The theatre of life: Collective narrative practice with young trans people
Dane Duncan Mills, Maria Castro Romero and Jesse Ashman
As part of my doctoral thesis, supervised by Maria, I (Dane) worked alongside a group of trans young people, part of the community-interest group Gendered Intelligence, to co-produce a structure for speaking and recording diverse and owned trans narratives. These detail reponses to everyday oppression, otherwise known as creative resistance. This was facilitated through the aid of a poster and the metaphor of a theatre stage to guide stories, which also provided a safe position from which to tell these. This practice was named ‘the theatre of life’ (Mills, 2017), and it is hoped it may open up doors by inspiring audience members with whom these stories may resonate, in order to create social action within community, institutional and political spheres.
What Is collective narrative practice?
Collective narrative practice has sprung
from the narrative framework, which emerged in Australia and New Zealand in the 1980s from the collaboration of Michael White and David Epston (1990). While both were family therapists, the framework diff erentiated itself as they began to give less focus to the systemic metaphor for people’s lives and became more interested in a narrative metaphor and the power of a person becoming the author of their own life story. Some practitioners have noticed
that, when people come together and create spaces to tell stories of hardship and survival in ways which make them stronger, this can open up new possibilities in their relationships and communities. Groups, clubs, communities and collectives with whom this practice has resonated the most includes survivors of trauma, oppression and inequality. If one voice is an instrument, then multiple voices can become a symphony. T e upshot of successful groups is writ en documents which detail the skills and knowledge of survivors of bullying, worry and misery (Lowell, 2008). When telling stories of survival, it can
be helpful to use metaphors to guide a narrative, keep it balanced, and help to create a protected position for those telling their stories to speak from. T ese ideas grow in the work of transformative practice by Ncazelo Ncube (2006) and David Denborough (2008), who
Context 155, February 2018
developed the successful ‘tree of life’ in South Africa with child survivors of grief, which has internationally inspired other metaphors for life, such as ‘T e Beads of Life’ (Portnoy et al., 2015) with young people living with cancer. Metaphors can provide a less direct
medium through which to tell stories and, since how we story what we have lived shapes how we understand ourselves, a metaphor can help to create an alternative territory of identity (White, 2005) to help explore problems, but also solutions that tell us something about the narrators’ values. T e metaphor of life as a theatre performance could help young trans people to feel a sense of pride, ownership and design towards how their life stories are told, as well as enabling consideration towards their chosen families as cast and crew. It also invites the idea that audiences can take important messages forward into their own lives.
The theatre of life Although we are beginning to learn
more about the multiple forms of oppression faced by young trans people, including the impact of under- and mis- representation of trans stories in the media and academia, there is relatively very lit le known about how to support this population and the systems put into place to support them. T e theatre of life (Mills, 2017) is a fun, artistic and politically engaging practice which helps to narrate life stories, designed by young trans people, for young trans people. It is the product of collaborative work
(participatory action research) between myself and a London-based community group called Gendered Intelligence. We were guided by Denborough’s (2008) ‘T emes & Dreams’ for working with groups in this way. First of all, this included thinking carefully about how to create a context for speaking about trans lives which is most comfortable. T is allowed the group to voice their desire to fi nd a way to hear about how oppression was already being resisted, and to record this in the form of stories, before fi nding a relevant audience with whom these stories will resonate. T e group wanted to create a session for
youth groups who meet monthly, under the topic of mental health and well-being. We experimented with ways to narrate life stories in fun, creative yet therapeutic ways. Recording life stories would allow us to share these with other young trans people in diff erent contexts who may feel isolated. One hope was that such stories would not just help individuals, but also help the systems of support for trans people in making eff ective changes. T e group came up with a theatre-based
poster template, a familiar image for those involved in theatre productions. Each section of the template represented a part of a person’s life, areas which felt right in the eyes of group members. T e template was digitally produced by an artist in the group and labeled with guiding questions such as, “What is the behind the scenes support that helps you to be you, to get ready to tell your story?”. T e session allowed group members to take turns to be in an
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The theatre of life: Collective narrative practice with young trans people
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