Have you had the chance to Playback? Below is a guest post from Liz Phillips about Playback Memphis, an “audience fueled” local improv troupe. Don’t miss their limited engagement of Memphis Matters-an evening of stories about life and work in our beloved city-on November 6 and 7. All proceeds go towards bringing the Playback experience to communities in need. Email info@playbackmemphis.org or call 901.264.0841 for reservations and ticket information.
On an early October evening as the recent mayoral race gained momentum, a group of around 40 assorted theatergoers jostle each other around a table piled with fruit and pimento-cheese sandwiches in the tiny lobby of Voices of the South’s performance space in First Congo’s basement. Black-clad performers mill around, greeting guests.
The occasion is a launch of the new season of Playback Memphis, an audience-fueled improvisational theater experience that’s been around for about a year but has an ambitious new agenda: to fund free Playback performances in “communities with hardship,” as Playback’s director Virginia Reed Murphy puts it, by staging paying public performances throughout the year. Tonight she is raising startup funds for the first two shows, set for November 7 and 8.
Virginia Reed Murphy and Joe Murphy
With a drum roll, the actors clap and sing their way onstage. Murphy, a small, radiant woman with long hair coiled at the back of her head, moves to the front of the semicircle of swaying actors to tell the night’s first story. “At the Cooper-Young festival the other day, I got so impatient with all the noise and crowding,” she begins, moving from side to side. “But then the music started up, and I found myself dancing, joyfully, filled with love for all I’d been criticizing.” She continues, “That’s why I love Memphis—it constantly turns your reality upside-down.”
As the Conductor of tonight’s performance, Murphy’s bit lays out some themes. But every cast member has a signature move and a bit of story too: Josh, the slim, sweet-faced African-American student who holds his hand to his brow, peering into the distance, “searching for a girl;” Glenda, the older white woman with an aging bohemian’s hair who’s frustrated because the lady she’s hired to help with the housecleaning “doesn’t feel safe in my neighborhood.” Joe, Murphy’s husband and business partner, does squats, furious at a dysfunctional health care system.
Josh Teal
Then, stillness. Murphy explains that in Playback there’s no script; instead, she’ll ask audience members to share stories from their daily lives. “It’s a bit like a town hall meeting—but maybe that analogy has become risky,” she teases, getting some laughs from the crowd. “Really, this is like couples therapy for city residents. You have to manage a lot psychologically to live here, but we’re in a serious, committed relationship with our city, right?” Everyone nods.
Murphy asks, simply, “So how was your day?” A few beats. “We’re comfortable with pregnant pauses around here,” she smiles, but doesn’t have to wait long. (In fact, she tells me later, she almost never does. “Surprisingly, the only group we ever really had to drag it out of was a bunch of teachers.”) A hand goes up and a woman named Holly talks about the mildew that has grown on her clothes during the long, wet summer and fall.
Portia Owens
Murphy’s smile, manner and intent listening stance welcome all stories. One man talks of being greeted at a sidewalk café (‘Hey baby, how ya doin’?’) by the “same guy who mugged my wife 5 years ago.” Another is dismayed by the stigma attached to her daughter’s bout with H1N1—aka swine flu—by her school. As people tell their stories, Murphy is an active listener, asking questions, clarifying, encouraging. There’s nothing of the reserved psychotherapist in her method; all the same, this feels healing.
Nor is there much narrative in the “playback;” instead, a single musician plays a figure on a drum, flute, or kalimba as a performer initiates—with no planning huddle—a physical motif and scrap of sound or dialog. Up to 3 or 4 other actors join, each with his or her own riff, until they form a living sculpture that miraculously plays back the emotion contained in the audience member’s story. Almost without fail, the message is clear: You Have Been Heard.
Glenda Mace
Amid all the fractiousness and factionalism of Memphis’s civic life, this message is startling. In the final story of the evening, a woman named Tisha has been haunted by a baffling memory: a woman with two children standing vigil at the foot of a driveway, scanning the horizon anxiously. Recently, after asking her mother to explain, Tisha learned that she was one of the children and the woman was her mother, who had just heard of Dr. King’s death. She was waiting for Tisha’s father and grandmother to return home safely through the riots that tore into Memphis in the assassination’s wake.
This playback feels creaky at first, stuck in the complexities of a longer story. But as the players collect on the stage, they powerfully externalize the emotions of Tisha’s child-self. At the end, the male actor Tisha has chosen to play herself looks out, pauses, and says, “I want to know more.” The real Tisha wipes a tear from her cheek. And everyone wants to know more—we’ve all been drawn into someone else’s life and memory.
It’s easy to see how therapeutic Playback can be on the individual level, even at a workplace or community center. But in Murphy’s vision, Playback is a forum, a tool for all of us who “hope for brighter days for their beloved city.” In bringing Playback to groups of less-advantaged Memphians, Murphy hopes to plant seeds where they’ll matter the most. Because for most of us, citizenship starts with the belief that our voices count.
