Theater arts and science are typically seen as non-intersecting disciplines, but members of Theatre Workshop in Science, Technology and Society, or TWISTS, don't see it that way.
TWISTS is both a research project and collaborative performance initiative that seeks to analyze contemporary issues within science and technology through an original performance piece. TWISTS includes those who have backgrounds in science, humanism, social sciences, and theater arts as well ascommunity members who all work together to create one performance.
"TWISTS itself is built on a model we've been developing over the past three years that seeks to bring a lot of different kinds of voices together into the development of our performances," said TWISTS co-director Saul Halfon. "We bring them together in these intensive, partly dialogic, partly theater performance movement kinds of workshops to get a range of responses, ideas, opinions, feelings, scenes, visions of whatever the issue is we're dealing with. From that we do a series of workshops, and out of that we sort of pull together a performance."
TWISTS co-director and former Tech graduate student, Jane Lehr, said she sees the benefits to approaching science and technology in a multidisciplinary approach. She said she liked hearing a variety of opinions on one issue.
"I think that's exactly how we should be exploring science and technology," Lehr said. "I think we can produce more socially responsible technology if we switch to that model."
Lehr said the public should be looking at science and technology issues in a variety of perspectives that involves both expert and non-expert opinions in a more reactive light to prevent harm.
Lehr, an assistant professor at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, contributes to TWISTS by securing grant money for the project and communicates with current TWISTS members by making occasional trips to Blacksburg and via electronic communication.
Halfon, assistant professor of science and technology in society, said working with people from different disciplines is both a unique and challenging dynamic of TWISTS.
Halfon said within one discipline, you have to ask, "What are they interested in? What questions do they ask? What are the expectations of what you should know that are different in every field? We encounter that as a collaborative group, trying to figure out each other's expectations and assumptions and working through those as well," Halfon said. "In TWISTS, we have a lot of things we think and say about Darwin. Somebody coming from theater arts may not have heard any of this stuff. And what do we do with our disagreements? How much do I have to learn about evolution? We end up having to learn a lot of social science. There are disciplinary differences that have to be bridged."
TWISTS is currently working on a "Living Darwin" performance - a yearlong project to commemorate Darwin's 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of the publication of "Origin of Species."
"'Living Darwin' seeks to explore in performance the way in which we as contemporary people, as modern people, think about ourselves, our lives, our relations with each other and our world in terms that descend from Darwin. It's about the way that evolutionary thought and Darwinists thought shape our everyday lives and become part of who we are as people, as individuals and as communities," Halfon said.
While there are many controversial societal issues surrounding Darwin, "Living Darwin" looks to explore the role of Darwin in our everyday lives.
"The idea is that it's an issue that people can have some feeling of connection with, where there's clearly a sort of cultural or social component to it. Or a component that connects with people's real or daily lives. With Darwin, there's definitely controversial aspects of Darwin, but that's not all we're focusing on. We're looking at other aspects of evolution and Darwin that are not controversial, but are still significant for people and the way they think about and live their lives," Halfon said. "We talk about people being fit or unfit. We challenge ourselves to survive, and it's a language of competition. We're going to explore those things."
Another integral aspect of TWISTS is research.
"We're thinking about performance as research," Halfon said. "Each one of those takes different research practices. Some of it involves interviews, some of it involves data collection at the performances, follow up quantitative and qualitative data, various methods of data collection interviews with TWISTS participants, range of research activities."
Another important component of TWISTS is the workshops it holds to help generate material for its final performance.
"We all have this sort of sense that there's something really interesting here. There's something new. It's challenging for all of us because it pushes us beyond our comfort zones and traditional zones. I'm someone who spends a lot of time reading and writing. What does it mean for someone like me to get up and do a performance? It's very outside of my zone, and how do I think about what performance is and what it can do in the kinds of things I'm interested in saying. I think all of us are very open to interdisciplinary work. There's a lot of struggles that happen in trying to make sense of interdisciplinary work," Halfon said.
