by Rebecca McCarthy, Rollins College, Florida

download this essay: Improvisational Dramatism

Social movements that utilize comical, theatrical and carnivalesque modes of protest, often run the risk of their theatrics blurring their intended message.  In order to aid social movements in their efforts regarding performance protest, this essay proposes a unified rhetorical protest paradigm designed to create directed theatrical moments of incongruity: Improvisational dramatism (ID)[i].  ID combines Kenneth Burke’s theory on dramatism with commedia and improvisational techniques.  This heuristic method rests on the philosophy of rhetorical pragmatism, which guides the communication paradigm.  ID will be explored while examining protests performed by two social justice movements: Reverend Billy’s Church of Stop Shopping and ACT-UP.

From the early Digger’s ‘happenings’ in Haight-Ashbury (1966), to the later comedic and theatrical protests of ACT-UP (1980-1990), [ii] to the 1999 Seattle WTO protest, many social justice movements have relied on theatrical, comical, and carnivalesque acts to spread their message.  Gone, it seems, are the days of dramatic sit-ins, and angry soapbox protests, which only preaches to, as they say, “the choir.” In order to gain a larger audience, and convince that audience to “turn on, tune in, and drop out” of an economic global “free-market” structure that ignores social justice issues, many of these groups are relying on and “tuning into” what the rest of us “buy into,” entertainment.  Such a mode of protest can be engaging, inviting us to participate with the protesters.  As Christiansen and Hanson noted while examining the theatrical protests of ACT-UP, protesters who utilize what Kenneth Burke terms the comic frame of argument, do so in order to disrupt tragic argument frames.[iii] Comical protest can promote directed or “planned” acts of incongruity, which encourage an audience to question the dominant power/cognitive frames being presented to them.[iv] However, just as theatrical protests can help created directed moments of incongruity, these protests can also offer an indirect, or chaotic approach that has the potential to confuse or turn an audience away from the moment of dissent.  For example, in Seattle, 1999, confusion ensued when protesters, reacting against the policies of the WTO, danced in the street, performed street drama, and carnival acts.  What were they protesting EXACTLY?  Animal rights?  Yes.  Economic free-market policies?  Certainly.  Social justice issues?  Most definitely.  But what was, reporters asked, the unified message being sent to the public, the WTO, to policy makers?

Likewise, confusion regarding the intended protest “message” resulted in the earlier, 1989, “Stop the Church” Protest by ACT-UP (discussed below).  A New York Times editorialist, Storming, stated “The demonstrators who stormed St. Patrick’s Cathedral Sunday . . . brought discredit on themselves for demonstrating in a way that obstructs consideration of their arguments . . .”[v] Although I disagree with Storming that ACT-UP protested in such a way as to obstruct the “consideration of their arguments,” he does broach upon a valid question regarding the modes of these theatrical and carnivalesque protests, namely:  How can social movements create, direct, and sustain discursive and performative acts of directed incongruity, and protest, in such a way as to avoid obstructing or weakening their message?  This paper address this question and proposes a unified communication paradigm of improvisational dramatism (ID) designed to aid social justice actors on construction, performance, and refinement of their arguments in order to create better identification with their publics.

ID combines Kenneth Burke’s dramatism with theatrical improvisational/commedia techniques in order to create a praxis-oriented approach to protest as performance.  This method rests on a philosophical base of rhetorical pragmatism, which unites John Dewey’s tenants of pragmatic aesthetics (Art as Experience), with the more classical Greek rhetorical notions of phronesis—practical wisdom—, kairos—opportune moment—, prepon—the appropriate—, and dynation—the possible.  With this proposed unified tool, social movements and other actors can better create directed moments of comical and theatrical incongruity designed to disrupt either/or discourse, while encouraging interpersonal relations.  This paper will present and explore the pragmatic rendering of ID.  First, while examining Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping’s direct “Cell Phone Opera” protest, I will demonstrate the need to revive interpersonal relations in regard to the promotion of social justice, and the role that rhetorical pragmatism can play in accomplishing this task.  In the second part of this essay, while exploring ACT-UP’s “Stop The Church” direct-action, I will examine Burke’s use of dramatism and how dramatism can be adjusted, with the aid of improvisational commedia techniques, to accommodate a praxis oriented communication method that helps create directed acts of theatrical incongruity.

Pragmatic Processes and Interpersonal Relations

In the same way that nationalism, consumerism, or Christianity offer not only a praxis oriented method for living, but a philosophical groundwork in which the practical application rests, any method that proposes to challenge such grand narratives would also benefit from a philosophic foundation.   Philosophy, after all, can provide the glue needed to hold a public(s) together.  However, if the philosophical base is not flexible or ambiguous enough to adapt to contingencies, then binary—either/or frames occur which work to exclude us from life’s processes.  To be sure, such inflexible frames prohibit engagement with our surroundings and, instead, work to create a type of Burkean sheer motion, where forces work against you.[vi] In order to reengage life’s processes and reignite interpersonal relations, we must rediscover a pragmatic appreciation for process rather than settling for a predetermined or prepackaged end.  Such is the aim of Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping, a social justice movement centered in New York City.[vii]

Reverend Billy, aka Bill Talen, performs as a satirical “revivalist” street preacher who, with the help of his gospel choir, works to disrupt the destructive end of personal identification as promoted through a consumerist’s culture.  Joy, according to Reverend Billy, is only genuine and real when it is produced and promoted by people, not corporations or products.[viii] With consumerism, the idea or the imaginative is said to manifest itself in a “thing,” a commodity: Transcendent beauty can be found in a shade of lipstick; sex can be had through a good-looking car; and love can be nurtured through a diamond ring or a Mickey Mouse doll.  This commodity rule-of-thumb states that a commodity becomes an end.  However, this end is really a perverted truth far distant from the real process of living and everyday life.  This is a tragic frame of reference wherein the process of living is narrowly defined by our connection to things rather than our connections with people or the experience of living.  When we define an absolute end, whether it is an end found in a commodity, or an end found in a universal or nationalist truth, we are limiting the possibilities of imagination and process, and thereby curtailing opinion, interpersonal relations, and democratic processes, because an absolute end suggests that the creation of an idea or a truth is complete.  Here, truth takes on a Burkean scenic quality where a scene ends up controlling our actions (as the scene of war is said to direct the act of justified killing).[ix] This is possibly why Burke views bureaucratization of the imaginative, or the process of making the ideal or the imaginative into a material rule/substance, as a naming process for dying.[x] Since Burke wishes to redirect our focus towards conscious action, what Dewey terms the engagement of life processes, the bureaucratization of the imaginative becomes a scenic device where the scene works to control us.  What Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping hope to do is to comically disrupt the bureaucratization process and to re-engage their public in active, social interaction and relations.  I argue that they accomplish this task through the use of rhetorical pragmatism, which aesthetically redirects attention away from a commodity and back to human relations.  To demonstrate, I will first examine the tenets of rhetorical pragmatism that is aesthetically motivated, and then I will demonstrate how Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping utilizes this rhetorical and philosophical mode in their comically designed direct action, “The Cell Phone Opera.”

