This year, The Civilians worked with Alison Weller to run a series of investigative theater workshops to share knowledge on how to go about creating and producing an investigative theater project. Weller, an Associate Artist of The Civilians since 2002, has an accomplished background in both creating and teaching theater. She was an original collaborator on both Gone Missing and This Beautiful City. As a writer, actor, producer, and instructor, she shares the knowledge she has garnered throughout her career through teaching independent workshops and college courses at several well-known institutions. In the interview, we briefly discuss one of Alison’s latest works called Boundless which she created on commission after conducting research in the marine communities in Massachusetts. You can read more about the process and the piece in her HowlRound article “Maybe Tomorrow, The Fish Will Be Gone.” We sat down to discuss her work in investigative theater, her experiences teaching, and what she thinks about the evolution of the field.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Leah: What drew you to investigative theater? What keeps you interested in it?
Alison: Well, I go back to my days at UCSD, Steve and Annie Kaufman were two years ahead of me at UCSD. So, I took the class, the joint stock class that I think was the inspiration for The Civilians, with Les Waters and got involved with The Civilians, really in earnest when Steve was gathering people to work on Gone Missing. I’ve been involved in it now for a very long time, and so I was an original collaborator-interviewer on that and on This Beautiful City. I was a history and literature major in undergrad and I think my alternate fantasy jobs would have been being a journalist or a lawyer. And in a weird way, I think these shows kind of harness things that both of those jobs use also, you know, in terms of research and detail.
Leah: Oh, absolutely.
Alison: And I think I have an inherent curiosity about people, which seems like a kind of obvious thing to say of someone who is an actor or theater person, but what I love about this kind of theater is that if you are super really interested, it’s a great way to sort of exercise your curiosity very rigorously for whatever period of time you’re doing this kind of work. When we were working on This Beautiful City or I know when they were working on Nobody’s Lunch in the ‘00s, we thought things couldn’t get crazier in terms of national discourse and feeling like we needed to try and understand the other side. And clearly that was a misguided sense of reality that we had then. So, I think it’s even more important as time as goes on to do this work where we’re either amplifying voices that are not being heard or interrogating things that seem to not make sense or seem dangerous in terms of how we’re moving on as a society. I don’t know, it’s exciting doing these interviews and interacting with people it’s such an exciting foundation for making theater.
Leah: Yes, I absolutely agree. Like you were saying, it pulls on a bunch of different fields with its journalistic inquiries and such. Based on your background, how has it been in terms of your own development as an interviewer, as a collaborator in this field in terms of pulling skills that show up more in the humanities or more in the social sciences or also bringing in performance skills? How has your development personally been with pulling across industries, if you will?
Alison: Well, it’s interesting, I teach documentary theater at the New School and I was thinking today… I keep coming up this year for some reason with these sort of Venn diagrams about what the purpose of each show or the things we kind of contemplate whenever we start one of these investigations. So, when we did Gone Missing, I’ve actually been trying to figure out what that would have been– that was about connecting to the community after 9/11 whereas This Beautiful City was really about interrogating this kind of commitment to religious doctrine that is very exclusionary. I feel like Gone Missing was very much just talking to people on a basic emotional level, although it got philosophical so there was definitely a philosophical element to it. With This Beautiful City, it felt like there were all kinds of strains going through that we had to dig into, certainly religious, political, economic kinds of stuff. That was like a vortex. In terms of my own development, I did a show called Boundless that was an investigation into how the small boat fishing community on Cape Cod has been navigating climate change and regulations and all kinds of things. That was the first time that I ever personally worked on a show where science really became a bigger part of the conversation and that was interesting. And I think what is always so important no matter which kind of thing you do is having those connector people that are your touchstones throughout. I’m not sure if I have a philosophy around all of that, each project is so very different in terms of whatever strands of things you’re having to dive into. So, on [Boundless] for sure, it was really key that we had this person from the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown—Owen Nichols, their Director of Marine Fisheries, he’s a scientist, but he also goes out on boats with all the fishermen who aren’t necessarily inclined to divulge their personal feelings about anything to anybody, which is partly why they’re fishermen. But, having that connection with him, and he could speak both to the interpersonal stuff, he could speak to the work challenges because he’s out on the boats, but he could also speak to and connect us with all the science people, so that was invaluable. I feel like we’re sort of, I don’t know what the word is, but like the translator of these experiences for people. So, we have to find the trustworthy and willing participants who can really be our anchors as we deal with that stuff. I don’t think I answered your question.