In a March 22 workshop, visiting singer and songwriter Elise Witt guided a group of about 10 people in various singing exercises for non-musicians. Participants take individual lines of words and "sing" them - they sing a note and everyone else in the group has to match that note. They'll sing together to demonstrate how two notes combine to make many more.
"I'm teaching them the many elements needed to construct a musical piece ... really understanding how sounds fit together," Witt said.
She said she taught her participants about harmonies, melodies and rhythm.
Near the end of the workshop, each person took turns "singing" sentences from a passage of Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species."
"All of us in the workshop deepened our understanding of the text," Witt said of the workshop. "It's a very poetic passage. I think the (words) come alive more than when we're just reading."
Ashley Tomisek, a first year master's student in sociology, attended last Sunday's workshop and said she had to shed her fear of performing to sing in front of a group.
"No matter how embarrassed I was, I had to do it," Tomisek said.
She also said that it was interesting to work with Darwin's ideas through singing.
"You take the subject of Darwin and expand the biological issue subject into something social," Tomisek said.
As artistic director of TWISTS, Ann Kilkelly, professor of theatre arts and women's studies, is responsible for taking material from workshops and synthesizing it into one performance.
"The bottom line is we can raise really complex issues in a format that people really enjoy," Kilkelly said. "Challenges people to think about topics that are, if not misunderstood, have a variety of perspectives. ... It's also very, very gratifying. It feels relevant to people's lives."
Kilkelly begins this process by looking at transcripts of digitally recorded notes during workshops, finding what she called the "juicy" tidbits and weaving them into a story. She said one of the toughest parts of her job is to organize the play in a way that will make sense.
While writing the script, Kilkelly must keep in mind that the play is for many different audiences. She will use metaphor, dance, singing, poetry and improvisational techniques in her script.
She said the play won't be like a variety show, but instead will capture the veracity and beauty of the natural world.
One of the focuses of a TWISTS' performance is to challenge audience members to work with the subject. Kilkelly will use two specific theater techniques to engage the audience with the material. One is called theatre of the oppressed, which has the very specific goal of dealing with social problems. The other is image theatre, which involves the audience members using their bodies to say something about the issue being discussed.
"People love it," Kilkelly said of audience participation. "Sometimes it feels therapeutic even thought it's not therapeutic theatre; it always has implications."
Cora Olson, a Ph.D. student and graduate assistant assigned to TWISTS, realized that being part of TWISTS means trying new things and that participating can be fun.
"On occasion, we're pushed outside of our comfort limits. And that's a really exciting place to be intellectually. And to remember, because (being pushed) undermines a lot of your assumptions to be pushed outside of those limits, and remembering to take pleasure in that I think are integral parts to TWISTS," Olson said.
Olson handles the logistics of the project and assists the three co-directors with research. She said she appreciates interacting with people from different backgrounds.
"One of the big draws of TWISTS for me is outreach and engagement with different types of publics. I got particularly turned on by the project in its commitment to multiple voices and making sure the performances embody multiple perspectives," Olson said.
Olson helps coordinate and spread the word about TWISTS workshops, like the one held on March 22 that focused on signing, and said they serve multiple purposes.
"There were things we could get to with sound, maybe effective things we could get to with sound, that words don't capture and that have value," Olson said. "I think of the workshop process itself as a site of research."
Olson said while attending workshops she has learned more about other disciplines. By being part of "Living Darwin" she has learned that Darwin suffered from a stomach illness and more about social Darwinism and eugenics, the study or belief that society should encourage those with "favorable" traits to reproduce and discourage those with "undesirable traits."
"I was considerably less aware of Virginia's history in eugenics before this. I think that Virginia was, well, not a good state to live in at the time," Olson said.
For the research side of the project, TWISTS also focuses on personal narratives.
"Personal narratives are a very interesting way to get at that, that values both the scientists' experiences and 'lay people's' experiences in ways that if we were to just read out of a science journal don't," Olson said. "It's an integral sort of part of how we operate is always reaching across those borders and trying to make sure our boundaries are sort of fluid in terms of disciplinary boundaries and what we conceive of as knowledge."