Driven to Create

Transcript

SHEILA
I'm Sheila Bandyopadhyay, and I'm the director and creator of In the Empty.

SUSAN
I'm Susan Dibble. I've been teaching at Brandeis Theater Department for 34 years. I just retired and now I'm an emerita professor.

INTERVIEWER
And how did the two of you meet? Do you remember Sheila?

SHEILA
I yeah, I believe it was my first year of Brandeis freshman year I took. Susan had a couple in many movement classes, but I think the first one that I took was your movement, modern dance class. That was the first one I took. Yeah. So yeah, that was really important for me because I had never had a movement, a theater movement class before in my life. I had studied dance and theater my whole life. I had done theater in high school and actually I started doing theater when I was about six and I started taking dance when I was about six. But I didn't. I grew up in a smaller town in Florida, and so there was a kind of a limited scope of what was available to a performing artist in that time. So, yes, when I came to Brandeis, I knew that I wanted to study theater. I did not know that there was such a thing as movement, like a specialty in that that was something I was introduced to here with Susan.

INTERVIEWER
Susan, what was your trajectory with movement theater and mostly coming from the dance world or theater or incorporating the two or.

SUSAN
Yeah, I I was a dancer choreographer and I ended up doing a lot of work in theater. I really like working with actors, so I studied and worked a lot about on movement, trained with people. And then and then I kept my dancing choreography and my own performance consistent with my becoming a movement teacher for theater. So when I came to Brandeis, I was fortunate enough to be able to teach everything that I have been working on.

INTERVIEWER
So that's amazing. When was that, actually?

SUSAN
I came here in 1979 and I was in the teaching for the MFA program, as well as undergrad program. And then over the years I developed, I would say, an additional five courses that were to do with movement and also dance and modern dance and the tradition of modern dance and movement and and all kinds of theater, clown and mask. And so I just kept building my repertoire just in

INTERVIEWER
terms of the context of the time and what was happening in theater and incorporating movement in dance. You said that you studied with people and got ideas around this. Can you speak to that a little bit?

SUSAN
Yeah, I I went to SUNY purchase, got my dance degree, and I was also encouraged as a choreographer. Partly because I broke my foot and I couldn't take class, so I just became a choreographer. I couldn't stop making dances. I continued to perform as well after that injury, but I met Christian Linklater, who is well-known voice teacher who and her partner, Tina Packer. And I was I was subletting Kristen's loft in New York, and I learned about theater company. And then I studied with with Mary Conway and also John Broome, Tricia Arnold, so a very rich group of movement dance teachers. And then I just went from there and and just made up all my own things based on their encouragement because we were all real innovators at the time.

INTERVIEWER
Yeah, you were pioneers in bringing that work together. And then with this class that you were teaching that Sheila sort of sounds like you kind of stumbled into and it became a point of inspiration for you. So do you remember Sheila coming to class?

SUSAN
Oh, yeah, yeah. I remember her the first day. She just first of all, she moved beautifully. And I, she also moved in a way that was not, you know, she wasn't coming to the class to become, you know, to say, Oh, how come I can't? What isn't Brandis have a dance program. She gets there because she really love moving and dancing. And so it was she was she was great and I just latched on to her from the beginning.

INTERVIEWER
Mm-Hmm. Can you speak to any of that yourself? Just to respond with Susan was saying where you weren't coming there to be necessarily a dancer, but it sounds like you were responding from some other place.SHEILA
And that's a really that's really astute. Like at the time, I probably would not have been able to recognize that because, you know, I think I was 17 when I came to Brandeis, just imagining context. I had danced most of my life. I took three jazz, ballet and tap. I was not good at ballet because it's very specialized and who can do it? So when I saw the class offering, I was really intrigued. You know, it's modern dance, so it's something I haven't done before, but it's also inside of the theater department and because I already had many years of acting and working on musical theater and I had even directed a little bit when I was in high school like I, you know, had already kind of put myself into that. I just felt like there was something about physical. Language inside of a theatrical context that was interesting, so I would say, yeah, I probably just came with like, you know, I'm in college now and this is something I've never done before. And the really transformative thing for me was that I was I think I took all of Susan's classes. I'm pretty sure maybe I missed one.

SUSAN
You took one of my MFA classes.

SHEILA
Yes, that was the most transformative for me was being able to take those at the time when we had the MFA. Susan invited me in a couple of other people to take the second year graduate movement class that completely changed my life because of the things that we were introduced to, including things like theatrical mask clown. We started creating our own pieces, which were from a movement lens versus from a strict dance lens. And so physical storytelling became another aspect of the work that that really inspired me and kind of set me off on a larger trajectory.

