Swamp Gravy: Northerners tell stories in private and call it therapy. Southerners tell stories in public and call it swapping lies.

"You are making a dirty trick with the Gravy Soup," said Pedro Sandor cheerfully, in his accented English. Sandor, a community activist/ filmmaker from Chile, was referring to the bait-and-switch tactics of the performance project I direct in rural southwest Georgia. Sandor couldn't remember that the project's name was not Gravy Soup, but Swamp Gravy.

Swamp Gravy's "dirty trick" draws a small, southern, majority white community into a racially integrated performance process that is part celebration, part self-critique. The project appears to be a conservative celebration of heritage. In fact, Swamp Gravy activates community change. I defend the bait-and-switch because, once involved, community members control the process. They make Swamp Gravy. Delivered into their hands are the means of production of community performance.

Community performance is theater of, by and for a particular group. It is Outward Bound for towns. Celebratory and critical, it is controlled by the consensus of two expert groups-artists and community members. It is nonconfrontational. It creates change through the experiences that participants create for themselves. And everyone is a participant: crews, committees, performers and audience. "It validated a lot of people in their ability to come through under pressure," said one participant. "It showcased talents and pulled people to work together in the face of adversity and criticism. It has given Colquitt a new sense of pride. It has given us a sense that we can accomplish the impossible-the ability to make our dreams come true." In this article I will focus on the history, process and outcomes of an experiment in "community performance"-oral-history-based, large-scale, professionally produced amateur theater.

In the summer of 1991 several of Colquitt's leaders sat down over lunch to plan the project. Between bites of fried catfish and cheese grits we considered local words and expressions that might title the project. Dot Wainright, president of the arts council that sponsored my work, mentioned swamp gravy.

I had met Joy Jinks, another arts council member, six months earlier in New York. Her community wanted to do a play about its history, she told me. I was doing doctoral research at Northwestern in performance studies and was interested in the performance process as a tool for community building. Both goals, we thought, could contribute to her town's revitalization. Six months later I was in Colquitt, Miller County, Georgia.

Colquitt, although small (pop. 2,000), is big enough to contain contradictions. It's pretty and ugly, dying and reviving, wealthy and poor, close-minded and adventuresome. It's a kitchen-full of possibilities and the home of peanut butter and jelly. Colquitt is sandwiched between peanut fields and mayhaw ponds. Mayhaw jelly is the most famous product and peanuts are the biggest crop. A day of fishing by the creek might include gathering mayhaws, eating boiled peanuts and making swamp gravy.

My lunch-mates liked Dot's suggestion, so we christened our project with that name. "My dad used to fix it," said Helen Griffin, owner of Pirate's Cove Restaurant, "when we didn't catch enough fish to feed everybody." Swamp gravy is a local tomato gumbo cooked creekside in the crumblings and grease after the fish is fried. Most anything can go into it, always fish drippings, tomatoes, potatoes and onions, sometimes shrimp, corn or fish heads. Swamp gravy, like stone soup, is an oxymoron. It's the "plenty of nothin" in the Gershwin song. It's a good name for a program designed to make a feast out of whatever's on hand.

What's on hand is a whole bunch of stories. A southern-fried friend of mine wrote an oral history-based play for a midwestern community. "Be thankful," she said, "that you're in the south. Up here, people confuse oral histories with obituaries. They're dry, real dry." I don't know what it is in the Southern psyche that breeds storytellers, a past too painful to be told plain? A love of reading endlessly between the lines? A genetic talent for turning monotony into entertainment? Northerners tell stories in private and call it therapy. Southerners tell stories in public and call it swapping lies. Last October "Swamp Gravy Sketches" brought a diverse group of 50 citizens together to perform selections from the stories. I hoped those "lies" could be therapeutic for the community.

Not that Colquitt is sick. English has no word to describe Colquitt's state: "not-sick-and-yet-desiring-greater-health." Doctors in the '70s came up with a word to describe people who wanted to go beyond "not-sick," and coined the term "high-level wellness." Colquitt is in search of high-level wellness.

In small-scale societies the performance process aids community wellness by providing group bonding activities that engage everyone. Tribal performance also provides images that, like x-rays and stress tests, reflect the health of the communal organism. Such sophisticated social technology is missing from First World communities; performance no longer functions to focus and reflect community. Community performance offers a corrective.

During the nine months before rehearsals, citizens and humanities scholars had gathered jokes, recipes, autobiographies and family stories from older citizens, black and white. According to the tellers, Miller County of living memory was the home of individuals who built their lives around the land. The oral histories tell of self-reliance and interdependence, of friendship among African Americans, Native Americans, and European Americans who together worked the land.

In September, playwright Jo Carson and her dog Eudora drove in from Johnson City, Tennessee, to adapt the stories for the stage. Coupled with the enthusiasm at having us "move in with them," was a profound mistrust of us as outsiders. Urban and suburban people can't appreciate this response. It can only be compared to the stress I might feel if a strange adult moved into my house.