Rhetorical Pragmatism

Central to the classical Greek debate, and indeed to the same debate today regarding process and ends, truth and opinion, was the term doxa, which Poulakos loosely translates as meaning belief, opinion, conjecture, and judgment.[xi] When applied to the question of true knowledge versus probable knowledge, doxa represented the realm of probable knowledge and therefore related to the art of rhetoric rather than philosophy (although our aim is to unite the two), which sought transcendental truth rather than transcendence through alternative perspectives.    Since absolute knowledge was understood by many early Greeks[xii] to be impossible; practical knowledge needed to be dealt with in such a way so to avoid false doxa that would lead people towards negative acts.[xiii] To this end, Isocrates insisted on educating students in practical wisdom (phronesis), which would work to curb the unpredictable nature of doxa.  As M. Lane Bruner explains, phronesis as practical wisdom, separate from sophia or theoretical wisdom, “deals with ethics (actions which result in a virtuous life) and politics (actions which result in a well-ordered state), and is principally concerned with wise deliberation, right action, and virtuous character.”[xiv] To navigate the uncertain, the use of phronesis or practical wisdom, rather than transcendental truth, is vital to the process of everyday living.  Practical wisdom, then, relies on process, which focuses on action and deliberation—the realm of language.  Thus as Poulakos reminds us, rhetoric functions in a world filled with contingencies, while seeking opportunity and possibility.[xv] Fundamental to this definition of rhetoric are Poulakos’ references to the key concepts of “kairos (the opportune moment), prepon (the appropriate), and dynaton (the possible).”[xvi] As he further explains, situations exist in time and space and so both a situation and a response to a situation are contingent.[xvii] Active speech must engage the opportune moment, kairos, in order to be effective.  Next, symbolic action must be appropriate, or prepon, since “prescribing that what is said must conform to both audience and occasion.”[xviii] But most importantly, symbolic action must point to the possible, or dynaton, because “the possible is the opposite of the actual. . . . it rejects permanence and favors change; it privileges becoming over being.”[xix] What Poulakos is describing in relation to rhetoric is a form of Deweyan pragmatic aesthetics that exists within symbolic action. 

In November and December of 1906 and January of 1907, William James (1842-1910) delivered a series of speeches at the Lowell Institute in Boston, where he described how, in opposition to rationalism and extreme idealism; pragmatism offers a better philosophic mode for real life.  Central to the pragmatist’s point of view is the question of “Truth,” with a capital “T.”  In James’ view, absolute situated truth, a bureaucratized end, is problematic since it does not allow for lived contingency or an evolution of knowledge.  Indeed, such absolutes cannot and will not bend.  They must remain unmoving and unresponsive in the face of an ever changing world.  Therefore, like the early Greek Sophists, James views the world as doxa (opinion), a place where opinions must meet and compete and, with the aid of Pronesis, conjoin to form a better, more workable reality.[xx]

Building on this pragmatic philosophy, John Dewey wished to bridge the gap between aesthetic theories of beauty, interpersonal engagement, and pragmatism.  Dewey defines the aesthetic in conjunction with having an experience.  Having an experience occurs when an individual or collective undergoes continuous interaction with others and with the material conditions involved in “the process of living.”[xxi] Rejecting aesthetic theories that would situate truth and construct absolute perimeters for what defines “beauty,” Dewey insists that beauty and aesthetic values must be situated in the lived experience of everyday life, making the aesthetic pragmatic.  Relating this philosophy to rhetoric and communication studies, Nathan Crick later argued, and I believe correctly, that Dewey’s aesthetic theories have great potential for communication and rhetoric.  He suggests that Dewey’s views on aesthetic communication offer a distinction between passive communication that only encourages reception, and active communication that promotes perception.[xxii] Accordingly, reception implies a passive mode of communication where the receiver is being acting upon, and perception implies an active participatory form of communication where the receiver is participating in the act and, thus, having an aesthetic experience.  By constructing communication that allows for what Dewey calls “an experience,” a dynamic space of interpersonal participation is promoted where people become actively engaged with process and with each other.  It is this space, the place where we engage with each other that Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping seeks to inspire.

The Cell Phone Opera

For Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping, the artificial end of consumerism and corporatism induce sheer motion or simple reception, because these modes of bureaucratized processes disguise the true process of living:  “The shopping gods try to tell us that there would be no world without products, no economy, no sex, and nothing to do.  In this way they have persuaded us to give up on the control of our lives and the direction of our country.”[xxiii] In order to reengage everyday people with the process of living, Reverend Billy relies on rhetorical pragmatic philosophy, which is promoted through street theatre infused with comedy, song, dancing and, importantly, planned incongruity directed towards distancing a consumer from a product.  One of their most successful theatrical direct actions is called the “Cell Phone Opera.”

