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“Viewpointing through Ethical Concerns: Directing Joan Holden’s Nickel & Dimed”

Every time I begin work on a new production I feel as though I am out of my league; that I know nothing and have no notion of how to begin and I’m sure that someone else should be doing my

job, someone assured, who knows what to do, someone who is really a professional. I feel unbalanced, uncomfortable and out of place. I feel like a sham.

-- Anne Bogart, Viewpoints, 8

When I arrived in Flagstaff, Arizona to accept my new position as a Visiting Assistant

Professor of Theatre at Northern Arizona University in May of 2011, the play, Nickel and

Dimed, written by Joan Holden, had already been selected for me to direct. I suspect that my

department chair, with good intentions, thought I might be drawn to the play because of my

research and creative background conducting and creating performance ethnographies

concerning studies of diversity. Unfortunately, as I initially walked into the rehearsal hall, I felt

more closely to Anne Bogart’s above quote than I did a confident, or even comfortable, leader.

In fact, not only did I lack confidence in myself, I also lacked confidence in the play, because, as

a performance ethnographer, I was unable to come to terms with the ethical approach adopted by

journalist Barbara Ehrenreich when she conducted the original study—the factual study on which

the play is based.1 Here, I discuss the choices I made, some alone and some with the production

team, in order to combat my dislike of the play and the protagonist’s ethical approach.

Ehrenreich’s decision to compose this study was prompted by a meeting with her editor

at Harper’s in which he challenged her to conduct some good “old fashioned” journalism.2 She

reluctantly took his advice and entered the field incognito—working low-wage jobs in three

different states and returning to her comfortable upper middle-class home in Key West to write

up her findings. Those findings became the documentary framework for her New York Times

1 Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, 2nd ed. (New York: Henry Hold and Company, 2008). 2 Ehrenreich, 1.

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bestselling book, which was first published in 2001 and was recently re-released in a ten-year

anniversary edition.

Woody Lotts, Megan Hansen, and Allison Ritter at “K-Mart” in Northern Arizona University’s fall 2011 production of Joan Holden’s Nickel and Dimed. Photo courtesy of [Author].

In 2002, playwright Joan Holden was commissioned by Artistic Director Bartlett Sher to

adapt Ehrenreich’s book for a stage production at the Intiman Theatre in Seattle, Washington.

The play, efficiently titled Nickel and Dimed, went on to be produced at the Mark Taper Forum,

the Guthrie, and numerous other regional, university, and community theatres across the

country.3 In the play, Holden attempts to highlight the struggles faced by working class people in

America as they try to make ends meet in exceedingly challenging economic times. But, given

Holden’s thirty year association with the San Francisco Mime Troupe, the play is influenced

3 Joan Holden, Nickel and Dimed, (New York: Dramatists Play Service, 2005).

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heavily by agit-prop and as Lawrence Christon of Variety argues in his review of the play at the

Mark Taper Forum, “part of agit-prop’s basic weakness is substituting type for character, which

always ends up in oversimplification.”4 Alternatively, Holden argues that her techniques are

closer to epic theatre than to agit-prop and are meant to bring the characters closer to the

audience in a short amount of time. In a 2003 interview, Holden states that “epic characters are

not meant to be revealed slowly. They must be

instantly present. They are only going to get three

minutes onstage, but they have to make an

impression.”5

Because the play is neither truly agit-prop

nor truly epic and because the working class

characters are written such that they are shallow

and under-developed, I chose to produce the play

as Barbara’s journey. To me, therein lies the

difficulty. Directing this production proved

challenging because, while I easily agree that

Barbara is the play’s protagonist, I disagree

Chelsea Schinker and Allison Ritter as maids with the protagonist’s ethical point of view. in the fall 2011, Northern Arizona University production of Nickel and Dimed. Photo Christon’s description of his viewing of the courtesy of [Author].