INTERVIEWER
That's really interesting that you're talking about this process of transformation and then you came to college and you had some training already in place, but that you were so open, you know, to learning new things that you didn't even realize how much you were maybe bringing to the table for this particular kind of training. But you were so open to investigating it. I mean, what would you say to a lot of the students that are coming in right now you're working with? We should probably talk a little bit about the production that you're doing and the process around that, and you're working with a lot of students that may not have had theater experience before. Can you speak to that a little bit?

SHEILA
Yeah. This particular group does include people that have had no theater experience and some that have had a lot. And actually for either. Either type of person or any type of person. For me, it really comes back to beginner's mind. So regardless of this kind of Buddhist phrase, it like beginner's mind, it's like anything. Even if I have experienced theater before which I had in high school and I also went to a camp that I used to go to in the Catskills and I'd experienced theater, but I think. When I think about what makes a student truly successful or any performer, it's a willingness to just let go of what I think I already know. That kind of goes that goes for me too. It's really a sense of especially with devised work, which you can talk about. It's like I come in with ideas, but I'm not as attached to the ideas as I might be if I'm coming in with a play that's already written. Mm-Hmm. So beginners mind being willing to let go of what you think, you know, and at the same time, to feel confident to to enter in with full commitment and full heart. And that's probably the biggest balance that young younger actors are trying are trying to find, right? I'm confident, but I'm also not judging this process and finding that balance, I think is is key for the

INTERVIEWER
work. And can you speak to that as well just with your experience and bringing all these new ideas in at that time? And how many people you inspired over the years, including, yeah, including Sheila and just, you know, speaking to students today and how they're approaching their work. And a lot of students come in with a fair amount of pressure. Now, I would say, to deliver a certain, I think

SUSAN
thing. The biggest thing for me is curiosity. I have been teaching apprentice, you know, as a, as I said, quite a long time. And the first thing that I when I first started teaching here I was, I was just I came from a lot of knowledge and a lot of experience teaching. But it was really about how what I love is being able to be the person who didn't know everything. And I remember in my own education hating having to feel like I was being told exactly what I had to do. And this is the only way. So my approach to teaching movement and dance for non dancers or for dancers who already know a lot is we're all starting from the very beginning. This is this is this first day in class. We're all we nobody has been here together like this before, so it just gives me the freedom to encourage. Most certainly with Brandeis students, is there's so much pressure and there's pressure all years, not just back then, but is that this is a time to be here and not worry so much. Mm-Hmm.

INTERVIEWER
That's really a great idea. Worry, the worry can come in, you know?

SUSAN
Oh, my god, am I doing this right or. And then slowly but surely, what happens is that's forgotten. And then it's every individual has an experience that can be shared among each other with each other. And even on Zoom last year, I had that it was like, we all were just wow. And then suddenly there was 25 people on Zoom had this wonderful community because nobody really had been through any of this before, so it was really extraordinary.

INTERVIEWER
So in the process of making theater and movement just being a tool to help you do exactly what you're saying and turn into beginner's mind and curiosity and being open? I mean, how integral do you think that that has been? It sounds very much so for both of you.

SUSAN
Well, I would say it's just to get rid of fear. Mm-Hmm. From the beginning, I think a lot of training is about fear, and I grew up with that in piano lessons and in ballet. But I was always a rule breaker. So I and I still am and not in the way that I'm going to break rules that are serious, but it's really about how to not be so afraid. I work with actors a lot who, you know, we're punching walls and stuff like that, and I just like it's because of the stigma attached to movement. So it's your body and you're, you know, and there's always this fear this when there's a right way, wrong way. And so my my the beauty of my training was the fact that I could be I could work in a field that was really about, let's start with, let's not be so scared about all this.

INTERVIEWER
So that's great. And that sounds like what you were responding to as a student.

SHEILA
Yeah, yeah. Well, well, Susan's classes, not just from my perspective, but from everyone there. They were welcoming, safe and playful, but there was a seriousness of purpose, and that's something that I think I very much responded to, especially because in the ballet tradition, it's it is. It is taught through fear. It's taught through exclusion. It's taught by ignoring the people that aren't very good in the class. And that was a very that was Susan's classes were the opposite of that right and also based on body

INTERVIEWER
type two.