As described by Talen, the “Cell Phone Opera” was an action created to aesthetically engage Disney store shoppers and to alienate them from a product while, at the same time, inviting them to have “an experience.”  The action relied not only on a pragmatic aesthetic frame, but worked to redirect the master frame of consumerism, to a new master frame of human to human interaction, as well as a global justice instance.  The idea was simple:  Dress the protesters up like average tourists/shoppers who have been requested by a close friend or relative to buy a Disney toy for that person’s child.  Each actor/activist was armed with a $4 toy cell phone, and was instructed to have a discussion/argument with their friend or loved one on why they should not buy the Disney toy.[xxiv] Once in the Disney store, the actors/activist would be directed by one of the Reverend’s “Deacons,” activist directors, on when to start their improvised phone conversations.  As each actor was signaled, they started their imaginary conversation and slowly built up their argument at the Deacon’s direction—creating an operatic crescendo of cell phone arguments:  “I believe that Simba the cub did kill his father, Grandmother! This is patricide, and I don’t see why Carter should be exposed to such things . . . ” [or] “You read the papers—you know where they sew these things.”[xxv]

As the cell phone arguments clashed and merged, customers, Disney workers, and guards were baffled by what was going on.[xxvi] In the ensuing confusion, the Deacons took the opportunity to strategically hide inexpensive tape recorders that had been prerecorded with quotes from Bangladeshi women who worked in Disney sweatshops.[xxvii] Once the Disney employees caught on to what was happening, the guards tried to escort the actors from the establishment.[xxviii] At this moment, Reverend Billy took off his decoy shopper’s costume and exposed who he was.  He offered a sermon to the hidden store cameras, and to the real Disney shoppers, while his Deacons turned on the recorders.  As Reverend Billy and the actors left the store, the recorders started telling the story of the Bangladeshi women who worked in Disney sweatshops.  Not surprisingly, many of the real shoppers left the building and followed the Reverend out into the streets.

What Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping were able to accomplish was to create a pragmatic aesthetic experience that redirected a consumerist master frame to an interpersonal and social justice frame.  The creation of an experience, as well as a redirection of framing was accomplished through an artistic and comedic act that provided a perspective by incongruity. If consumerism encourages a bureaucratization of the imaginative where the ideal or the imaginative is materialized within a commodity, then, as Burke suggests, a different yet similar process is needed to disrupt that master frame—a perspective by incongruity:  “It ‘bureaucratizes’ the ‘mass production’ of perspectives.  It ‘democratizes’ a resource once confined to a choice few of our most ‘royal’ thinkers.  It makes perspectives cheap and easy.[xxix] Reverend Billy affected a perspective by incongruity by creating a comic space where the real Disney shoppers were abruptly disengaged from a scenic space of sheer shopping motion.

The “Cell Phone Opera” was an aesthetic, lyrical device where words rose and settled, where the audience’s attention was directed here and there, to this phone call and then to the next.  When the phone arguments reached a crescendo, and when the guards and Disney employees realized that something out of the ordinary was happening, the audience was also directed to a sort of a dance where the guards struggled to create shopping order among the actors.  Further, by dressing up as shoppers, the protesters/actors created a bond of solidarity with the real shoppers by looking like them.  Once the “play” was up and running, and once the guards confronted the protesters/actors, the other “real” shoppers most likely felt confronted by the guards as well.  Thus, an experience for all was promoted by this theatrical action where the audience was encouraged to join in.

Comical and theatrical protests will benefit, however, from the combination of philosophy, pragmatic aesthetics, practice, and improvisational dramatism (ID).  Further, the ability to create planned incongruity within an improvisational space requires a great deal of organizational effort and work.  In order to induce an experience, as well as a comical/theatrical incongruous perspective for an audience, the actor as rhetor must be equipped with tools that allow for immediate response to any given situation or circumstance.  This project not only supports rhetorical pragmatism, it suggests that an effective way of accomplishing this task is through the use of theatrical, non-violent, directed incongruous acts.[xxx] Such techniques would benefit from ID.  In the second half of this paper, I will first describe the carnivalesque direct-action performed by ACT-UP, their famous “Stop the Church.”  Next, while pointing out how this direct-action enacts aspects of ID, I will explain how Burke’s concept of dramatism can be altered by theatrical and improvisational theory, and how this hybrid ID can be used by social movements to aid them in creating direct comedic incongruity.

Stop the Church!

On December 10, 1989, ACT-UP and the Women’s Health Action and Mobilization (WHAM!) co-sponsored the “Stop the Church” demonstration at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.  As described by Christiansen and Hanson, the demonstration was directed towards the Catholic Church and Cardinal John O’Connor’s condemnation of homosexuality, birth control, and abortion.  The Church supported the widespread myth that AIDS was a “gay disease” perpetuated by immoral sexual practices.  By connecting gay men exclusively with the spread of AIDS, segments in society who agreed with the Catholic Church worked to reinforce this notion, while framing the gay community as scapegoats for the disease.  Articles, music, and new terminology were created to enforce this ideology and reinforce the gay male as the scapegoat.[xxxi] In an effort to reframe the debate and to debunk the status of scapegoat, ACT-UP and WHAM! protested at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.  Christiansen and Hanson describe the event as being carnivalesque in style, utilizing guerrilla theatre, comedy and parody.  The protesters held their “trademark ‘die-ins,’” while some others dressed as clowns, “catholic bishops, and nuns cavorting in the street.”  Outside the Cathedral, protesters chanted and held signs that read: “‘Curb your Dogma,’ ‘Papal Bull,’ and ‘Danger: Narrow Minded Church Ahead.’”  Inside the Cathedral, protesters held a die-in during the service where they “lay down in the aisles, blew whistles, and threw hundreds of condoms into the air like human fountains.”  Many observers were offended by the protest including churchgoers who could not understand the comic and carnival themed efforts of the protesters: “‘look at that . . . They’re making a party out of this, like they’re having fun.  How can anybody take them seriously?’”[xxxii]

Even though several segments of the community were angry, this action created an experience, engaging many members within the community, while, at the same time, bringing AIDS, Queer and Women’s Rights, and other issues into the public arena for debate.  As Jay Blotcher, an ACT-UP member and part of the team that publicized the event, stated: “You have to go back to that old maxim that any publicity is good publicity . . . after this demonstration, people were more willing, conversely, or ironically, to listen to us.”[xxxiii] Like many of ACT-UP’s actions, “Stop the Church” was an act of comedic, carnivalesque, specifically planned improvisation.  Further, it demonstrates many attributes of improvisational dramatism.[xxxiv]

