Dialogue & Difference
Acknowledge and embrace our differences.
Discover unexpected similarities across cultures.
Tell our untold stories.
Together with Hand2Mouth.
Most people are familiar with the traditional model of theatre in which a playwright, director, cast, designers and stagehands come together to build a production. But what if we were to work together in community instead? What kinds of productions and programs would fill our stages and societies?
“Devised theatre,” also known as “collective creation,” is the process of collaborating together through experimental exercises to create an entirely new and original performance piece together from scratch. Often, though not always, the authors are also the performers.
At Hand2Mouth, we developed our own specific method called Dialogue and Difference as a creative handbook for creating custom programming inspired by devised theatre with everyday people both on and off the stage.
Our pool of Teaching Artists is made up of professional actors, journalists, filmmakers and more who lead participants to identify what they have in common regarding a given project’s central theme — all while celebrating the individual differences and fascinating backgrounds that make communities so diverse and uniquely human.
Trainers lead the participants through the following six steps:
Community agreements
Establish a set of shared agreements that create a safe communal space for recounting personal experiences and celebrating our differences.
Shared storytelling
Engage in self-reflection through a series of writing prompts and interviews with other people in the community on topics such as change, conflict, acceptance, connection, communication and more.
Improv exercises
Sharpen whole-body listening and reaction skills and solve problems collaboratively in small groups.
Small group creation
Work together to devise a short theatrical creation that synthesizes stories and incorporates alternative storytelling techniques (sound, movement, space, silence, etc.)
Solo compositions
Unique moments, or ‘etudes’ as they are known, relating to the overarching theatrical creation are crafted by every person in the group to be showcased singularly and respectfully.
Large group creation
The entire group combines all of these elements together to create a live theatre performance using their own words and ideas.
What’s most important is that all Teaching Artists and participants embrace a spirit of curiosity and discovery throughout. After all, we never truly know where the process might take us…
Last but not least, the entire process need not feel completely bound to this structure and these rules.