4 Lawrence Christon, “Nickel and Dimed,” Variety, 20 Sept. 2002 www.variety.com/ review/VE1117918769 (30 August 2011). 5 Alice-Adrien Hansel, “Subsidized Living: Reflections on Bringing Nickel and Dimed to the Stage,” Theater 33, no. 3 (Fall 2003): 100.

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Taper production closely parallels how I felt about highlighting Barbara as the protagonist of our

production:

Joan Holden’s theatrical presentation of social critic Barbara Ehrenreich’s book

[…] is, despite every effort to dramatize the author’s self-doubt and mounting

desperation, the Barbara Ehrenreich Show, in which our top academic media-gal

takes us slumming, grieves about it, and then goes on to the NPR circuit and a six-

figure payday.6

More often than not, disagreeing with a fictional protagonist is of little concern when I direct a

play; however, given that this play is essentially a documentary, and given that the protagonist is

essentially the documentarian, my struggle with Barbara’s ethical approach grossly affected my

own approach to directing the play.

Even if I were able to disregard the white-professional-upper-middle-class-woman-

dropping-in-and-slumming-it-with-the-natives-approach to qualitative research as described by

Christon, what bothered me even more was that Ehrenreich hid her educated and privileged

background from the men and women she met while she was in the field. Following her

fieldwork, she wrote about and for her research subjects instead of with them in an empathetic

fashion, as prompted by more self-reflexive and open ethnographic approaches. As respected

professor and critical ethnographer, Soyini Madison, writes,

A concentration on ethics is fundamental to critical ethnography, because we are

involved in entering the domains of Others and in the interpretive practice of both

representing them and the multiple ways they construct their experiences and their

worlds.7

6 Christon 7 Soyini Madison, Critical Ethnography: Method, Ethics, and Performance, (Thousand Oaks:

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I recognize that Ehrenreich’s study is journalistic as opposed to ethnographic in nature. Even so,

I feel that her study would have been more ethical and, thus for me, more meaningful, had she

been forthright with her subjects. Of course, I also recognize that a forthright approach brings

with it a whole host of other difficulties. For example, her findings might have shifted because

she would be unable to pass as one of the natives. I believe that as artists, while we certainly

have a duty to expose the nasty underbelly of society for our audiences, we also have an ethical

duty to the real persons who might populate our stories—especially when producing a

documentary drama, which, is likely where my difficulty with this play stems.

As I’ve thusly described, some of the

challenges I could foresee going into our initial

production meetings and rehearsals included,

caricatures of real working class people (a

problem inherent in the base material,

Ehrenreich’s book, as well as Holden’s script), a

non-likeable and difficult to identify with

protagonist, and my overall disdain for that

protagonist’s ethical approach. At this point, I

discuss briefly what we did to combat these

challenges. To begin, most simply, I was honest

and straightforward with the production team and

actors. I outlined my ethical concerns and the Allison Ritter as Barbara Ehrenreich in Northern Arizona University’s fall 2011 difficulties I had trying to somehow identify production of Nickel and Dimed. Photo courtesy of [Author]. Sage Publications, 2005), 90.

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with – or even like – our protagonist. I did not take lightly my decision to fully disclose my

negative feelings. After all as the director, I’m supposed to be at the helm (and armed with, at

least, some semblance of direction). In fact, when I discovered some students in my Directing

class were struggling to connect to their scene material, I shared my experience working on

Nickel and Dimed with them. One of them responded, “but aren’t you supposed to be the

cheerleader for the rest of the team?” And, in a sense, I feel that this student’s observation is

accurate; however, I judged at the time that most of my collaborators—both on the production

team and in the cast—needed permission to express disinterest in this project. What my decision

to share my dislike of the text did was motivate us to work on a challenge together. Very often,

my team sought to inspire me and in doing so we, as a team, inspired one another.

