Kym Longhi on the creative collaboration, The Table

Table Set in Theatre

About The Table 

What does it truly mean to have a seat at the table in our world? This new physical theatre piece explores the table as a metaphor for society, a gathering place with the potential to create inclusion and nurture community or to divide and alienate. Using gesture, heightened physicality and the puppetry of familiar objects, The Table examines and deconstructs the types of gatherings that occur at tables: familial, social, business and political. In this nonlinear dreamscape, the table transforms to take the audience on a journey from the family dinner table into boardrooms and global negotiations. The human struggle for community is seen through table manner and ritual, feast and famine, home and migration, and systems of justice and oppression to address the question: With all that divides us as a society, how can we truly come together at a larger table?

What was your inspiration for creating this piece?

Kym Longhi, Director: I wanted to start with a simple premise and see what kind of complexity we could discover in it through devising.  A table is a familiar object, but even though it is a common thing it evokes a multitude of possibilities and relationships.  I loved the idea of its necessity as a place for nourishment, and as a place to provide commonality.  I started thinking about efforts to be inclusive, to offer a “seat at the table” - and I wondered if this isn’t necessarily inclusive - because there are rules at every table, so that even if you come to the table, you might not really be included or empowered.   I wanted to take a closer look at how we treat each other at tables and what that is doing to our world.

How do tables divide and bring us together in today’s society? 

KL: For me, it is about order - every table seems to have protocols and rules - things like table manners at dinner and “rules of order” at meetings.  Ideally, the family dinner table can anchor us and teach us how to relate to others.   As a society we need structure, but our structures and systems have created divisions that we feel on every level: in global affairs, in politics, in economic disparity and in justice systems - and then it all comes back to us at our family dinner tables.  A simple example of community and division at the table is the contrast between the pleasure and dread we experience when we think of family feasts at holiday times.  We strive to forge relationships at tables, but our connection is often paradoxical.  One of the artists in our project observed that on a date, the table could provide both a means of connecting to the other person, and a protective barrier if they felt too vulnerable.
 

What challenges arise when creating this kind of work?

KL: One challenge is obvious: creating something with nothing but our bodies and an object requires a lot of trust in the wisdom of our creativity and patience to build the work one gesture at a time.  Another challenge is that we are making this work through collaboration.  We have to be willing to share our ideas, but we also have to build consensus - so we have to let our ideas transform as we work together to manifest them. We have to create cohesion between multiple points of view, while maintaining dynamic tension. Finally, there is the challenge of exploring the deeper personal and societal meanings of the table in a way that is not didactic – we are striving to present familiar issues innovatively in order to stimulate the audience’s imagination.  
 

What is the importance of creating this work on a college campus with students?

KL: I believe that taking a creative and embodied approach to explore highly charged social issues empowers our students to speak with insight and creativity to their world.  This work provides an opportunity for a living exploration and synthesis.  Our students study and discuss the ideas and issues in The Table in many of their other classes, but in order to create this work, they have to put these ideas on their feet and make them live in new ways.  In making this work they practice observing with compassion, acting with courage and speaking with intention.  Through collaboration, they learn to trust their ideas, to listen to each other and to work together to create a world – the world of The Table.  As our students examine their present world with imagination, they gain the creative insight and experience to re-imagine their world for the future.
 

How do gesture, heightened physicality, and puppetry of objects help examine the central themes? 

KL: When I think of our divided society, I think that words are often used to mask and to manipulate.  Most often words contextualize, but in this piece we are seeking to free the audience to make new associations out of the familiar, and to pay attention without the distraction of words. The “language” of The Table is primarily physical – ranging from the quotidian, or everyday gesture, to the poetic or abstract gesture suggesting multiple meanings.  We are asking the audience to learn this language as an immersive experience, one that challenges them to discover meaning as it is lived. 
 
I wanted to make the experiment of foregrounding the body in this piece in the hope of looking more closely at how we treat each other. The Table is all about relationships – how we connect and how we miss or sever connection. During the first week of rehearsals, I challenged the artists to create a dialogue without words, using just five exchanges of gestures.  As we looked at each duet, we were amazed at the amount of story and meaning that we could glean from those compact and simple scenes.
 
We puppet objects in this piece in order to give them life, to heighten the ritual aspects of our actions and to find the poetic metaphor in our everyday interactions with them.  Our relationship to objects exposes our character and informs our relationship to each other.  Of course, the biggest and most obvious object in this work is the table itself – and our goal is to make The Table a living entity.
 

What do you hope audiences will take away from this piece? 

KL: My hope is that we can inspire our audience to see something new in familiar relationships, and in the larger systems that impact our relationships.  I don’t think we have any answers to many of the problems that we pose, but I am really interested in the questions we can provoke.  I also hope that our audience will appreciate the power of the body to speak, and to enjoy the creative stimulation of a non-linear journey through the many tables in our lives.
 

Is there anything else you'd like to share about The Table?

KL: When I began this research, I knew that The Table was about relationships and systems – but through our work I have discovered that at the foundation of it all is order and chaos.   We need stability, and a table certainly provides that, but in that stability there is the danger of stable oppression. In The Table, we are looking at all of the ways that we invent order to prevent chaos – and through those inventions, the help and the harm we create.

The Table performs February 26-29, 2020, in the Nolte Xperimental Theatre at the Rarig Center. Free with reservations: z.umn.edu/UMTAD.
This article was written by an undergraduate Theatre Arts & Dance marketing student employee. Learn more about Theatre Arts & Dance student employment
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