Dramatism

Kenneth Burke’s theory of dramatism entails a “technique of analysis of language and thought as basically modes of action rather than means of conveying information.”[xxxv] Further, he calls his theory “‘dramatistic’ because [it views] language primarily as a mode of action rather than as a mode of knowledge.”[xxxvi] Central to Burke’s theory are the terms action and motion.  For Burke, people act.  Consequently, humans are “symbol-using, symbol-making, and symbol-misusing animal[s].”[xxxvii] Motion is devoid of conscious action.  To this end, any theory of dramatism must also be a theory regarding action.  Dramatism can therefore be considered as a broad category of praxis, as well as a pragmatic process that promotes action over motion.[xxxviii]

In order to determine the motivations and conditions of an actor, Burke’s dramatism analyzes human relations through what he terms the pentad: act, agent, scene, agency and purpose.[xxxix] Accordingly, Burke states: “For there to be an act, there must be an agent.  Similarly, there must be a scene in which the agent acts.  To act in a scene, the agent must employ some means, or agency.  And it can be called an act in the full sense of the term if it involves a purpose.”[xl] Importantly, the overall scene can be viewed in varying scope or “circumferences.”   For example, a scene can be of a narrow practical scope, such as a scene in a park, or it can be narrowed to “naturalistic limits, as in Darwinism.”  Further, a widening circumference of a scene can include ideas such as all of “Western Civilization,” “Elizabethanism,” “Capitalism,” and so on.

For Burke, the simplified grammar of these five terms becomes “principles” for later complicated philosophies or “casuistries,” which demonstrate how the terms interact in a given situation.[xli] As such, the scene becomes a philosophy or casuistry once it is viewed in relation to how the scene relates to an act.  When considering the terms scene and act, the scene/act ratio, then, would entail the “container [scene] and the thing contained [act].”[xlii] Additionally, different ratios will uncover different modes of motivation or purpose, as does an emphasis on ambiguity (discussed below).  For example, the scene/act ratio can be viewed in terms of ACT-UP’s “Stop the Church” action.  According to several members of ACT-UP (Petrelis and Schulman; Leo and Schulman; Cramer and Schulman; Nahmanson and Schulman; Signorile and Schulman), the direct-action protest was called into existence because of a larger scene—suggesting a scene/act ratio:  Here, the scene of the Church’s stance against homosexuality, called the act of protest into being.

Not unlike pragmatic aesthetics which would prize ambiguity over narrow ends, according to Burke the grammar terms are purposely kept ambiguous because relations between these terms are ambiguous in nature, and so “what we want is not terms that avoid ambiguity, but terms that clearly reveal the strategic spots at which ambiguities necessarily arise.”[xliii] Depending on how a critic approaches a given scene, that critic might place more importance upon the act or, rather, on the scene that contains the act.  Depending on what the critic chooses to emphasize, the overall motivation will change.  When considering ambiguity in relation to the “Stop the Church” action, some ACT-UP members were motivated to act because of their perception that the Catholic Church was involved with local politics.  Other members felt that the Church, because of its place in the community and its vast resources, did not do enough to help the community.  In either case, because the “Church” as a scene becomes somewhat ambiguous, different members could bring to the action different motivations for committing the protest act.  Further, these differing motivations were also affected by the many obstacles that confronted members of ACT-UP while preparing for their protest.  Thus, although Burke’s typology of dramatism is a useful tool for critics, I would suggest that in order to transform it into a praxis oriented technique, two fundamental elements are missing: the obstacle (that which gets in the way of the act) and the application of theory to actor/activist practice.

Burke, to be sure, recognizes the importance of the obstacle in relation to conflict or what he also calls “conflicting stimuli.”[xliv] While explaining dramatism, Burke states: “If action is to be our key term, then drama; for drama is the culmination form of action . . . But if drama, then conflict.”[xlv] When recognizing conflict, conflicting stimuli can be constituted as a type of obstacle—that which stands in our way of getting what we want (motive or purpose).  As Uta Hagen rightly points out in Respect for Acting, the conflict “is at the root.”[xlvi] Whether you are analyzing symbolic action after the fact or preparing for an act of symbolic action, the obstacle(s) must be identified and factored into the motive equation because obstacles influence motives.  As Lloyd Bitzer argues, an exigency is “an imperfection marked by urgency; it is a defect, an obstacle, something waiting to be done, a thing which is other than it should be.”[xlvii] Consequently, fundamental to exigency within any rhetorical situation are the obstacles that an agent faces in attaining his or her goal or purpose—as was encountered by ACT-UP.

Before the direct-action, ACT-UP members had to face a series of obstacles including conflict between ACT-UP members regarding the event, and whether the event should take place outside the Church or also inside the Church during mass.  Although most members supported the action, several felt that it was inappropriate.  For example, Ann Northrop explains that some people feared that taking action against the Catholic Church would only generate negative publicity and, therefore, hurt the movement.[xlviii] Likewise, Jay Blotcher reports that several ACT-UP members felt uncomfortable about the action because they were Catholic.[xlix] These obstacles, and many more faced by ACT-UP required different responses, while affecting individual motivation to different degrees.  For example, in order to deal with the fear of negative publicity, members such as Blotcher were highly motivated to get the word out and worked for a month in advance to inform the media and the Church about what they planned to do, and why they were doing it.[l]

Dramatism as a Heuristic Device

Burke’s theory of dramatism seems incomplete for this current project, insofar as it does not address how social movements and others could use this theory in their role as actor or composer.  Indeed, the redirection of dramatism as a heuristic device is not a new idea. Charles Kneupper, in his essay “The Relation of Agency to Act in Dramatism: A Comment on ‘Burke’s Act’” states: “Indeed one might go so far as to say that Burke has a ‘trained incapacity’ to developing the potentials for composition of his theory.  As a result, Dramatism as a rhetorical theory . . . is at best half developed.”[li] As such, Kneupper offers the observation that dramatism “can function as a heuristic” device for the composer or, as in our case, the social movement as actor.[lii] Ultimately, what is perplexing is that Burke himself did not also pursue the full potential of dramatism; but, as Burke explained, his concern was mainly with literary criticism, not composition or performance.[liii] In the end, Burke’s theory of dramatism is a helpful tool for literary critics wishing to uncover motivation within symbolic action.  Further, because dramatism is also intimately connected to acting theory, since both apply similar terms and methods, it could also be adjusted, using acting theory, to serve as a composition tool.[liv]