One of our more inspired, if you will, decisions was to incorporate live video feed into

the production. This choice stemmed from the fact that we felt that Barbara’s character is the

protagonist. Whereas, Joan Holden argues that the play isn’t about Barbara in so much as she is

the vehicle to tell the stories of the working class characters, due to the flatness of the working

class characters, we were unable to agree with Holden’s point of view. Instead, we highlighted

Barbara as the central character—tracing her journey to learn about herself as she immersed

herself in minimum wage work for her research project. To do so, we capitalized on the fact that

she’s currently known for giving NPR interviews, as a best-selling author of non-fiction, and as a

journalist for Harpers and we framed the production as if she were delivering a lecture to the

audience and the characters were fragments of examples from her memory. We felt that this

choice would highlight the experience as Barbara’s and allow us to deliberately illustrate how

these characters are filtered through Barbara’s point of view. Such a filter helps to make the one-

sidedness of the working-class characters make sense.

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Because the working-class characters that populated the play were one-dimensional, I felt

it was incredibly important to ensure that we formulate a cohesive ensemble capable of further

explicating the caricatures in a brief amount of stage-time. We spent a week-and-a-half of our

five-week rehearsal period learning to create as a group and learning the physical and directorial

language that would be the foundation of our production. During that week, we turned mostly to

Viewpoints8 as a way to create a cohesive team, willing to take risks, and willing to do more

giving than taking in the rehearsal space. Anne Bogart and Tina Landau in The Viewpoints Book

define Viewpoints as: “a philosophy translated into a technique for (1) training performers; (2)

building ensemble; and (3) creating movement for the stage.”9 I spent three evening rehearsals

(amounting to a measly nine hours) teaching the nine Viewpoints and encouraging the young

actors, who were relatively well versed mostly in the System and the Method, to explore instead

this new (and strange to them) language for creating theatre. Two additional rehearsals were

dedicated to exploring the Viewpoints both in character and with music and we continued our

Viewpoint training briefly each evening throughout much of the remaining rehearsal process.

I’m not a big believer in whole-heartedly adhering to any singular approach to acting

training or directing; however, what I appreciate about Viewpoints is that it offers to students and

practitioners a number of “gifts.”10 These gifts include firstly; “Surrender,” or a relief from “the

pressure of having to invent by yourself” and “trust in letting something occur on stage, rather

than making it occur.”11 As a classroom and rehearsal hall philosophy, I find that teaching

8 While I suspect many readers of Theatre/Practice are already familiar with Viewpoints, to learn more see, Anne Bogart, Viewpoints, (Lyme, NH: Smith and Kraus, 1995); Anne Bogart and Tina Landau, The Viewpoints Book, (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2005); Anne Bogart, The SITI Company, www.SITI.org, 25 May 2012. 9 Bogart and Landau, 7. 10 ibid, 19. 11 ibid

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students to “surrender” can be incredibly beneficial. I also find that the students who have done

Viewpoints training with me are oftentimes better able to “surrender” in their in-class work.

These students generally will trust a process instead of seeking a product. By the completion of

rehearsals for Nickel and Dimed, the students could reflect upon where our open-ended process

led us. Learning to “surrender” was hard for this group of undergraduate students who initially

only wanted to know their role, their blocking, and their lines.12 While they were often frustrated

near the beginning of the process, in the end, I believe they were pleased with their investment

and co-creation of the production.

Other “gifts” Bogart suggests that Viewpoints offers include: possibility, choice,

freedom, growth, and wholeness.13 To my mind all of these components lead to what I feel is a

more comprehensive gift from Viewpoints, a raised awareness. To create as a cohesive

ensemble, each collaborator must gain a heightened awareness of his or her co-creators, the

space, and his/her own place within the mix. In my experience, students introduced to

Viewpoints often gain a better understanding living “in the moment” on stage because the

training raises their awareness, which allows them to adapt more quickly than they might have

otherwise. This cursory introduction to Viewpoints as we rehearsed for Nickel and Dimed

allowed the students to be much more aware of their physical selves and the physical selves of

others surrounding them. They were more willing to engage their entire bodies in a portrayal of

characters with whom many of the students could not easily identify.

