1967) model of "abstract," "orientation," "complicating action," "evaluation," and "resolution" (Labov and Waletsky, 1967). By far the most intricate approach, this option offers the added benefit of helping students recognize and appreciates the structural components of oral history. Armed with one or more of these methods, students become better equipped to approach the dual task of turning one voice into two and two voices into one.

Comparing the Holland Home and the Heartside classroom performances, I observed that the bifurcated Heartside oral histories pushed students away from mimetic/imitative movement choices that typically complement oral history performance (i.e. the Anna Deveare Smith performance) and toward a more suggestive aesthetic common in readers theatre and chamber theatre staging. A number of choral reading style scripting choices—such as speaking words simultaneously, echoing phrases, overlapping dialogue—also emerged as prominent scripting choices. With only a few exceptions, the classroom performances of the Heartside residents far exceeded my expectations as students produced exciting, creative, and often unexpected performances.

Stage Four: Community Performance

All of the components of a semester long oral history project merge into one with the creation and performance of a compiled script. Based on first impressions, the "Community Performance" stage appears the most challenging and seemingly overwhelming sequence of the project. In this stage, the instructor divides students into project groups, introduces the genre of the compiled script, discusses and illustrates presentational staging techniques, devises introductory, transitional, and concluding material to connect group projects, and, finally, facilitates a community performance of the newly created compiled script. In spite of the seemingly large number of steps, I have found that the design of the assignment establishes a momentum that propels the project reasonably effortlessly towards a successful and rewarding conclusion.

Key to the success of this assignment is the decision to divide students into small groups. Imagine the task of composing and staging a thirty-minute, multi-genre script that involves twenty student performances equally—a sizable project for a seasonal directing slot, much less one project within a three-credit semester hour course. Placing students in small groups of four to five makes the project manageable and increases student ownership. Instead of one producer/adapter/director/each group compiles its own five to seven minute script. As part of the compilation process, I require students to incorporate selections from the oral history assignment as well as at least two other genres of literature into their compiled scripts.

As a primer to the group work, I spend a class period introducing students to various techniques of compiled script formation, focusing specifically on the range existing between assemblage and collage scripting techniques. I then spend a second class period introducing basic presentational staging techniques useful in group performance. Material from Klienau and McHugues (1980), as well as Yordon (1997) serves as useful guides for these discussions and demonstrations. Students generally appreciate having time to explore and experiment with the new material in their project groups. Armed with practical information on scripting and staging, students spend the next three to four class periods scripting and staging their group projects. We then workshop each piece in front of the rest of the class. Together, we use this time to polish and refine student generated scripting and staging choices.

Suddenly, we now have about 25 minutes of scripted and staged material. The final step in the process involves connecting the four to five short group performances into one master script. First, the production needs an introduction. With both the Holland Home and Heartside performances, students began the performance by introducing themselves as if they were their community partners. This simple framing device both established the relationship between the students and their community partners and introduced the audience to the basic convention guiding the performance as a whole. To make the frame visually interesting, I directed students to meet center-stage in groups of two in lines that circle back to the center. In both performances, members of the audience applauded or sheered as they heard their name or the name of someone they knew. When the first two performers introduced themselves, the line opened to reveal the configuration of the first performance group. With the Heartside performance, I instructed one student to shout-out, "Voices of Heartside" with the rest of the students responding in unison, "In celebration of community."

After devising an appropriate method of introduction, the next step involves deciding how to deal with transitions. During the Holland Home performance, I learned the hard way the importance of filling in the gaps. In this case, I neglected transitions almost completely and the overall performance suffered. Audience members appeared confused as to when to applaud or how to react to the dead-spots between each of the small group performances. The absence of transition-friendly technical theatre equipment (light boards, sound equipment) further complicated matters. With the Heartside performance, I found a low-tech solution. Two students, one on piano and one on guitar, played music during the transition gaps. The music came from a Christian hymn used as part of the compiled script by one of the groups. Although countless options exist for transition material, the use of live music filled gaps in the scripts needed for set-up time while successfully unifying the performance as a whole.

Finally, the performance needs some kind of concluding statement. Several possibilities exist. With the Holland Home project, I added a recognizable frame to the performance by ending it as it began, with the students introducing themselves two by two. As a way of symbolizing the connections made during the performance, students recited their own name along with the name of their community partner. With the Heartside project, I tried a different approach. Near the end of the final group's performance, the rest of the performers, who had been sitting near the periphery of the small coffee house stage, slowly filled in all of the spaces not taken by members of the group performing. This action symbolized a community coming together. By the final line of the script, every student performer and, by implication, every community partner, owned a place on stage. At this time, the same student who began the performance again reached his arms toward the audience and shouted, "The voices of Heartside," followed by a unison repetition of the line, "In celebration of community" from the rest of the performers. I was happy to notice that several of the Heartside residences participated in this call-and-response moment of dialogue.

