Tag: Playback Memphis

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Playback Memphis Hosts a Special Juneteenth Memphis Matters

Photo: Courtesy Playback Memphis

Since its founding in 2008, Playback Memphis has been bringing its improvisational Memphis Matters to Memphis communities with a mission to “co-create and catalyze community well-being, social healing, and flourishing culture,” as their website states. This Saturday, June 10th, Playback Memphis will present a special Juneteenth Memphis Matters with all-Black ensemble for a BIPOC-only audience. Before the performance, the Flyer spoke with ensemble member and University of Memphis dance professor Wayne Smith to learn more about it. 

Memphis Flyer: What should audiences expect from the Juneteenth Memphis Matters performance?

Wayne Smith: So, Playback is an improvisational, audience-interactive theater company. The way we interact with audiences is that people in our audiences are prompted to share something and we have a team of performers, or actors as we often call them, and they will enact what the person in the audience shared in a creative way. It’s theatrical and incorporates use of language, movements, and music. It’s multidisciplinary. For this show, we’re looking at this as a commemorative celebration, being in honor of Juneteenth, so we’re looking at people of color coming together to share their experience, place of their identity, who they are.

What will be your role in this performance?

Remember when I mentioned that audiences are prompted to share something? Well, there’s a conductor that does that. So for this BIPOC show, I’m conducting. I’ll ask the questions. [For this show,] we’re very much aware of the importance of honoring and thinking about the emancipation of people who were enslaved and freedom and liberty and what does that really mean? These will be part of some of the questions that I will be prompting from the audience, and people can share from a very personal perspective.

I’ll start with surface-level things, then I’ll get gradually more personal, so people can begin to be comfortable with opening up and digging into deeper things. And it’s amazing how quickly people begin to open up. And then you know, we get the feedback afterwards, and people say that it really helps them, first of all, to share something that’s very difficult, but then to see it honored in Playback in such a very special way. We listen; we really try to listen and not just with our ears, but with our entire bodies. It really kind of helps them to heal. 

That sounds like it can be very therapeutic.

It is. Playback Theatre has its roots in drama therapy, so the therapeutic aspect is a real aspect of Playback. Even just being in the audience is so healing because you hear that other people are going through all of these different things. I mean, it could be happy, it could be sad, it could be everything in between. It can be traumatic, it can be completely ecstatic. And I think Playback Theatre gives to us performers as well as the audience. It gives everyone a sense that we’re more connected than we realize.

Is there anything else that you’d like to add?

I will say that all the cast — myself included — we’re all super excited about another opportunity to do this kind of a show [for the third time]. I feel very fortunate to be a part of an organization that fully supports this kind of a show. A part of me feels like there’s not a lot of my folks in this field, so the fact that we’ll have an almost all-Black audience come to see all-Black cast is significant. It’s important for people of color to see that representation in this unique and creative venue.

Playback Memphis will perform Juneteenth Memphis Matters on Saturday, June 10, 7-9 p.m., at TheatreSouth at First Congregational Church. Tickets can be purchased online for $20 until 4 p.m. on the day of the show. A limited number of seats will be available to purchase the night of the show. 

If you’d like to “pay it forward,” $40 tickets are also available to cover the cost of tickets for another community member. If you have concerns about ticket costs, reach out to Adriane Hall  at adriane@playbackmemphis.org. 

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Playback Memphis Hosts Mental Health-themed Events

Playback Memphis strives to destigmatize mental health. (Photo: Courtesy Playback Memphis)

Mental health concerns seem to be on everyone’s minds these days, as evidenced in this week’s cover story, and Virginia Murphy, founder and executive director of Playback Memphis, has found that true within Playback’s group of professional artists who bring audience stories to life with improvisation, dance, and music.

“We consider our work to be healing work,” she says, “but we were in a moment when we recognized even within our own very healthy organization, by most respects, we had a number of stories where mental health was a central character. … And we didn’t really have a direct way of talking about that with each other. That was true before 2021, before the pandemic, and now it’s kind of on steroids.”

As such, the group has turned its attention to seeking clarity for the sake of mental health and has invited the community to join in this pursuit with its Listening for a Change Week. “It’s an initiative on our part to explore new pathways and partnerships for mental health and healing through the arts,” Murphy says. “We know that we have this incredible therapeutic tool, and we feel like it’s an untapped resource in our community.”