Leah: These are great insights! It really gets at a different question I had, but I was thinking about if you’ve had to, over time, develop specific skills from other fields where you’ve had to search out other people to develop how you are as interviewer or…?
Alison: Right, got it. Certainly, as an interviewer, I read up. I haven’t ever interviewed a journalist about how they interview, but certainly read a bunch of articles about how to conduct a more successful interview. I try to go back and do that every year, because it’s such a big part of what I do with my students. In terms of practice, things have changed a bit because we did Gone Missing in the joint stock way of not having a tape recorder or anything with us, but that has significantly changed. When we were in Colorado Springs, we had actual voice recorders and stuff like that. I feel like I’m 96 when I’m like our phones didn’t, you know, we couldn’t just use our phones to record people.
Leah: I had a flip phone for the longest time, and I do remember the days of having a Walkman, actually.
Alison: Yeah. And certainly, every time you do a project, I think you have to dive into a different… the research part of it, and that’s part of what’s fun, too, is that it may send you into a different field than you’ve been in before.
Leah: You talk about the fact that you’re teaching these skills and such, both through The New School and the workshops that you run. Can you tell me a little bit about your approach to teaching and what it’s like to foster these skills in new people?
Alison: Sure. One thing I will say actually, also, is that as technology has grown, certainly,
I think it’s opened up not only ways, things we can do in the performance aspect of theater, but also other things for what I call found material. You suddenly have places online where you can mine material and access tons of information which we didn’t have when we were first starting out in this, like immediate information. But again, that’s a bit of a minefield, too. I always go back to people, I’d always also rather have the conversation with actual humans. In terms of teaching, I really think it matters who is in my classroom, I like to get to know the people that I’m teaching. So, even when I teach the workshops, I take a few minutes to find out where people are from, what brought them there, that sort of thing because this kind of theater attracts so many different people who wear different hats. And I think one of the biggest things I just try to reiterate because it’s a class and people want a definite set of rules that they can walk away with, apply to everything. And what’s really tricky is that every project is incredibly different and will require all kinds of different things that are very specific to that piece, that community, whatever it is that you are doing. I feel like it is perhaps somewhat infuriating that I’m constantly saying that, but I feel like the thing that you can take with you is that the touchstone is always how can I authentically express and be true to the people that I’m interviewing, even in a theatrical way. People often say “I’m concerned about lampooning or presenting people as a caricature” when they have people perform the people they’ve interviewed. To me, it’s always about not trying to be perfect, and certainly not trying to lampoon, but in some way to sort of distill the essence of whatever that experience was either in the entire investigation or in the conversation and authentically convey it to your audience. In your editing, in your making it theatrical, making sure that you’re still holding onto that authenticity. And it’s a murky thing, right? You can’t promise that your sense of that might or might not upset someone that you interviewed. You never know, but what you can do is always come back and check in with yourself and your collaborators about if it feels right and you can also include the people you’ve engaged in the interview process too, if you desire.
Leah: That makes a lot of sense, especially the approach differing based on what your class is like. I taught in grad and I had two very different semesters with my students. It certainly can make a difference, especially because I taught when everything switched to virtual because of COVID. So, even the immediate shift of what a single class looked like was wild.
Alison: Yes, I was teaching then, too. We switched everything because we were all working on something as a class, and then we ended up splintering into separate groups and projects because some people wanted to actually dive into the pandemic and go interview people about it while others did not. I teach them the same methodologies and the same bullet points in terms of how to go about making a piece, but I’m always interested in what questions they have.
Leah: When you first got into teaching, was it surprising the kind of range of people that this would attract? Was it more something you expected, to see people from a range of different fields and interests coming together?
Alison: I have to say, up until the workshops this year, all the teaching has been at the college-level for the most part. At The New School, I teach a required course, so it wasn’t particularly surprising, but in terms of the workshops, we had a real generational spread. There were more people over 50 than I anticipated including some people who were journalists, and then a more normal spread of people 40 and below. It was really interesting to find out how they found out about it and what brought them to the class. Obviously, we had some theater practitioners but there were some people who were like “oh, it flashed across my screen and it sounded cool.” And the journalists were interested in how this could help their work, and a couple lawyers also, how their work and skillsets and the things they had learned could be translated into theater, so that was really interesting. And people from all over the place. The upside to this virtual thing that has obviously been a bit of a bummer was that we had someone from Alaska, and Florida, and Iowa, I think. And that’s exciting for me because usually it feels much more compressed if you’re teaching at a college. It’s really exciting to me to teach people from all over the place because that’s the point.
