'Kiss My Grit' highlights hometown heroines
A new production from Broken Theatre gets kids involved in creating documentary theater about seven local women. Our Faces of West County writer Steve Einstein loved it!
When former theater kid Brian Glen Bryson was working as a substitute teacher in Oakland, he was captured by the work of playwright and actress Anna Deavere Smith, who took on-the-street interviews about events like the Rodney King riots and turned them into theater.
This type of work is known as documentary theater, and for 15 years, Bryson practiced this craft, working with kids, through a nonprofit he created called Walking Elephant Theatre Company and as director of education at Cinnabar Theater in Petaluma.
After he created a documentary theater piece for Petaluma’s sesquicentennial, he said he thought “Wow, you know what? I can really devote my life to this. I really saw its healing and community-building potential.”
Now living in Sebastopol, he’s created a new theater company, Broken Theatre, and he and his first cohort of youngsters are in the middle of their first production, Kiss My Grit, which started on March 29 and runs through this weekend.
The production is the result of interviews the kids conducted with seven local women, each vignette focused around the concept of grit and the part that’s played in their lives. With Bryson’s help, the kids then constructed short theatrical vignettes based on those interviews.
“What results is a delightful evening of insight and awe,” said our Faces of West County reporter Steve Einstein, “The kids are fabulous. They sing, play a variety of instruments, and even dance, on top of their acting portrayals of the seven women. Brian’s direction has really brought out the acting chops in these five kids.”
“Locals will recognize many of the featured women, from Esmerelda Pinal of Sunshine Cafe to Nancy Prebilich of Leland Street Farm fame. Out-of-towners will feel like they know a lot more of what makes Sebastopol tick,” Einstein said.
Other vignettes center around Bronwen Shears of Sebastopol Cookie Company, Sara McCamant of Ceres Community Project Garden, Ashley Radzat of RadzatConsulting, Tracy Lough of Your Village Midwife, and Leslie Hassan-Seidman, a hospice nurse.
How it works
The young actors are involved at every stage of the production. They call up and schedule the two-hour interviews, which Bryson calls “sacred conversations.” They come up with the questions.
“There's not really places in our lives where there’s some space being held for these conversations, where it’s okay to ask somebody questions and then to take the time to hear the answer,” he said. “You know, like, What did you like to do when you were my age? What does success mean to you? Are you afraid of death? What struggles have you had to overcome in your life and how did you do that?”
Bryson attends the interviews to record the conversations.
“After we do the interviews, then we talk and we say ‘What are the golden moments for you in this interview? What are the moments that make us laugh, that make us cry, that make us cheer, that make us see the world in a whole new light. So we have that conversation and we mark those things and then we transcribe those moments. And then we take a look at all those moments from all the different interviews and we think ‘Well, which ones should we take to shape into a theater piece?’”
“The kids learn the pieces word for word—but not just word for word, they also learn it, like, musically,” by listening to the audio. “They speak in the same rhythms that the person is speaking in, because what I've learned over the years of doing this is that contained in those rhythms is the person's sensibility and sense of humor and the love that they're sharing with that person at that moment is all in the rhythms that the person is speaking.”
You’ve got just three days left to see this amazing piece
Showtimes are 8 pm on Friday and Saturday and the final performace is at 6 pm on Sunday. The production was originally scheduled to be at Leland Farm, but due to the dicey weather, the production has been moved indoors to a somewhat secret location. Park in the St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church parking lot on Robinson Road and then follow the signs to the theater which is just down the street. A donation at the door will be enough to get in, but nobody is turned away for lack of funds.
Find out more at Farmtheatre@gmail.com
So glad to see these wonderful members of our community portrayed by the next generation.