For the Listening for a Change Week, Chesney Snow, a New York City-based, award-winning performing artist and pioneer in beatbox culture, will lead a choreopoem workshop, open to the public, this Thursday. The workshop will give insight into sharing personal stories and using art as a medium for social healing. The event will also include excerpts of Snow’s original choreopoem performance, The Unwritten Law, which explores the artist’s personal journey “from a legacy of incarceration to fatherhood, homelessness to Harvard, to ultimately starring on Broadway.”

After the workshop, Playback will host a free community gathering with Snow at 5:30 p.m. at the Frayser Community Development Corporation garden. You do not have to attend the workshop to join, and light refreshments will be available.

On Saturday, Snow will join in a Playback performance with audience members sharing a personal story or reflection for the ensemble cast of actors, dancers, musicians, and poets to reimagine on the stage. “It’s done in the service of building empathy and awareness,” Murphy says. “You may share a story and see it played back and may see something you hadn’t really considered before. … Not everyone shares, and if you’re in the role of witness, that’s a really important role as well. It helps a lot with perspective.”

After the performance, Jennifer Balink of Kindred Place will facilitate a conversation to reflect on the shared experience of the performance. Murphy says, “We want people to walk out after and feel like they are taking away something that will nourish and support them out of the theater.”

Choreopoem Workshop led by Chesney Snow, Frayser Community Development Corporation, Thursday, August 25, 2-5 p.m.

Listening for a Change: Memphis Matters, TheatreSouth at First Congregational Church, Saturday, August 27, 7 p.m., $10-$30.

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Playback Memphis Brings Together Police and Felons

Felons and police officers may seem like especially strange bedfellows, but a Memphis theater troupe has built a bridge between some who enforce the law and some who have broken it.

And now those groups are planning to join together to help kids in Frayser stay out of trouble.

Last fall, Playback Memphis, an improv troupe that uses theater to promote healing and reconciliation, paired a group of five Memphis police officers with six ex-offenders from LifeLine to Success, a ministry that helps felons turn their lives around and re-enter society.

Memphis Police Officer Joy Knowlton (center) acts out a personal story with fellow officers and ex-offenders from LifeLine to Success.

“In the Playback method, someone shares a reflection or observation or personal story. We have a team of actors and a musician, and we bring those stories to life on the spot using music and metaphor,” said Playback Memphis Director Virginia Murphy.

The group met for 10 weeks and shared personal stories from their lives. Playback Memphis members taught the participants how to use improv to act out those stories.

“We listened to ex-offenders tell stories of their childhoods, about growing up in difficult situations. And a lot of the officers had those very same stories, including myself, growing up in a home with domestic violence,” said Memphis Police Officer Joy Knowlton. “The only difference between us is some of us turned right and some of us turned left.”

In the end, friendships were formed, and any distrust between the two groups faded away.

“Our clients found a way to express themselves that they didn’t even know existed. It allowed them to remove a lot of stress and reveal some their experiences,” said LifeLine to Success Executive Director DeAndre Brown. “Doing that with police officers made it even better. We had those people who used to run from police, and to be able to meet with them every week on purpose was a big deal.”

The group of police officers and felons acted out some of their stories for the public in a performance in early December. But the work didn’t stop there. Murphy’s goal, in getting the two unlikely allies together, was to get them to assist in Playback’s plan to work with troubled youth in Frayser.

“We wanted to do a project where police and ex-offenders could come together, and if you could break down barriers and bring some healing and transformation between those two groups who we typically don’t think of as having harmonious relationships, they can go out and have an impact on young people,” Murphy said. “They will have a reach Playback wouldn’t have on its own.”

Playback runs an anti-bullying program called Be the Peace in area schools. And they hope to establish it in the Achievement School District in Frayser soon. When they do, the police officers and ex-offenders who participated in the fall session will join them in that work.

“We want to take the Playback model into the schools in our neighborhood to help children use conflict resolution skills,” Brown said. “We have identified a Frayser Success Zone around the elementary school across the street and the high school across the street.”

In addition to helping Frayser kids, Knowlton said she hopes the Playback model may eventually expand within the police department.

“This needs to be an experience for every officer. I would like to see the [Memphis police] training academy give officers a chance to see Playback to help officers touch back with their roots and remember why they chose this career,” Knowlton said. “For me, [Playback offered] a reminder of why I chose to be a police officer and give back to the community.”