Leah: And that is definitely one of the things that has been really amazing in terms of the switch to virtual has been that opening up of access. The kinds of productions you get to see because it’s streaming from wherever and the amount of attention that don’t have a strong, large audience base for theater are now getting, so that part is fascinating to me.
Alison: Yeah, and the other thing I discovered last year, because I was teaching virtually all year last year and I was skeptical of how it would work, but actually in a way because so much of this stuff ends up being direct address sometimes, the virtual space was actually more welcoming than I anticipated. I think we had a really great class even though we were in virtual land.
Leah: With your experiences teaching, what have you gained out of that experience, what has the returned to you?
Alison: It’s such a cliché, because I remember listening to teachers say this before, but I do learn so much from the people that I teach and no matter how old they are, I love teaching the young because it’s such an eye into what’s going on. They keep me in the moment, literally, in terms of what’s going on. There’s also so much happening in terms of representation and it’s really great to continue these conversations with young people, with everybody as they’re happening. You can think about that stuff alone in your house, but it’s really important to have conversations where we’re going to get somewhere. And it just helps me articulate. I never feel like I have a philosophy around all of this, but it helps me articulate what I think is the right way to approach this.
Leah: In your experience, how have you seen investigative theater as a whole evolve from when you first entered and where do you see it, hope it, will evolve to in the future? Especially around these kinds of issues you’re talking about?
Alison: I think making sure you’re very mindful of what your purpose is going in and as you make choices, as things continue to move toward production, that you’re honoring, again, the story and making sure there are people involved who make sense for the story and the community that you’re representing. I was talking to KJ Sanchez about this, I don’t know if you know KJ, but she teaches at UT Austin and she’s a Civilian. She put it really well, that you’re trying to amplify as opposed to just taking things and also making sure you’re actually creating ways to partner and give back to the people that are being so generous with their time and offering up their stories. Anyway. I think seeing Dana H. was interesting to me because the whole notion of lip-syncing is a whole new, amazing kind of way to think about this stuff, too. I don’t have any great fantasy of where it’s all going other than just hoping that it continues to bring people together and encourage people to ask questions, and, to quote Ted Lasso, “to be curious, not judgmental.” To encourage people to not just run on their assumptions about other people, but to actually create conversation.
Leah: Are there any tips or insights for people that are interested in getting into investigative theater, that are perhaps new to the field?
Alison: I mean, I would recommend taking a class. No, I mean I would, but really doing it and get started. It is a daunting kind of work because there’s a lot of legwork that is different than deciding to just sit down and write a play. I know that it takes more to write a play when you’re playwright and it takes a lot of research, but there’s a lot of procedural things and tracking people down, there’s a lot of elements to it and being at the whim of other people’s schedules that is not necessarily the same when you’re devising from your and your collaborators’ minds. I do think just putting a stake in the ground and saying “I want to investigate this thing” and just start and not worry about making it perfect. I do hear people worrying about because you’re working with real people, there’s more of a sense of that responsibility. Which is good and it’s necessary. I’m not saying you shouldn’t feel that, but you can also get sort of imprisoned by your concern about relaying that in a perfect way and it’s not really possible and it’s not really what the point is at all. I would encourage people to take the leap. There’s often some anxiety around interviewing for some people, some people don’t mind at all, but that thing of reaching out and having a conversation with a stranger can be daunting. But the other thing that I would say is that people really like to tell their stories. This is a common thing that we often talk about, we’re always surprised at how much people are willing to open up and I think it’s really rare nowadays for people to have the experience of someone really actively listening to them for any period of time. It can be a generous act to be the listener. Try to put your anxiety aside and jump in.
Leah: Those are all really great. I’d like to open up space and make sure that if there’s anything you wanted to discuss or share that I might have missed, we have some time to talk about it.
Alison: I think I keep doing this, because, you know I was listening to something that was talking about making choices in your life that feel like they make your life smaller, that are contracting, and I feel like what’s really lovely about this kind of work is that it’s very expansive. It’s really hard to work on a piece like this and not feel like you have grown in some way even if it’s baseline in your knowledge around the thing, but usually it’s a deeper thing around growing in terms of having encountered a bunch of new people and a better understanding. So, I would say that’s the reason I keep going back and doing it and therefore, I recommend it.
Teaching investigative theater is an important component to expanding and evolving the field. At The Civilians, we continually find ways to help educate through articles on Extended Play, teaching classes, working in residencies at colleges and running independent workshops often in collaboration with our Associate Artists like Alison Weller. If you are interested in learning more about The Civilians and our education programs, visit our page.
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