Reflections

The marriage of performance studies with service-learning holds the potential to increase student learning and to make positive contributions to the community. Benefits to students emerge in predictable and unpredictable ways. At the very least, students get to know people they otherwise would not. At best, a transcendent joining takes place. Pelias (1991) describes this joining: "They become a part of the community of voices seeking meaningful contact and struggling to make sense of the world" (p. 150). Prior to turning in their journals for the Heartside project, students responded to three questions: What do I have in common with my resident? What don't I have in common with my resident? And what did I learn from my resident that I can use as "equipment for living"? Predictably, many students addressed the third question with responses such as, "I realize how easy my life is compared to Jim's'," "Mary taught me to stop taking things for granted.⁷ Occasionally, however, the reflections took less expected turns. One student wrote, "I learned the importance of joy and laughter. It is so important to smile and find joy in life, whatever the circumstance. Geoff reminded me of this." Another student wrote, "Helping people is how Rick defines himself. He sees everyone as image bearers of God. I hope someday, I can do the same, especially if I'm ever in a position like his." Finally, a third student reflects, "The quality I most want to imitate in Marlene is her ability to keep going when most of us would crumble. She is a tower." These qualities—optimism, selflessness, and perseverance—stand as worthy goals in any curriculum.

In a 1997 National Public Radio interview, Anna Deveare Smith discussed the differences between journalists and performers. Both collect stories, but whereas journalists strive to remain disconnected and objective toward their subjects, Smith states, "my job as an actor is to love the characters I play" (Smith, 1997). Merging service-learning and the performance of oral history forces students to lose a bit of their journalistic objectivity. Through the act of performance, vocal patterns and experiences commingle into one—a relationship forms. Certainly, to claim that cultural understanding automatically results from a five-minute performance of an oral history transcript shows a disturbing naiveté. And yet, on some level, student performers must learn care for their subjects in order to connect with their words. To echo Smith, they must learn to love them, if only a little. Considering the alternatives of ignorance, apathy or hatred, integrating service-learning into a performance studies classroom exists as a worthwhile, helpful, and affirming pedagogic tool.

The oral history assignments described above also offer something useful and affirming to their participating communities. True, a skeptic might argue that, despite the positive efforts of volunteers, our systems for aiding the elderly are less than ideal and therefore should not be glorified in performance. A like-minded voice might argue that our homeless communities inspire anything but communal celebration. Ultimately, these positions fail to examine the empowering capabilities of community performance. Turner (1969) celebrates the efficacy of the performance event as tool for building community. Turner posits that, for many communities, experience becomes meaningful when "expressed" or "pressed out" through performance. He argues that public performance of narratives and rituals structure and create meaning for a society (Turner 1960, p. 13-14). It is certainly true that traditional forms of discourse generally do not privilege stories from groups such as Holland Home volunteers or Heartside residents. In keeping with Turner's observations, oral history performances highlight communities who might otherwise see themselves as voiceless. Such performances do not endorse the process that led to a community's social standing so much as they bear witness. By sharing their stories with students, participating community members create a record, a transmission of life experience, that places them within the fabric of a group of people united by symbolic beliefs and shared experience. Indeed, in his discussion of the challenges of performing oral history, Pelias (1991) outlines the ideal outcome of performance ethnography. He states, "When performers speak 'with' or 'beside' others, they share the stage, giving others equal opportunity to be heard" (Pelias, 1991, p. 150).

Experience supports these conclusions. Sitting in the audience at the Holland Home and Heartside performances, an observer could witness several community participants turning and smiling to the people around them when they saw themselves portrayed. One young man at the Heartside performance could not contain himself, joyfully shouting, "That's me! That's me," whenever his student partners spoke his words. Similarly, after the Heartside performance, a middle-aged woman walked up to me and asked for a copy of the script. Moments before, she watched students perform her stories of struggling with drug addiction and of being a homeless, single mother. With an expression of confident gratitude, she said, "I want my kids to have this script. Other people have got to know our stories."

Finally, beyond the attributes of community service and improved pedagogy, the use of service-learning promises something of practical and great importance of performance studies practitioners: accountability. In the 1980s, members of what was then a discipline known as "oral interpretation" changed their name to performance studies. Although a complicated issue, the change grew out of a desire to expand the definition of what constitutes performance, to widen the lens of investigation from literary to cultural texts, to be, in short, more inclusive of otherness. Inherent in all of the debates and discussion of this time lurked a subtle altruism, a belief that a symbolic renaming might somehow contribute to a better understanding of difference in the world. The logic is simple: replication of life performances, when done responsibly (Conquergood's "dialogical performance," Pelias' "dialogic embodiment," Stucky's "natural performance") leads to empathy and increased understanding of otherness. We then assume that this empathy and understanding will translate into better communication and, when applicable, reconciliation. Service-Learning puts teeth into these assumptions. Beyond simply being respectful and ethical of otherness, service-learning forces students and teachers to devise and direct projects that will contribute positively to the participating community. In summary, the idealism of performance studies can be approached through the humble efficiency of service-learning.

Epilogue

Now when I look across the floral print tablecloth at my hard-working farmer and truck driver father-in-law, I feel less awkward.

"So, what kind of 'research' are you working on now?"

"Well, I'm writing up some work that I've done recently in an area called service-learning."

"What's that?"

"Well, let me tell you…"

Author

Robert J. Hubbard is an assistant professor of communication arts and sciences at Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa. He teaches courses in the history and theory of theatre, as well as performance studies.

Notes