Northwest Institute for Social Change: The Blog

Wednesday Lunch with Sojurn Theatre’s Michael Rohd

One of the pillars of NWISC programming is the weekly “Wednesday Lunch,” in which fellowees meet with a variety of media/social change figures in the greater Portland area, over lunch (usually donated by restaurants, thus free to students!). Last week we had scrumptious deli sandwiches and talked objectivity and subjectivity with the editor of The Journal of Radical Shimming, while this week we talked with Michael Rohd about our perceptions of the documentary film as a medium, and the role it plays within social change over delicious (and huge!) Laughing Planet burritos.

Michael Rohd first introduced us to his theatre troupe, Sojurn Theatre. Sojurn Theatre takes theatre and performing art to totally new levels – shows aren’t in typical theatres, they’re in warehouses, they’re in condo showrooms. There’s dancing, there’s audience participation in a way Brecht couldn’t even dream of. Best of all, they’re politically, or at least, ideologically charged. Michael did a great job engaging us and remaining extremely bipartisan when speaking of the troupe’s past few shows. One that I loved was the ‘7 Great Loves,” a play created and written after scavenging Portland’s population for their best ‘love’ stories – love for a person, love for a place, love for a religion, love for love – and putting on a pretty avant-garde sounding performance as the final result.

We discussed a lot about the idea of ‘intent’ within our own pieces. How can we persuade? Are some stories just stories about people, or is there always convincing involved? What about marketability to the public? How can we get the message across to the greatest amount of people? As a fellow noted, most theatre shows are often seen by middle/upperclass individuals, and Michael wholeheartedly agreed. But the question is: How do you make it accessible to all? “One step is making it free,” Michael said, noting that many of Sojurn’s productions were free to help work towards this. How about the methods to generally connect with ALL of the greater community, regardless of race and socio-economic class? What I admired was how Sojurn told the stories of ALL different kinds of people – people who were different from one another in every way of the word, but somehow characters in the same play with the same issues. I believe such approaches make the final product more effective. If someone sees one character so accurately depicting themself, then they have to trust the director, and the cast, and the story to realize that the OTHER characters – however different they may be – are also as true. As a result, greater tolerance, and perhaps change, can be born.