14 December 2005

In Our Lifetime:  The Children’s Theater Company of Boston

            Playwright Mark Perry said to me once in an interview that “the world is longing for plays that are hopeful, for plays that make sense out of seeming senselessness.”  Likewise, after watching a semester’s worth of documentaries that bring world affairs and issues of social justice to the foreground, the most powerful seemed to combine a forthright analysis of the problem with a hopeful suggestion towards a solution.  The documentary In Our Lifetime is my attempt in conveying those elements, particularly the latter one, even if vaguely.  Because of the intangible and indefinable nature of art and its effect on the human psyche, it is difficult to measure its productivity in the realm of social change, whether we are talking about theater or filmmaking.  This film at least documents an honest willingness to create change, in both the part of the subject and the filmmaker.
            The first thing I considered before filming any material, or even deciding on a topic, was the style that lent itself best to the message I wanted to convey.  The message, I knew, would be a constructive argument for the advancement of humanity, whether through education, justice, diversity and understanding, conflict resolution or environmental preservation.  With such a broad topic in mind, I decided the subject would do the work of narrowing it down for me.  In terms of the form, while it is true that we live in an era where information, argumentation and logic is important, the nature of human advancement is also poetic, organic and spontaneous.  And when it comes to human interactions, the simplest circumstance or moment can reflect an entire philosophy of a generation, or the deepest metaphysical concepts.  This is evident in Ross McElwee’s The Six O’clock News, for instance.  While he usually begins with a logical approach to investigating a subject, from the moment he starts interacting with people or situations, the form of his film adapts to the unexpected material at hand.  A trip to interview a survivor of an earthquake disaster turns into a series of introspective scenes, quiet reflections on the nature of God, existence and purpose.  This is risky and difficult to balance, but in McElwee’s case, it is certainly rewarding for him and refreshing for the audience.  His film is successful as long as he pursues the moments of immediate interest to him, because he is then always able to tie them back into a narrative where the central theme are his own current meditations on the media, however varied.
            Early on in filming, I decided to take a similar approach, keeping in mind that the central theme would be my meditations and observations on human advancement, which by its organic nature, is also dependent on a diverse number of interrelated processes.  Once I decided to film the Children’s Theater Company, it became evident that whatever forces nurture those kids into a socially conscious and motivated group, it would be a number of things, including the theater.  The challenge then became to seek out and expose myself to whatever routines the children went through together, then also be perceptive to moments that accurately represent what is most meaningful in their development.  Fortunately, the entire philosophy of the Children’s Theater is based on a similar idea, principally, “building character onstage”.  The purpose of the program is to entertain and educate not only the audience, but the performers themselves.  I researched the background of the subject to further understand how this particular effort strives to create social change, thus inspiring my own observations about how I could do the same.
            Created in honor of United Nations Human Rights Day (December 10th) in 2003, The Children’s Theater Company was first aimed at providing free musical and theater experience for children in underprivileged neighborhoods in New York City.  The company artistic directors Mehr Mansuri and Karida Griffith were inspired by a model of children’s education that came from their background in the Bahá’í Faith.  This model mainly entails that human nature is noble, and one of humanity’s most important tasks is to ensure that all children fulfill their innate potential to acquire virtues, knowledge, wisdom, spiritual capacity, eloquence, and a sense of social conscience.  Therefore, the education of children is the most valuable service one can provide for the advancement of humanity.  The children’s theater would thus be one way to provide this form of education, especially to children who by their circumstances would lack such opportunities.  Somehow demonstrating the principles that sustain the CTC initiative became important to me, and it hopefully comes across through the environment where most of the documentary was filmed.  Particular scenes also highlight these ideas, such as when the chapter coordinator Soma Stout asks the audience what is the biggest challenge the world currently faces, and receives the answer “education”.  Demonstrating the emphasis with which the children are trained to see themselves as “Peacemakers” on a daily basis was one way I could show what basic attitude drives the people involved with the program.