Kneupper offers excellent starting places for adjusting Burke’s pentad to serve the social movement as actor/composer.  First, he suggests utilizing the pentad as a heuristic devise, which would allow social movements to consider the many perspectives of their audience, motivation, justification, as well as vital questions concerning any policy being put forth.  In this light, the pentadic ratio “functions similarly to the Aristotelian topi as places to look for justification.”[lv] Thus, vital questions emerge to help the social movement as actor address an audience:

How appropriate is the policy to the scene? What in the scene calls for policy?  How will the policy change the scene?  Who will implement the policy?  Are they capable of effectively implementing the policy?  What must be done to implement the policy?  After implementation, what will the policy require by way of continuing action?  Are resources to implement and act on the policy available, and are they operational?  Why is the policy desirable?[lvi]

From a pragmatic point of view, a heuristic approach to Burke’s pentad not only helps one consider contingent obstacles, but it supports and connects the key rhetorical considerations observed by Bruner and Poulakos: “kairos (the opportune moment), prepon (the appropriate), and dynaton (the possible)”[lvii] and, of course, phronesis (practical wisdom).[lviii] Aspects of this heuristic approach were utilized by ACT-UP when they prepared for their demonstration.  As is demonstrated in the table below, in order for the direct-action to create directed incongruity, ACT-UP had to consider the ratio tensions between grammar terms in order to ask and answer a series of relevant questions regarding the action.  Each tension provided information on how ACT-UP needed to approach different exigencies and obstacles:

Questions	Pentad Grammar-potentials for ratios:	KairosTo Prepon To DynationPhronesis	ACT-UP’s “Stop the Church” Action
How appropriate is the policy to the scene?	Act/Scene	Kairos (opportune moment)	Should the protest be held inside the Church, or outside the Church, or in both locations?
What in the scene calls for policy?	Scene/Purpose	Prepon (the appropriate)	Which protest actions will promote the best publicity?  Does the type of publicity matter? What will create engagement between audience and actors?
How will the policy change the scene?	Act/Scene	Phronesis (practical wisdom)	Will the protest against St. Patrick’s Church change policies supported by the Catholic Church?
Who will implement the policy?	Agent/Act	Prepon(the appropriate)	Which affinity groups will protest inside and which groups will protest outside the Church?
Are they capable of effectively implementing the policy?	Agent/Act	Phronesis (practical wisdom)	How many police will be present at the action?  How can protesters avoid arrest, while still remaining nonviolent?
What must be done to implement the policy?	Agency/Act	Prepon (the appropriate)	When should the media be contacted?  How do we frame our message?  What type of posters should be created?  What type of costumes should be worn?  How can protesters gain access to the interior of the Church?
After implementation, what will the policy require by way of continuing action?	Act/Agency	Dynaton(the possible)	How do we fight the negative publicity?  How can we follow up on our demands?  How will our next action be different from what was learned from the Church action?
Are resources to implement and act on the policy available, and are they operational?	Agency/Act	Phronesis (practical wisdom)	Can we rely on the media to accurately cover the event? Do we have access to printing materials?  Can we rely on established networks to organize attendance?
Why is the policy desirable?	Purpose/Act	Dynaton(the possible)	What can we accomplish?  Will it increase awareness?  Membership? Or create division among ACT-UP members?
What are the obstacles present?	Obstacle – Added to Burke’s Pentad and taken from acting theory	Phronesis – What stands in the way of getting what you want?	Do we have the people and resources need to direct our act of incongruity?  Will someone stand in our way of performing our act?  Will anyone care?

The pentad also has potential, as Kneupper further points out, for “adapting discourse to a particular audience.”[lix] Should you approach the audience from the rationale of agency, act, agent, purpose, obstacle, scene, or, even, attitude?  Which approach will provide the best prepon, persuasion for situation, kairos. If we concur with Bitzer that “rhetoric is situational,”[lx] and that “the presence of rhetorical discourse obviously indicates the presence of a rhetorical situation,”[lxi] then the social movement as actor must address an audience from the grammar of the scene.  If the audience is weary of the purpose, but maintains strong support for the agent, it would be wise to construct directed incongruity that reflects on the agent’s ability and her belief in the purpose, and therefore to assure the audience that the agent, as “technical” expert, supports the purpose of the action proposed.

Furthermore, in using the pentad to determine justification for an act or using it to determine the best means of persuasion, the social movement as actor works first as a critic/composer and second as a performer/activist.  Yet this latter mode of working is not necessarily the norm, because the social movement as actor does not always have the leisure to construct and plan for an act of rhetoric—their role as critic.  Social movements will often be in situations that demand immediate action, and so they must be able to adjust quickly in a timely way to capture kairos (opportune moment), prepon (the appropriate), and dynaton (the possible).  In order to offer social movements the proper tools for such situations, I propose improvisational techniques that aim to reform action, allowing social movements to use their talents in any circumstance or situation.

Improvisation, Commedia, and the Lecoq Technique

What is theatrical improvisation (improv)?  Why recommend improvisation for social movements? How can improvisation help social movements?  On the first question, Frost and Yarrow in their text Improvisation in Drama, state that improvisation is: “The skill of using bodies, space, all human resources, to generate a coherent physical expression of an idea, a situation, a character (even, perhaps, a text); to do this spontaneously, in response to the immediate stimuli of one’s environment, and to do it à l’improviste: as through taken by surprise, without preconceptions.”[lxii] Most definitions stress spontaneity, the lack of pre-conceived notions in reacting spontaneously to ambient conditions, and active perception between actor and audience.  However, as Smith and Dean suggest, improvisation has acquired “romantic notions” emphasizing ideas such as pure “spontaneity” and “simplicity.”[lxiii] Their critique is significant because although these notions pervade perceptions of improvisation, the truth is quite different:  to be successful at improvisation, the actor must be completely prepared before entering the stage.  She has with her an arsenal of trained techniques and bits of theatrical action.  She is prepared for the contingent, the unexpected, is actively engaged with life processes, and thus she is so comfortable in a world of flux that she can adjust herself to meet demands.  She is not rigid in this sense, but absolutely prepared—a neutral living space filled with active potential.  To understand this paradoxical relationship between the spontaneous and the prepared, in relation to a neutral living space of potential, it is helpful to review the techniques developed by the improvisational and commedia master Jacques Lecoq (1921-1999).