The community was deeply concerned that Jo and I reflect them accurately. I had shared some preliminary directorial ideas, and my committee was worried that I was going to do something arty. Tammy Spooner said, "You'd be better off boring people than giving them something that they don't understand, or don't want to see." I heard this refrain so often I became paranoid. No matter how much I reassured them, I couldn't win their trust. They looked at me and saw someone about to make Art at their expense. In hindsight, they were right. The self-reflexive response of the American artist is so ingrained that even when I thought I was being transparent to the community's desires, I was coloring the issues. While intending not to, I was heading for confrontation.

I grew up in a culture where socially active art meant confrontation. But in evermore conservative communities, artists who confront find themselves playing to one another. How valuable is art for artists' sake? Fortunately I had friendly critics who were brave enough to tell me when I was screwing up. They said so loudly and often. One abrasive, courageous woman never let up. She wasn't going to let me mess up in her community.

In fact, project leaders like Kay and Don Chandler, Karen Kimbrel and Gayle Grimsley, were giving me a crash course in efficacious performance. Artists frequently address their audiences in ways that prevent communication; inappropriate venues, unauthentic images, irrelevant topics and unfamiliar words are some of the ways we squelch our own voices. My friends wouldn't allow me to do that, insisting that I find my voice through their words.

Theoretically I was in agreement with them. I had read the books. Baz Kershaw, in The Politics of Performance, documents the rise in England of a style of performance that overcomes the problem of art for artists' sake. Called Community Theatre (not the community theater we know in America), it is perceived by the audience as authentic because it encodes communication in the conventions of the community.

This genre reflects a community down to details of dialect, allusion and topic and- this is the crux-alters selected elements so that the result is a mirror image, but with a difference. Kershaw calls this "rule-breaking-within-rule-keeping." Community members and artists determine which rules to break, and how much to break them. Too little rule-breaking and nothing is accomplished. Too much and the performance becomes destructive. Kershaw's middle way welcomes the community into emotional participation and then presents it with a crisis. If audience members decide to enter into the celebration, they also embrace the crisis. Through celebration people bond with the altered image of their community.

Jo set the play committee at ease when she suggested that the script use the theme of work to stitch together short, unrelated scenes. Jo and I endeavored to make our work transparent and to feature the stories, almost unaltered, as the text of the play. A chamber theater approach allowed actors to move readily from third to first person, playing character and narrator simultaneously, as a storyteller does.

The inexperienced cast had no trouble with the characters; they knew them all. They brought to their performances an innocence of acting. They didn't base their work on the behavior of actors but on people around them. No one talked about role playing. Characterization seemed more about ontology. After a performance some months later, performers introduced themselves, saying what they did in real life. Following a housewife, a clerk and a business owner, a cast member stepped forward and boomed, "I'm Lester Miller, and I'm the preacher!" The preacher was the role Lester performed onstage, not his life role as a laborer. The acting of stage roles drew life roles into question, made actors aware that life masks could be taken on and off like theater masks. "Swamp Gravy helped me to see what I need to work on most, where I am weak at," said Annette Miller, Lester's wife. Through acting, individuals embodied the discovery that they could choose different modes of being. "I want to try things," she continued. "I want to try again even if I fail. Hey, if I be laughed at, help me." Annette has recently taken a major leadership role in the organization.

Central to the genre of community performance is the barter of expertise for expertise. Rehearsal barters insider knowledge for outsider expertise-in both directions. As a Yankee from Chicago, I am the outsider in Miller County. To the world of theater, they, as untrained amateurs, are also outsiders. Ideally, we meet one another as differently skilled equals in the creation of an event that, literally, celebrates our differences. This challenges me as a performance worker to adapt my approach to the needs of the community, and challenges the community to adapt itself to the demands of theater.

Last week a group of community leaders cornered me, and halfway through the conversation I realized that, after two years, they were still curious about why I was in their community. I have told them from the beginning that my motives are selfish, I wanted to find out if performance could, in fact, contribute to community. But that goal makes very little sense to most people. I, too, am suspicious of my motives.

How different am I from a missionary that inflicts religion on a "heathen" people? Armed with the gospel of performance I go among the nonperformers to spread the Word, promising "reanimation," "revitalization" and "redevelopment." Each term implies, like the doctrine of original sin, that the community is, a priori, flawed.

Pedro Sandor, who visited Colquitt last summer, wants to return and spend a week in the company of Sareen Coleman, an elderly African-American cook and house worker. Pedro saw a beauty in Sareen's life that he found lacking in the community and in Swamp Gravy. Miss Sareen, and many older African Americans and whites are the roots of a culture that has been mowed down. This other culture, says journalist Wolfgang Sachs in "'Poverty'-in Need of a Few Distinctions," has, instead of cash wealth "access to fields, rivers, and woods, while kinship and community duties guarantee services that elsewhere must be paid for in hard cash. Nobody goes hungry."

Sachs says that this other culture, which still appears globally in hundreds of native varieties, is "free from the frenzy of accumulation." While such cultures appear poor to our eyes, their members do not see them as such. Sachs found this out when he remarked to a Mexican on his town's poverty; the man shot back, "'No somos pobres, somos Tepitamos!' (We are not poor people, we are Tepitans)."