12 Students were not provided roles until our second week of rehearsal for two reasons. First, I did not want having a role to influence our work with Viewpoints and, second, given that the script encompassed 30+ characters, I wanted to spend some time with the actors before making final casting decisions. 13 ibid, 19-20

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Students perform “The Mall-Mart Dance,” a dance collectively created using Viewpoints for Northern Arizona University’s production of Nickel and Dimed in fall 2011.

Photograph courtesy of [Author].

In the end, our initial work with Viewpoints led to four created dance-like interludes that

explored the world of the working-class characters Barbara describes. These interludes came

from our work with music to explore character in rehearsal and they were partly choreographed

and partly improvised using Viewpoints as the framework. Each evening, in performance,

through these interludes we celebrated the ways in which the working class characters live their

lives; as opposed to Barbara who simply tries to survive in their world, a world so very different

from her own.14 In this way, we were able to incorporate the musical elements called for, but not

elaborated upon, by Holden in the pre-text to the play. These moments, interpreted by us as 14 My primary directorial questions as I approached this play were “what is the difference between living and surviving; and, how do these distinctions vary from person to person depending on class, gender, and ethnicity?”

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Barbara’s memories, quickly became my favorite moments in our production because they

allowed the working class characters to truly shine. It was through these interludes that we

witnessed chaos and frustration alongside friendship and fun—aspects of the characters’ lives

glossed over in the play proper.

In retrospect, while our explorations of Viewpoint training were probably the most

fruitful components of our production process for the cast, for the community we created a

seminar entitled: Nickel and Dimed Retrospective: 10 Years of Not Getting By. Participants

included representatives from Flagstaff’s housing subsidy unit and the Mayor’s office alongside

Professors of economics and philosophy, and the production team from Nickel and Dimed. We

met to discuss the issues raised by the play with the University and greater Flagstaff

communities. The event was open to all and the audience included a number of local officials,

theatre patrons, and students from various departments and colleges across campus. As the

event’s coordinator, I ensured that, during the dialogue, we paid fair service to the ethical

concerns I had with the book/script and the resulting conversation was engaged and lively.

Through its thematic material—issues of ethics, class, gender, distribution of wealth, we

were able to converse both academically and artistically with the greater community in which we

live. Unfortunately, the script never grew on me (as some do); however, I appreciate greatly the

various discussions, debates, and opportunities to expand on our current actor training practices,

all of which were prompted by our production of this play. Producing Nickel and Dimed offered

to our students a final valuable lesson—you might not love every play on which you work;

however, you should still approach it diligently and with, as Anne Bogart might suggest, an open

heart and open mind because you never know where the journey will lead.

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Bibliography

Bogart, Anne. The SITI Company. www.SITI.org, 25 May 2012.

Bogart, Anne. Viewpoints. Lyme, NH: Smith and Kraus, 1995.

Bogart, Anne and Tina Landau. The Viewpoints Book. New York: Theatre Communications

Group, 2005.

Christon, Lawrence. “Nickel and Dimed.” Variety, 20 Sept. 2002.

www.variety.com/review/VE1117918769 (30 August 2011).

Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America. 2nd ed. New York:

Henry Holt and Company, 2008.

[Author], dir. Performance of Nickel and Dimed. Northern Arizona University.

October/November 2011.

Hansel, Adrien-Alice. “Subsidized Living: Reflections on Bringing Nickel and Dimed to

the Stage.” Theater 33, no. 3 (Fall 2003): 96-105.

Holden, Joan. Nickel and Dimed. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 2005.

Madison, Soyini. Critical Ethnography: Method, Ethics, and Performance. Thousand Oaks:

Sage Publications, 2005.

*** For photo courtesy & citation of the production, I’ve substituted [Author] for my name for

the review process.