Lecoq was born in France and started acting after World War II.  He discovered improvisation while working with Claude Martin, and later, with the Compagnie des Comédiens, he became interested in commedia theatre.  In 1956, Lecoq opened his influential school, The Ecole Internationale de Mime et de Théâtre, which is still in operation today.[lxiv] Basic to the Lecoq technique are four overall principles: “(a) the establishment of the ‘neutral body’ . . .  (b) the concept of ‘play’; (c) observation and research, both of ‘realistic’ detail and of rhythm and movement; (d) the auto-cours or ‘do-it-yourself’ work in teams or groups [aimed at] producing various kinds of performance.”[lxv]

The most important notions in the Lecoqean lexicon are the concepts of neutrality and “observation and research.”  First, it is important to understand that the term neutral does not imply a middle place of opinion, nor is it a space of sheer motion where forces act upon you.  Rather, it is a space of pure potentiality where all possibilities reside at rest until called upon.  As Frost and Yarrow explain, the neutral space “is highly charged.  The body has a wide range of available resources; neutrality engenders a state in which they are ready to go into play, but not programmed to operate in a predetermined way.”[lxvi] Neutrality is dependent both upon absolute preparedness, as well as the ability to not predetermine, necessarily, how one will utilize the prepared resources.  As such, preparedness requires “observation and research.”  For the actor this means that you must observe yourself as a person, as well as others in order to assume different personalities and physicalities.  For the social movement as critic, this means that you must understand all aspects regarding the program you are promoting.  It is the space of the critic and researcher who prepares before composition.  Furthermore, the critic must be a student of human nature, because she must learn how to understand people, their reactions, concerns, and behaviors.  Without having an understanding of her potential audience(s), she cannot make a proper connection with them and will, therefore, mistake the best means of persuasion suitable to a certain audience or circumstance.   Thus, neutrality, research, and observation work together to create the active space of possibility or dynaton.

For example, ACT-UP used observation and research well, although, some members found it difficult to utilize a neutral energy—hindering their ability to react in a way that promoted their ultimate aim of exposing and criticizing the Catholic Church’s policies on homosexuality.  ACT-UP was well prepared for the protest, effectively coordinating the attendance of many activists.  Media consideration was also taken care of, because Blotcher sent out faxes and letters a month before the protest to explain ACT-UP and WHAM!’s aims, demands and concerns, while, Richard Deagle created professional posters.  Affinity groups were formed and each group planned exactly what they wanted to do.  However, because ACT-UP members were divided between individuals and affinity groups, and because coordination between these groups and individuals was minimal, a great deal of the protest resembled a Deweyan Babel of voices.[lxvii] Furthermore, some members, such as Michael Petrelis, found it difficult to use neutral energy and, therefore, difficult to adjust their protests in such a way as to redirect attention, create directed incongruity, and promote an experience.

As Petrelis explained, when it came time for the activists to reveal themselves inside the church, they did so all at once, competing with each other, and the church-goers.[lxviii] Because Petrelis wanted to be heard, he imposed himself onto the scene by standing on a pew and yelling: “O’Connor, you’re killing us!  Just stop it, stop it!”[lxix] Although incongruous within a church scene, since he could not use a neutral space that would have allowed him to adjust his protest in order to create an experience for those present, Petrelis’s action became a random incongruous act instead of a directed incongruous one, which in the end worked against him.[lxx] Were Petrelis able to use the energy of neutrality, he might have been able to adjust his protest to work better within that particular environment.  This is what Jamie Leo was able to accomplish.  Dressed as a priest, Leo was sat in the front of the Church, and instead of yelling out his protest he offered a protesting prayer—quieting the parishioners, promoting an experience, as well as direct theatrical incongruity.[lxxi] As Leo’s protest demonstrates, utilizing the neutral space is a form of phronesis, since practical wisdom, aided by a heuristic dramatism, is used to select and initiate the appropriate action need to create directed incongruity and to induce an experience between you and your intended audience. Vital to this process, however, is the ability to align one’s self with the flexibility of process over ends.  If social movements or actors are rigid, they are not able to adjust quickly to exigencies that may present themselves and, therefore, may not take action appropriate for the particular circumstance being faced.  In order to inhabit neutrality, Lecoq’s second notion of “play” is vital.

Lecoq’s concept of play entails the “energy that is shared between performers on stage and in rehearsal—the ball that the game is played with.”[lxxii] It is a type of perception (action) rather than reception (sheer motion) that occurs between actors, and between actors and an audience.  It is an effective way to create an experience, as Dewey insists.  Next, with Burke’s concept of the pentad, play is the tension that holds the dialectical ratios together, thus creating energy between the terms and notions that actively creates what Frost and Yarrow term “inter-play.”[lxxiii] Finally, play is what helps identification, in a Burkean sense.  For the social movement who steps into the role of actor, play is vital to cultivating a relationship with an audience, because an actor must promote active energy which engages and invites the audience to have a shared experience with the activist/performer.  For example, returning to ACT-UP and Jamie Leo’s “holy” protest, by choosing to offer up a prayer as a way to protest, Leo was able to “play” with the real parishioners, inviting them to pray with him.  This is the difference between speaking at someone (as Petrelis did when yelling, “O’Connor, you are killing us”) and speaking to or with someone.  It is the difference between seeing your audience as an entity of sheer motion or as one of action and reaction.

Finally, this sense of play is also close to Lecoq’s notion of “do-it-yourself” work in teams or groups, because an actor is not an isolated being working in a vacuum.  She is an active force of potential action/energy, engaging and working with other actors, including counter-agents, as well as her audience.  It is not a mono-project, but a space of plurality that must be creatively and actively navigated.  Of course, ACT-UP uses “do-it-yourself” work extensively, not only with the organization as a whole, but also through their use of affinity groups and consensus decision-making.