SHEILA
Exactly. Very externalized and very white body supremacy type lines. So what's great is that dance has changed a great. Since then, and I consider myself actually to be a stage movement or a physical theater performer at this stage of the game, but my dance training both prior to and at Brandeis, really supports me in being able to work with actors and give them like various kinds of skill sets that they might need.

INTERVIEWER
Yeah. Can can you speak to what is devised theater for those who don't know that term? And if you could just break it down in terms of what it means to you and your process? And Sheila? Susan, I'll ask you the same.

SHEILA
Yeah. So I just just to catalog this a little bit for me. Devised work is a process in which the actors are also creators. And part of my training is a place called Dalata International, which is a physical theater ensemble devising program, and we learned to be actor creators there. So that's really what this is in this production. I've worked in many different types of devised theater formats. Some device theater is like five actors get together and they have no idea, and they just come into the room and they start tossing out ideas and start playing and they come up with something sometimes devised. Theater is more like what I'm doing now, which I'm coming in with a strong arc and I have the I already had the the movements of this piece in my mind. However, the actuality of what's happening in the space is coming through the rehearsal process, so the students are contributing to that. They're actually students that are choreographing parts of this. I have a student who's working on music. For part of this, they're being invited to write and then the whole thing is going to is being shaped through our process together. So that's for me what this process is. It's the actors as creators as well as performers. So when I came in for this particular show, I had five frames or I'm calling them the five movements of the piece, and there's a there's an arc, there's a story, there's a journey that that is happening within the piece. So the actors are actually being given palettes in a sense to work with. But I actually give them structured improvizations so.

INTERVIEWER
And so what's an example of that? And also, I just want to be clear, when you say movements, you were talking about movements within a piece as in section's movements of this story within the arc, not actually a body movement.

SHEILA
Exactly. I know it's it's I was trying to think of like what to call the sometimes I call them episodes. In my last piece, I call them episodes because that was a different kind of piece. It was more there was more text involved. This time I'm like, it's movements like, like in a symphony kind of thing. So, for example, I had them do a little bit of journaling the other night and then distill their journaling into three to five phrases. And then we are in the process now of I put them in pairs and they're kind of working out how to how to craft those in the space. And that can be anything so they can use the phrases. They could speak them aloud. They don't have to. That can just be movement. It could just be voice. But it's it's a very open-ended thing. But I've given them kind of a set of parameters within which to create something.

INTERVIEWER
Mm hmm. Yeah, that's clear. And then it really does sound collaborative because everyone's contributing to next movement within this framework.

SHEILA
Yes. And those kinds of things, actually, that kind of exercise comes directly from Susan. I want to actually create them because this is, she said, right here. And it's like, this is this is stuff that I got directly from Susan.

INTERVIEWER
Yeah. Can you speak to that a little bit? And I think this is wonderful that it's, you know, from a mentor and, you know, the student and now you're carrying that out into the world to to new students. And I mean, and what is that? I mean, that must feel pretty rewarding.

SUSAN
Yeah, it is. It is. It's I think that for for me, the the devising concept and I think it's generational a certain way because I think that what was I mean, I think my approach to how I make dances and my like my when I was have been calling a dance play since. I've been doing a few here at Brandeis, but I think it's because I come in, I have an idea. I'm also a painter, so it's I. It's basically I'm interested in how the performers can make what I want become even more human. So what'll happen is I'll be I'll come in with set choreography. I actually have a story. And then what happens is all of these, all of these things happen in rehearsal, also depending on the limitation of people's techniques and things like that. But it's what's really great is that it's kind of how to make the painting come alive, which, you know, I became a choreographer because it's it's to. Because I wanted to make something, I want to make things and I wanted to paint, and then I wanted to choreograph, and then my one of my best teachers said, Listen, I had to get myself out of the forest and I had to figure out one thing, at least for now. So that's what I did. I said, OK, well, I'll be a choreographer dancer. So even with Sheila, and there was one piece we worked on quite a few years ago, and she was also Elaina Bearak, who was awesome and Sheila's class. And she was a wonderful dancer, too. So they were both my show. But I was working on this piece and it's what they brought to that, you know, their their their zest and fire. You know, it kind of sent me in a direction that I was really excited about because of what they brought to it. So it's really a collaboration in that way. Not so much. I'm not asking them to choreograph things or things like that.

INTERVIEWER
Yeah, but they give you a inspiration towards something, and it starts to go in a different direction that you may not have anticipated right now.

SUSAN
Or I'll work with an actor who you know is just what's fun is I can give actors direction and movement. And then how they do it is the thing that's really exciting. So it becomes like a human being doing it rather than a trained dancer doing, even though they're really highly skilled movers.

