ABSTRACT
Based in the Redwood Forest area of California, they have a perspective on ecology, native American traditions and the place of the artist at the centre of things, that does not rest easily with the American mainstream. Nevertheless they constantly aim to ‘make productions accessible to our wide touring audience through theatrical inventiveness and by tackling themes that, while inspired by our area, flow into larger currents in the stream of American life’.32 Politically their shows reflect and satirise that which surrounds them; they take the political potential of commedia dell’ arte quite seriously, much in the way the San Francisco Mime troupe did in the 1960s, working effectively to combine content and style. From 1979 to 1991, amongst other work, they created a trilogy of plays (The Scartissue Mysteries: Intrigue at Ah-Pah in 1979, The Road Not Taken in 1984 and Fear of Falling in 1991) concerned directly with their surroundings and the politics of ownership and land use. These shows all utilised the structure of a detective thriller, with a strong female lead detective, Scartissue herself, created out of a union between Sam Spade, Fred Astaire’s dancing detective in Bandwagon and the experience and artistry of Joan Schirle (the character’s creator and performer). The company sums up their philosophy and way of working by calling it ‘Theatre of Place’. Where they work affects how they work. They consciously create a synthesis between the imported commedia dell’arte traditions, and the native American animal stories:
The Native Americans of the Pacific coast didn’t make theatre as we know it, but they created stories about animals that became part of their oral tradition and mythology. The characters arose from the collective observations of generations for whom animals and plants were part of the fabric of survival, ceremony and enjoyment of life. Animals and humans share qualities like courage, laziness, timidity, sensuality; bear, raven, coyote, and salmon became part of stories that were sometimes serious, sometimes comic, spiritual or bawdy. We are
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animal’s names.33