Development, as a concept, ignores the truth that a community that is apparently impoverished may have invisible means of support, may measure itself on a different scale. The culture depicted in the play is such a culture. It is ironic that Swamp Gravy might threaten the native culture that it celebrates.

Swamp Gravy is designed to help the community and its members succeed in the consumer-oriented culture of the United States. When African Americans see Swamp Gravy as a ladder to empowerment, and actors see role playing as ontological enhancement, their goals are expressed in terms of the dominant culture. In the ideas of Augusto Boal (transfer theater's means of production to the people) and Victor Turner (performance always opens culture to subversion) is the possibility of a different "revitalization" process, one that would honor and incorporate native cultural values as it refines itself. The answer for some residents may not be new cars and VCRs, but something like the pride and frugality of the Tepitans.

The play was a real success. The community was overwhelmed that their own neighbors could perform. They greeted each performance with long and loud ovations. I think they were proud, too, to hear the young perform the old stories and to see blacks and whites share in them together. One participant said, "I have never seen anything with such a healing potential as this Swamp Gravy concept."

The tension between the cultural codes of theater and community made the play dramatic and real. Much later the cast performed for a gathering of Georgia artists and arts agencies. This theatrically sophisticated audience was most impressed with how fresh and real the performers were. The cast got as warm an ovation from them as they had in Colquitt.

The tension of black and white also charged the rehearsals and performances. My appreciation of this fact grew after the performances were over, when I interviewed the participants. Many, like Ferrell Keaton, a middle-aged white man, spoke eloquently on the issue.

"Swamp Gravy has validated our history," he said, "Yes, this history is important, yes, this history is precious. Yes, this history, whether you are black or white, we can talk about it, we can see it. I think it [Swamp Gravy] is going to eliminate pain and replace it with understanding, with insight. Holding up black and white history and putting it into play form, and the more it's done, the more the tension is eased, and the more we can accept each other."

Ava Mae, an African-American woman, said, "All these years all this information has been happening, but really nobody knew how anybody felt. Until the `Sketches' came along, nobody knew."

Ava Mae and Ferrell understand something about race in America. Civil rights has been an important legal thrust toward equality. But a verdict in law cannot overrule the heart. Legal solutions create winners and losers. Working together intensely and creatively provides a new way for a community to encounter itself.

For example, I had intended to recount here a brief incident of racial discord, the calling of a name. I phoned my informant for permission. He suggested that I also use the names of those involved. None, he said, were ashamed of their racial feelings. After checking with them, he called back upset. Why was I writing bad things about Colquitt, he demanded. We discussed the need for balanced reporting, but my informant wanted the story cut. Reluctantly I agreed, better to save the trust and lose the story. As we hung up he told me, "Besides, _______ says he doesn't use that word anymore." I knew the person, knew how confirmed he was in his racism. I was witnessing habits and beliefs changing as a result of the community performance process.

Because of the class/race divide, an artist activist might be tempted to see Miller County in terms of oppressors and oppressed. I think this would be a mistake. Miller County's disadvantaged, like the spotted owl or the snail darter, are the casualties of an ecosystem in the process of unraveling. The people I talk to believe that the whole community, not just the poor sector, is in jeopardy from a system that locates control beyond the county line sign. Distant politicians, bureaucrats and corporations are fickle friends to small communities. In Miller County, one's true friends are the people who live there. The old, the young, blacks and whites, men and women, rich and poor, need one another. Each group, in effect, controls the others' destiny.

This fact is universally true; interdependence is almost a definition of community. But most of the time interdependence is invisible, hidden by the complexity of the socio-economic system. Through community performance interdependence can be made visible. It can lead not only to amity, but to jobs. "The spinoffs from the play can create friendships and pride, new businesses and no end of good things," says India Taylor, executive director of the chamber of commerce.

Economist Henry Grunwald says, "Economics is at bottom psychology." I would go farther and say that a community is the sum total of the people's feelings about it. Community performance, more effectively than anything I know, can influence people's beliefs about the place they call home.

In 1994 a community-wide play will extend the success of "Swamp Gravy Sketches." The project will involve 300 citizens (150 as actors) in a 90-day training/rehearsal process beginning in January. In March those 300 citizens will in turn lead ten workshop/performances involving nearly half the county's 6,500 residents. The production will employ promenade staging in which the audience moves and the actors perform among them and on a variety of stages. The community's own stories will challenge racism, confirm an historic multicultural identity and celebrate the people and the land.

After the workshops the presenters will use their skills to animate other projects like business incubation, leadership training, cultural tourism and Swamp Gravy replication. The facilitator/presenters will work with the schools, the chamber of commerce and other community agencies. They will teach groups, individuals, and other communities the process of exchanging outmoded "roles" for identities of their own choosing. The following year they will reconfigure the workshop/ performance as a visitor attraction. The process, a participant said, "brings out hidden talents, instills pride, and encourages [people] to join in more."

Richard Owen Geer is a director and community performance worker with a doctorate in performance studies from Northwestern University. He lives in Chicago with his wife Adrienne St. John.

Swamp Gravy: Northerners tell stories in private and call it therapy. Southerners tell stories in public and call it swapping lies.

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