            In NYC, the Bahá’í community sponsored the activities of the group mainly by providing rehearsal and performance space in the community’s center in East Village.  In July 2005, several members of the Boston Bahá’í community who were interested in providing the same opportunity in the Boston area, worked with the NYC company to begin a CTC chapter in Boston.  This form of community-wide involvement, and strong integration of moral principles into the foundation of the program, was evident from the first day of filming.  The parents of the children were the ones driving and feeding the kids, and maintaining the rehearsal space, which was also provided by the Bahá’í Center in Boston’s South End.  The directors, trainers, technical crew and ushers were mostly youth volunteers, and a great number of people became involved simply because of being part of a diverse range of activities that were already taking place at the Center, whether of religious studies, interfaith devotions, community service, or social and artistic gatherings. The Latin-American woman who I am speaking with in the beginning of the film teaches at an ESL program that takes place there.  Since I am a Bahá’í and have frequently been part of the activities at the Center, which is how I learned of the CTC in the first place, I was aware of how these other community activities relate and influence the way CTC is conducted.  Most people seemed enthusiastic because they were providing a service, particularly one in which they felt they could give input, in whatever capacity they could contribute.  This spirit of service seemed to permeate the conduct of the parents, the trainers, and eventually, the children.  I tried capturing some of this by filming of the interfaith devotionals (with the singing and drumming at the beginning), the social interactions in the kitchen of the Bahá’í Center, and the general flurry of activities elsewhere.
            The filming technique was important, since I thought the piece could easily turn into a public service announcement, a promotional video for the CTC, or a flat testimonial of proud parents.  Although some material like that was filmed, I was careful not to include any of it, and when interviewing people, I usually only used snippets where I felt they were speaking to me and not the camera, or an imaginary audience.  Most of the filming I was excited about happened when the subjects, especially the children, became unaware of the presence of the camera.  It took a while for this to start happening (at least one or two hours of continuous filming at the start of each day), and the result was an unaffected and genuine feel that hopefully emulates films of the cinema verite style such as Campaign, War Room, and Seventeen.  The most difficult part was finding moments that were engaging in some way, but simple enough that they represented what commonly takes place in this environment.
            At times, the children were even able to interact with me without reacting to the camera, which provided one of my favorite moments, the first half of which opens the film, and the second half of which appears in the end.  While walking by, one of the kids spontaneously shows me a seashell she made in class.  Excitedly she explains that it contains a piece of paper with the names of people she loves.  Another girl joins her, and they go down the steps.  Later in the film, they continue down the steps and the first girl explains that even though the person whose name she wrote had already passed away, she believed their spirit was still with her.  These two scenes also represent an important structural element of the film, which is to reveal information in a way that somehow followed the organic process, the central theme of the film.  This meant it would sometimes be non-chronological.  The scene of the girl at the steps is continued later because we learn why she wrote those names in the shell:  because she was coming back from class where she was describing her feelings of loneliness to the teacher, who then taught a lesson about spirituality and always feeling the presence of those we love.  The girl’s excitement about her seashell represents some form of transformation, from her feelings of loneliness to love.
            The structural idea was to first establish an almost anonymous, yet personal and emotionally open identity of all the “characters” that would appear in the film.  To me this humanized the whole endeavor, but with a deliberate vagueness that is meant to allow us to concentrate on the spirit behind people’s actions, the foundational purpose they had of educating and empowering children, and the real transformations that are happening in their lives, some of which can perhaps be observed first-person, rather than by listening to excessive descriptions in head-shot form and with musical accompaniment.  For the same reason, no voice-over was used.  The very basic facts about how the Children’s Theater works can be derived through the introductions of the performance to the audience, insert shots of signs like “Katrina Benefit Concert”, or conversations such as when Soma says the Bahá’í Center provided CTC with a fridge.  Some information is given, some is suggested, and most is discovered as one would if they happened to walk into a CTC concert or rehearsal.
            The ultimate concern of the film was to answer the question:  how is the CTC changing the children, and how are the children changing the world?  Again, I felt that a formulated and coherent statement in this case would be automatically inaccurate and incomplete, underestimate the audience, and defeat the spontaneous rhythm of the piece; so I hoped the children would speak for themselves.  What came to mind was the poetry of films such as Chile: Obstinate Memory, Kiarostami’s Close-up, and Nathaniel Kahn’s My Architect, all of which spoke beautifully with images.  Kahn’s photography of his father’s haunting architecture represent his overbearing memory; the motorcycle ride at the end of Close-up, filmed through a cracked windshield represents the odd relationship between Makhmalbaf and his impersonator.  Much like the final moment in Mom, where after a distressful night, the filmmaker’s mother cracks a smile at him the next morning, I hoped to find a moment that answered the question I posed of my own film.  Although I’m not sure I found one, the girl talking about her seashell, followed by another girl with a drum over her head, then the first girl hugging her friend goodbye at the piano, are simple representations of noble human beings immersed in a nurturing habitat; growing, learning to love, and advancing society.  Perhaps an even greater expression of any change happening, whether to the children, their audience, or the film’s audience, is in their action – them on the stage.  The last shot simply presents the group singing, some energetic, others forgetting the words, some extremely passionate.  The measure of how they have been changed lies in how much we change when listening and being affected by their message.

 

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