Promoting Protest as Performance

One might rightly ask the reasons behind suggesting acting techniques for social movements or even suggesting that social movements become a type of actor, since actors are often seen as simple sources of entertainment.  I am not suggesting that social movements be reduced to the role of entertainer.  I am suggesting however, that social movements utilize theatrical direct-action techniques or acts—and that these acts, while entertaining, theatrical, and often comedic, promoted directed moments of incongruity created to disrupt tragic either/or frames that divide a society and halts a democratization of perspectives  for unevolving ends.  Historically, like artists and rhetors, actors, plays, and comedy have been demoted from a place where change could be effected in society through art, to a place of sheer entertainment equated with the rhetorical act of ceremonial oratory.  As Schechner laments in “The Big Issues and The Happy Few,” “we can hardly imagine such a display of [activist] fervor without suspecting it of total manipulation and bad faith.”[lxxiv] Schechner’s concern is understandable especially considering how commercial advertisers and corporations manipulate what appear to be spontaneous spaces and moments of creative engagement with life’s processes and the offering of multiple perspectives.  Whether it is Wal-Mart supplying bloggers with pre-written texts and encouraging these same bloggers to cut and paste the material into their blogs, or it is cigarette companies working to subvert governmental regulations by using YouTube to get their message out in an “invisible way,” it can be difficult to know the hows, whos, or whys behind acts of entertainment that also try to appear as incongruous acts challenging dominate either/or frames.  The only defense against such deceptive, manipulative efforts is to create clearer, more specific, directed acts of incongruity that attracts people on an everyday level.  As demonstrated throughout this paper, such efforts are already being successfully implemented by several social movements including ACT-UP and their work in finding a cure for AIDS/HIV, and Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping, and their efforts against consumerism, or the clowning efforts of new transnational protest groups such as the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army and their crusade against the violence of war and wartime crimes.[lxxv] Indeed, each of these social movements are successfully using aspects of the above proposed communication paradigm, improvisational dramatism, to create directed acts of incongruity in comedic, theatrical, and carnivalesque frames that also encourage interpersonal dialogue and debate in society.

---

[i] Although I use Burke’s term “dramatism” throughout this paper, I significantly alter his critical method in order to create and refine a critical and performative heuristic method for directing motivation and action.  I maintain Burke’s term “dramatism” not only because his critical technique has inspired my own heuristic application, but because agents and social movements as actors work to direct drama.

[ii] Visit http://www.actup.org for more information on their direct actions and history.

[iii] Christiansen and Hanson, P. 161.

[iv] Kenneth Burke, Attitudes toward History, 313-14.

[v] Emphasis added, Storming as cited by Christiansen and Hanson, 158.

[vi] Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives, 237.

[vii] Visit http://www.revbilly.com for more information on the incongruous acts performed by this group.

[viii] Bill Talen, 6.

[ix] Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives 3, 77.

[x] Kenneth Burke, Attitudes toward History 225.

[xi] Takis Poulakos, “Isocrates’ Civic Education and the Question of Doxa.” 45.

[xii] There was a great divide between those early Greek philosophers who held that absolute truth was not only possible, but obtainable (See Socrates and Plato), and those who felt that absolute truth was impossible even for the Gods, and thus they argued for the contingent nature of living (see Isocrates and the Sophists).

[xiii] Isocrates, 72.

[xiv] M. Lane Bruner, 86-87.

[xv] John Poulakos, “Towards a Sophistic Definition of Rhetoric” 26.

[xvi] Ibid.

[xvii] —. 27.

[xviii] —. 29.

[xix] —. 31.

[xx] William James, 31.

[xxi] John Dewey, 35.

[xxii] Nathan Crick, 315.

[xxiii] Bill Talen, 84, Emphasis added.

[xxiv] —. 72.

[xxv] —. 74-75.

[xxvi] —. 75.

[xxvii] —. 77.

[xxviii] —. 78.

[xxix] Kenneth Burke, Attitudes toward History 228-29.

[xxx] Non-violent direct-action is here defined as taking direct action against perceived problems in a non-violent manner, as opposed to indirect efforts such as voting.

[xxxi] Christiansen and Hanson, 161.

[xxxii] —. 157.

[xxxiii] Jay Blotcher, 42.

[xxxiv] In order to demonstrate how the “Stop the Church” action reflects improvisational dramatism, this project relies on the oral histories of ACT-UP members who participated in the action.  Taken from the ACT-UP Oral History Project, a program of MIX-The New York Lesbian and Gay Experimental Film Festival, this project uses 11 of the 61 oral histories posted on the Web site (http://www.actuporalhistory.org), that specifically discuss the “Stop the Church” action: Those of Peter Cramer (2002), Gregg Bordowitz (2002), Sarah Schulman (2003), Jamie Leo (2003), Michael Petrelis (2003), Michelangelo Signorile (2003), Alexandra Juhasz (2003), Dudley Saunders (2003), Ann Northrop (2003), Jay Blotcher (2004), and Steve Quester (2004).

[xxxv] Kenneth Burke, Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method, 125.

[xxxvi] Kenneth Burke, “Questions and Answers About the Pentad,” 330.

[xxxvii] Kenneth Burke, Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method, 6.

[xxxviii] Anderson, 255.

[xxxix] Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives, xv.  Burke’s pentad later becomes a hexad once the term attitude is added. Attitude is a “kind of incipient or future action, [and] it must be by some means grounded in the set of the body” Kenneth Burke, “(Nonsymbolic) Motion/(Symbolic) Action,” Critical Inquiry 4.4 (1978).p. 816.

[xl] Kenneth Burke, “Dramatism,” 446a.

[xli] Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives, xvi.

[xlii] —. 3.

[xliii] Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives, xviii, Emphasis in original.

[xliv] Kenneth Burke, Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose, 30.

[xlv] Kenneth Burke, Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method, 54-55.

[xlvi] Uta Hagen, 180.

[xlvii] Lloyd Bitzer, 221, emphasis added.

[xlviii] Ann Northrop, 28.

[xlix] Jay Blotcher, 58

[l] —. 39.

[li] Charles Kneupper, 306a.

[lii] —.306b.

[liii] Kenneth Burke, “Questions and Answers About the Pentad,” 330a.

