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Vancouver theatre company delves into #metoo movement by asking #whatnow

Artistic producer Marisa Emma Smith is looking for interview subjects to anonymously share their stories
whatnow
Alley Theatre artistic producer Marisa Emma Smith and Good Night Out coordinator Stacey Forrester are taking the #metoo conversation on to the stage.

Marisa Emma Smith is spending her holidays engaging in conversations fraught with some of the worst experiences imaginable.

It sounds horrible at first blush, but Smith’s end result has all the right intentions.

An artistic producer with Vancouver’s Alley Theatre, Smith is trying to bridge the gap between the continued outrage associated with the #metoo movement and a way to move forward, make sense of it and deal with the aftermath.

“Now that we know about this and we know it’s a big thing, what do we do? What happens now?” Smith said.

Smith is in the early stages of mounting a new production called #whatnow that will see the light of day in July 2019. She’s employing a storytelling method called “headphone verbatim theatre and dance,” which sees actors and dancers spontaneously reacting to recordings that are channelled through earphones.

In the case of #whatnow, those voices will come from people who were sexually harassed or abused, others who stood by and didn’t intervene and others still who perpetrated those incidents.

The end goal is to process the information and use it as a type of catharsis and restorative justice.

“I’m interested in sharing the human side of this story, the strange, funny and nuanced responses of that experience from multiple perspectives and so we can humanize it,” Smith said.

Four interviews had been conducted by mid-December, and Smith hopes to have 20-plus done by mid-January. Each interview is done anonymously to avoid legal ramifications and interviewees can opt out at any time. Some people have reached out to Smith or vice versa, and Smith’s questions are sent in advance.  

The lone male Smith’s interviewed so far represents the bystander: someone who suspected something bad was happening, but didn’t know what exactly and didn’t intervene.

“In the moment, there’s this feeling of ‘what is this?’ There’s almost denial,” Smith said. “People don’t know in the moment what’s happening. After the fact they realize what it was. There’s self-denial and a bit of shame.”

Good Night Out coordinator Stacey Forrester knows the bystander effect all too well, and workshops around that very phenomenon are among the most requested that Forrester’s 20-person group conducts.

“I think people are realizing that the type of street harassment or public realm harassment happens with lots of people around and the bystander effect is real,” Forrester told the Courier. “They don’t intervene for a lot of reasons: they don’t know how, they don’t feel safe to do it themselves.”

Forrester and her team have worked on the #whatnow project from the outset and members are present during the dialogue process to help interviewees process their emotions.

When the production morphs into its first iteration next year, Good Night Out members will give workshops to the performers involved.

Smith’s vision will get its initial look in July 2019 at the Orpheum Annex. Although it’ll be open to the public, those opening days will be more like a dry run to hone the project and gather more ideas. The full production is expected to debut in 2020 or 2021.

Anyone interested in sharing their story with Smith’s team can do so by emailing whatnowplay@gmail.com by Jan. 15.

@JohnKurucz