Devising in Hartford: The Parkville Project & the Immigration Debate 10 Years On
This is the story of how an idea became a play. A simple What If? question ten years ago became The Parkville Project, a new play about identity, hope and immigration. Created from community interviews and new historical research, The Parkville Project weaves physical theatre, music, and puppetry into a story about a love that knows no borders. It is a story that spans three generations and three continents. A story of an immigrant.
We follow Amalia, an undocumented worker who abandons Portugal in search of the father she never knew in Parkville. Caught up in an Immigration Customs Enforcement raid, Amalia’s life is thrown into chaos, as falling typewriters and a cascade of characters guide her through the past and help her navigate the trials of her present.
The Parkville Project was devised under the guidance of playwright Michael Bradford, director Helene Kvale and movement directors Greg Webster and Nicole Phaneuf marking the second production for Bated Breath Theatre Company in 2008. Stylistically, the production placed the audience on the border between observer and observed, actor and audience and then hurled us headlong into a salient American debate. Ten years on, as the fate of immigrants and Dreamers is hotly discussed, The Parkville Project is more relevant than ever. Here is my account.
By day, I had never paused long enough to notice the buildings at 56 Arbor Street. They weren’t much to look at, easily missed in this unpolished part of Hartford where the allure of history has long been forgotten. But that autumn night, on my way to a Real Artways party, I looked up and I wondered. What happened here? We are trained in the theater to consider the given circumstances. Curiosity about the who, what, when, where and why of any situation forms the beginning of our process even before we ask “What if?” That night, the old Gray Telephone building seemed ready to share its story, as long as we had the patience to listen.
There was a time when Hartford was the place to be. Samuel Clemens, Harriet Beecher Stowe, JP Morgan and Samuel Colt all lived here. The warehouse I was looking at, was the home of the first payphone manufactured in America. The first bicycle and electric car in America were made at Pope Manufacturing Company with tires provided by the Hartford Rubber Works factory nearby. The Royal Typewriter Company employed over 5000 workers on New Park Ave, competing with the Underwood Computing and Data Company Typewriter headquarters on Arbor Street. These factories made Parkville a vibrant center for American industry and the immigrant workforce poured in.
They still do. It was 2008 and it was time for our theater company to meet the locals. We needed to uncover how Parkville’s past played into the present and to build our play. We had a lot of work to do and the clock was ticking.
We quickly learned that recording interviews by video was a sure-fire way of getting the public to shut up, so with pen and paper in hand we went old school. We chatted and ate with folks at the Parkville Senior Center, recording their memories, their needs, their frustrations. We watched videos of other long-gone residents reminiscing about times past. Literacy Volunteers of Greater Hartford opened their doors to us, as did the Connecticut Historical Society and the Brazilian Alliance. Will Wilkins, director of Real Artways, introduced us to the Parkville Preservation Society, local property developers, entrepreneurs and poet Veranda Porche. We met with muralist Marela Zacharias who had been recording the Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids of November 2007. We interviewed the Trinity College “Stop The Raids” organizers. Countless trips to local bakeries and restaurants brought us close to the Brazilians, Vietnamese, Portuguese, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans and Romanians who called Parkville home. They had spirit, grit and resilience and more stories than you could imagine. The once economically vibrant streets of Parkville were now witness to high unemployment, low literacy rates, detentions and deportations. This was sobering stuff.
Researching is easy. The hard part begins with the devising process. You ideate, move, play, collaborate, write, argue, throw away, hope, move, play, collaborate, celebrate, play, argue, throw away some more, hope, play, move, rewrite, play, tear your hair out, rewrite, play, rewrite and finally eventually hopefully triumph. The art of devising takes time, patience and a lot of trust. It also takes resources. The multitude of artists who devote their time to this rewarding form of creation deserve to be paid.
A writer is key. They are the outside observer and bring their genius to the process, removing pressure from the actors and director. Discipline is crucial to create and adhere to strict deadlines so that you meet your (shifting) goals. Unfortunately, the joys of ideation, play and creation need to be balanced with the realities of time management. In my experience as a professional actor, director, writer and teacher for over thirty years, I have found a chain of command useful to ensure that the trains run on time. Decisions have to be made and someone has to take responsibility for the final piece. There is a hierarchy in theater for a reason. The big bad wolf of business dominates American society and also sets clear parameters around our theater making. We do not have the luxury of the European or Russian model of playmaking in the USA and until we do, that is a fact that we have to accept.
Back to The Parkville Project. Puppets allowed us to effectively explore sensitive subjects such as abuse and police brutality with humor and gravity. The writer, director, movement director and composer worked with the performers to refine the vignettes. Eventually the scenes made up the beginnings of a play. By October 2009, we were ready to mount our interactive promenade workshop version of The Parkville Project.
The Human Rights Institute at the University of Connecticut invited us to perform our workshop at the Human Rights in America conference at the UCONN. This gave us the opportunity to make a concrete contribution to the human rights debate while allowing us to refine our play. The Parkville Project was at a delicate phase. Our piece needed careful handling and thoughtful development before our world premiere at The Playhouse on Park between July 7-18, 2010. Michael Bradford went away and rewrote, bringing his poetic magic to an historically accurate and epic story of separation, longing, disappointment and hope. With an intense rehearsal process ahead of us, we felt confident in our characters and our choices.