[liv] Actors consider questions similar to those found in Burke’s grammar.  As Hagen (1973) details through her “object exercises,” these questions include: Who am I? (agent); What time is it? (scene);  Where am I? (scene); What surrounds me? (scene); What are the given circumstances? (scene); What is my relationship? (scene); What do I want? (act); What is in my way? (obstacle);  What do I do to get what I want? (agency) (p. 82).  The question of “why do I want? (purpose)” is not included in Hagen’s object exercise, but should be.

[lv] Charles Kneupper, 307.

[lvi] Charles Kneupper, 306.

[lvii] John Poulakos, “Towards a Sophistic Definition of Rhetoric,” 26.

[lviii] M. Lane Bruner, 86-87.

[lix] Charles Kneupper, 307.

[lx] Lloyd Bitzer, 208.

[lxi] —. 207.

[lxii] Frost and Yarrow, 1.

[lxiii] Smith and Dean, 25.

[lxiv] Frost and Yarrow, 61-62.  For more information on Ecole Internationale de Mime et de Théâtre, visit their Web site at <http://www.ecole-jacqueslecoq.com/index_uk.htm>.

[lxv] —. 63.

[lxvi] —. 65.

[lxvii] John Dewey, 349.

[lxviii] Michael Petrelis, 37.

[lxix] Ibid.

[lxx] Petrelis was immediately removed from the church by a police officer (p. 37) and ACT-UP members criticized his actions (p. 38).

[lxxi] —. 45.

[lxxii] Frost and Yarrow, 64.

[lxxiii] Ibid.

[lxxiv] Richard Schechner, 7.

[lxxv] Visit http://www.clownarmy.org/index.html for more information on this comedic activist group.

Bibliography

Anderson, D. “Questioning the Motives of Habituated Action: Burke and Bourdieu on Practice.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 37.3 (2004): 255-74.

Bitzer, L.F. “The Rhetorical Situation.”  Contemporary Rhetorical Theory: A Reader. Eds. John Louis Lucaites, Celeste Michelle Condit and Sally Caudill. New York: Guilford Press, 1999. 217-25.

Blotcher, J., and S. Schulman. “Interview of Jay Blotcher (Interview: 054) ” MIX-The New York Lesbian and Gay Experimental Film Festival: ACT UP Oral History Project, 2004.

Bruner, M.L. “The Rhetorical Phrominos: Political Wisdom in Postmodernity.” Controversia 2.1 (2003): 82-102.

Burke, Kenneth. Attitudes toward History. 2nd ed. Los Alton: Hermes Publications, 1959 (1937).

—. “Dramatism.” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Ed. D.L. Sills. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1968. 445-52.

—. A Grammar of Motives. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969 (1945).

—. Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966.

—. “(Nonsymbolic) Motion/(Symbolic) Action.” Critical Inquiry 4.4 (1978): 809-38.

—. Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984 (1954).

—. “Questions and Answers About the Pentad.” College Composition and Communication 29.4 (1978): 330-35.

Christiansen, Adrienne E., and Jeremy J. Hanson. “Comedy as Cure for Tragedy: Act up and the Rhetoric of Aids.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 82.2 (1996): 157-70.

Cramer, P., and S. Schulman. “Interview of Peter Cramer (Interview: 050).” MIX-The New York Lesbian and Gay Experimental Film Festival: ACT UP Oral History Project, 2002.

Crick, N. “John Dewey’s Aesthetics of Communication.” Southern Communication Journal 69.4 (2004): 303-09.

Deagle, R., and S. Schulman. “Interview with Richard Deagle (Interview: 028).” MIX–The New York Lesbian and Gay Experimental Film Festival: ACT UP Oral History Project, 2003.

Dewey, J. Art as Experience. New York: The Berkley Publishing Group, 1980 (1934).

Frost, A., and R. Yarrow. Improvisation in Drama. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989.

Hagen, U. Respect for Acting. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1973.

Isocrates. “Against the Sophists.”  Trans. G. Norlin. The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present Eds. P. Bizzell and B. Herzberg. 2nd ed. Boston: Bedfort/St. Martin’s Press, 2001. 72-75.

James, W. Pragmatism. Ed. B. Kuklic. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1981 (1907).

Klepto, Kolonel. “Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army”.  2008. Electronic. April 20 2008. <http://www.clownarmy.org/index.html>.

Kneupper, Charles W. “The Relation of Agency to Act in Dramatism: A Comment On “Burke’s Act”.” College English 47.3 (1985): 305-08.

Leo, J., and S. Schulman. “Interview with Jamie Leo (Interview: 037).” MIX-The New York Lesbian and Gay Experimental Film Festival: ACT UP Oral History Project, 2003.

Nahmanson, E. , and S. Schulman. “Interview of Emily Nahmanson (Interview: 023).” MIX–The New York Lesbian and Gay Experimental Film Festival: ACT UP Oral History Project 2003.

Northrop, A., and S. Schulman. “Interview with Ann Northrop (Interview: 027).” MIX–The New York Lesbian and Gay Experimental Film Festival: ACT UP Oral History Project 2003.

Petrelis, M., and S. Schulman. “Interview of Michael Petrelis (Interview: 020).” MIX-The New York Lesbian and Gay Experimental Film Festival: ACT UP Oral History Project, 2003.

Poulakos, J. “Towards a Sophistic Definition of Rhetoric.”  Contemporary Rhetorical Theory: A Reader Eds. J.L. Lucaites, C.M. Condit and S. Caudill. New York: The Guilford Press, 1999 (1983). 25-34.

Poulakos, T. “Isocrates’ Civic Education and the Question of Doxa.”  Isocrates and Civic Education. Eds. T. Poulakos and D. DePew. Austin: University of Texan Press, 2004. 138-68.

Schechner, Richard. “The Big Issues and the Happy Few.” TDR/The Drama Review 48.2 (2004): 6-8.

Signorile, M., and S. Schulman. “Interview of Michelangelo Signorile (Interview: 029).” MIX-The New York Lesbian and Gay Experimental Film Festival: ACT UP Oral History Project 2003.

Smith, H., and R.T. Dean. Improvisation, Hypermedia, and the Arts since 1945. Performing Arts Studies. Vol. 4. Amsterdam: Hardwood Academic Publishers, 1997.

Talen, Billy. What Should I Do If Reverend Billy Is in My Store? New York: The New Press, 2003.