Performing Arts Living Room (P.A.L.R.)
An Embodied Practice of a Queer Black Feminist Performance Aesthetic.
ORIGIN STORY:
Mark Hallen was a theater professor at Eastern University (EU) in St. Davids, Pennsylvania. The “Performing Arts Living Room” was his idea and I was his student. Mark created the Performing Arts Living Room (P.A.L.R. or PALR) to showcase the various talents of my fellow students. We didn’t have a theater major just a small but very active program and a bucket-load of students participating, several of which went on to pursue theater as a life profession, attended graduate (including Ivy League) school education in theater, joined professional companies, and founded long running theater camps steeped in community, cross-cultural, and social justice engagement. The first PALR presented bits from Jules Feiffer’s, Feiffer’s People; an original play by Jennifer Tibbels, Ik Weil Heir Dood Gaan: I Want to Die Here, about a South African township that defied the colonialist/separatist rules of apartheid to maintain their multiethnic neighborhood and community. Hallen and the theater students of EU transformed their proscenium stage into a coffeehouse. Attendees were invited to sit on the sacred space of the stage at round tables covered in butcher paper with a candle in the center and a few loose crayons for doodling out their thoughts. There was a small, low platform stage and some stage lighting units pointed at it. One lighting look and speakers that played music in the background and between sets. It was a simple set up to foster an atmosphere where performance and vulnerability meet and meld. We presented funny skits, people acted for the first time or did monologues they had been working on.
This Wikipedia page is built to begin a living document or reservoir for this embodied practice. It is a way to share experiences of producing a Performing Arts Living Room while documenting this practice as a tenet of a queer, black feminist, performance aesthetic.
Subtitles introduced by Dr. Deanna L. Downes at Coe College in 2018, act as a focusing theme for the event. They also help to distinguish one P.A.L.R. from another.
HISTORY 2018
Coe College Intercultural Center Subtitle: I’ve Been Meaning To Tell You... BLURB: Performing Arts Living Room, is an evening of curated performances. The intercultural space will be transformed into a coffeehouse with a small stage and minimal lighting. There will be round tables and chairs and couches for audience/witnesses to sit and watch. Tables will be covered with a sheet of butcher paper and loose crayons and a battery-operated candle will be in the center of the table for ambiance and to encourage a doodling of thoughts. While there will be a small platform stage the entire space will be for performing – a scene may begin at one of the tables and move throughout the space. We will be serving, for free, coffee - regular and decaffeinated – baked goods – including vegan varieties – hot chocolate and tea. The evening, a span of a few hours, is designed for the Coe College community to share in the practice of vulnerability through an exchange of the arts. The desired resulted is an event that is repeatable, either per semester or yearly creating an anticipated evening of artistic sharing. Current pieces include a brief play on imposter syndrome; scenes from a play on affirmative consent (which is being developed for First Year Experience); monologues from Acting 1 students, acoustic guitar to name a few. Completion will be the evening of April 20th, 2018 but we hope to begin preliminary planning, including evaluating event success, for 2019.
PURPOSE The purpose of P.A.L.R. is two-fold: 1) To create a performance opportunity for students across campus, in particular the Acting 1 students. 2) To create a repeatable (yearly or per semester) and curated event, outside the Dows Arts Center, to showcase random bits of performance on Coe College's campus.