The movement of The Parkville Project was first developed by Greg Webster during the workshop phase. Using classic Lecoq pedagogy, Greg brought a sensual flavor to the movement, matching Michael Bradford’s writing. His wealth of experience as a physical theater practitioner and founding member of Bated Breath Theater Company made him an indispensable part of the devising process. Nicole Phaneuf then brought her dancer choreographer sensibility to the full-scale production of The Parkville Project, deeply engaging with the emotion and humanity of the piece to create a beautiful coalescence of body and spoken word. Our play was epic, yet personal. Communal yet intimate. As creators, we felt profoundly indebted to the people we had met, the stories we had heard, the history that we brought alive. We were shaped by those who came before us and this seeped into our piece filling it with the heart and spirit that we had witnessed on the streets of Parkville. In the devising process we instilled the voices of those who had come before paying homage to the people, places and events that made up our story. Our devised workshop sketch had started like this:
Scene 1 November 2007
Typewriter.
The muffled sound of a police megaphone from offstage left. An ICE raid unfolding. It fades into the sound of an ocean, the sea, huge waves crashing upon the shore. Darkness.
The Chorus appears in the audience. The sea. Push and pull. From the body of the Chorus, Amalia is spewed out onto stage. She is wearing a cleaner’s uniform holding her dust cloth. It is her first day of work. 5am.
A display cabinet covered in a white parachute dust sheet lights up.
Amalia moves towards the cabinet, drawn by something inside. Slight sound of typewriter tapping grows as Amalia gets closer.
Amalia pulls off dust cover. An intake of breath.
A 1927 Royal Typewriter is beautifully lit inside.
Drawn to it, she opens the door and pulls out the typewriter, just like the one her father had. She taps a key.
Michael Bradford then developed our sketch into a play about the fictitious Sedaño family who made Parkville their home in 1938, 1992 and then 2007. Amalia is an undocumented Portuguese cleaner. Like many before her, she comes to America with a dream to be reunited with family. Her grandfather is a Cuban sugar cane worker. He caught one of the 200 typewriters from Parkville that the Royal Typewriter Company parachuted onto a Havana field back when he was a boy. Amalia’s father is a journalist, imprisoned for 12 years after writing articles on his Royal typewriter that are critical of the Cuban regime. Amalia knows him only through the letters he wrote to her in Portugal, begging her to come to Parkville. She makes the trip to America, but before she can be reunited with her family, she gets caught up in an ICE raid and her journey of discovery begins.
The narrative of our play was greatly enhanced by the fine work of our scenic, lighting and costume designers. Projections created a watercolor effect to balance the Dreamers’ story with the socio-economic reality of the times. I was proud of how we showed the past providing the shoulders on which we stand today, wherever we are from. Our production created a magical realist tapestry, a sensual, poetic experience with movement, music and sound supporting the powerful saga of the Sedaño family. In total over 30 artists were involved in telling this human story.
As I write this ten years later in January 2018, a divisive immigration debate rages on and it is unclear how it will play out. Bigotry permeated Trump’s 2018 State of the Union address with his unsubtle “Americans are Dreamers too” line. DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) hangs in the balance with Trump ready to let it expire in a few weeks.
What we do know is migration has always been a feature of human existence. According to the Migration Policy Institute and the 2016 Current Population Survey (CPS), “immigrants and their U.S.-born children numbered approximately 27 percent of the overall U.S. population. While most of these new arrivals are immigrants new to the country, some are naturalized citizens, lawful permanent residents, and others who might have lived in the United States for some time prior to returning in 2015.” The United States is a country made up of immigrants, each with their own story of hope, fear, resilience and strength. The Parkville Project is just as relevant today in 2018.
The Parkville Project Team
Produced by Bated Breath Theatre Company and The Playhouse on Park
Creator & Direction: Helene Kvale
Text: Michael Bradford
Movement: Nicole Phaneuf & Greg Webster
Puppetry: Fergus J. Walsh and Paul Spirito
Costumes: Laura Crow
Scenic Design: Jeanette Drake and Rachel Levey
Lighting: Chad Lefebvre
Sound: Greg Purnell
Music: Tim Maynard
Cast: Vanessa Soto, Phillip Korth, Gretchen Goode, Ken O’Brien*, Kate Shine, Kevin Coubal, Fergus Walsh, Nate Caron, Arron Lloyd.
With thanks to Michael Hanson, Alexandra Petrova, David Regan, Cat Yudain, Teddy Yudain for the PP Workshop.
The Parkville Project was funded by: The United Arts Campaign, Greater Hartford Arts Council, The Marks Family Endowment in Fine Arts, The School of Fine Arts Dean’s Grant at The University of Connecticut, The Human Rights Initiative at The University of Connecticut, The Human Rights Institute at The University of Connecticut, The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of Connecticut.