SHEILA
But this piece was really inspired by thinking about the pandemic and thinking about what I how nature. Was a resource for me during the experience of the shutdown in New York, being in New York during shutdown. And then over the summer I was traveling and that's where the things came to get and I knew that would happen. I couldn't tell you. In May, I just like this summer, it will come to me. Like how that next piece? I know it's going to be about there's nature is going to be a big part of this. I know that. That's all I know. But over the summer, I will travel and the rest will fall into place. And that's like a kind of I would say that's something about being a creative over a long period of time. 20 years ago, I would not have at Brandeis. I would not have felt like, Yeah, no problem, I'll come up with something. But at this point, I'm like, I know that something will come in and I just have to be open to receive that.

INTERVIEWER
And where were you traveling this summer?

SHEILA
I traveled across the country from New Jersey, down to Florida and then over to California, and during that time, one of the places that I went was White Sands, New Mexico. And that was the moment where it all kind of came together, and I saw this tiny lizard and I was like, Wow, and this big tree, there's nothing there. It's just white sand for miles around. And you look and there's a tree there. There's life here. It looks like it's a it's totally there's nothing but there is life, and there's some way that this life is being supported. And that was the metaphor for me of the pandemic.

INTERVIEWER
I'm speaking to two students today and. Specifically, I mean, do you have any in terms of their creative process? I mean, we hear from you, Susan, that creativity, you decided it was just always going to be a part of your life and it continues to be and it continues to evolve. And obviously, Sheila, you're you're on that same trajectory and just committing to the arts and committing to creative life that can sometimes have more baggage for for some than others.

SHEILA
Big thing is those thought like, we all have to liberate our own ourselves from the mentality of capitalism and patriarchy and colonialism, because those are those thoughts are inherently the things that make young artists. Oh, I can't really have this life because otherwise I'll have to do X, Y or Z thing. I've had a very abundant experience as a as an artist. Some things have come easier than other things. Yes, like teaching has been come very easily to me very early on. But actually getting to the point where I'm creating my own work and putting it out into the world took me longer. I was often working on other people's projects and it was really, even though I trained in creating my own work, took me longer to to to find that within myself and to just start doing it. But everyone's on their own timeline, you know? And so the ideas that we have about being a creative, those are just thoughts, and they come from the collective that especially in the United States, it's not valued this work. Our work creative work is not valued even though we know how essential it is to people's well-being. So that's kind of what I want to say about it. And any thought that for a student or someone who's a young creative like to examine thoughts and to say, like this thought, does this thought serve my personal liberation? Or is it actually limiting me in some way? And then to actually look at the thought and recognize it's just a thought, it actually has no meaning in life. It's just a it's intangible. And to start to recognize where my thoughts are limiting and where my thoughts are expanding me and kind of work from that place each of us, it's how we

SUSAN
were, how we were brought up. And you know, there's so many different factors that kind of add up to, you know, give us the courage to keep going with what we're doing, but not just the arts. But I think that I I grew up my father's a painter. I grew up with the arts or it was in every part of my family and like my life, my, you know, so. But the one thing that I said that was it was just that was the air we breathe and it was the food we ate. And the other parts of life were also really creative and artistic. But what I can say is that I learned from my parents that having a just a regular solid job was the thing not to be ashamed of that and to be able to make a living enough money just to, you know, support a kid or whatever. Do so for me, the examples of the adults was really important. And my father was a painter. He had a he made a business for picture framing to support his family. Fortunately, I love teaching, so that became my that's became my livelihood. And then it also became a huge creative process. So it's just. But I'm one person, and I think that I feel very I'm very grateful. I'm also just it's it's was my survival, basically.

INTERVIEWER
But you're talking about having a job where you're supporting your creative life and you're supporting yourself, but the creative life doesn't necessarily have to financially support it all.

SUSAN
No, no. And I think it can be go hand in hand. But I want to say one thing about Sheila that I do connect with with her is that I think we're both. We have I will say this. We both have these kind of I mean, we we get on the road and we go off to the side, but we both have roads that we're we're on. And I find that really exciting to know Sheila and have that in common because I we just that's what we have. You know, it's that my mom said, You have a drive. It's, you know, it's a good thing. I feel lucky.

SHEILA
Yeah. Yeah, me too. Yeah.

INTERVIEWER
Thank you both so much. Thank you.

SUSAN
Dirt roads on paper.

SHEILA
Yeah, that's. Yeah. Just go. Just do it.