A young couple says good-bye to their extended family, leaving their children behind as they prepare to move to the United States. A father worries that his young son won't remember him after a two-year absence. A new arrival to the United States struggles to understand a nurse's questions.

Karen:
How did you get the idea to start a theater group for immigrants?

Kathleen:
One of the inspirations was a playwriting class that I took, which just got me into the whole frame of mind of using theater. The other motivation came from working with adult immigrant students for four or five years and becoming familiar, as we all do, with a lot of the issues in their lives, and a lot of the difficulties they experience. I thought it would be nice if students could use theater to express some parts of their lives that Americans who are not immigrants aren't aware of. Most of the students who signed up originally were initially just interested in another way to practice conversation. But once we got started, they became very involved in using theater to express their experiences, and that became a driving force for them. Then, after the first production, there was a sense that their self-esteem was stronger and that it had been very therapeutic for them to express what they were going through. These were things that many of them had been holding inside, trying just to grin and bear it and get through.

Karen:
What are some of the themes you've explored with the class?

Kathleen:
One thing I really wanted Amer- ican audiences to understand was that people don't leave their homes, families, countries, and cultures for frivolous reasons. Some people may be going on an adventure, but to really pull up your roots and start over from zero requires a strong reason. If people had good choices in their countries, most would stay there. They've made tremendous sacrifices coming here, and one of the themes was the pain of going away and leaving family members behind, and then the difficulty of trying to maintain relationships when you're separated by such a distance for so long. The other themes all revolved around learning how to cope and survive here. People come and they have to learn not just the language, but also all of the systems, all the customs, all of the things that you and I just take for granted. Then there are also culture clashes, and dealing with being condemned or judged for being different, for example, Muslim women wearing scarves, and trying to maintain a certain sense of your own identity. Another important theme was breaking through barriers, reaching through to get people to change their attitudes.

Karen:
What are some of the methods you use in class and how are the scripts developed?

Kathleen:
All of the stories were based on very specific true incidents in students' lives. In the first month or two, we did a lot of talking and writing about their experiences. I took the experiences they talked and wrote about, as well as others that I knew about from former students, and for the first production, I wrote the scripts and they learned them. It's difficult working with immigrants and theater because pronunciation is such a huge obstacle. In theater, it's pointless if people can't understand you, so we do a lot of work on pronunciation and voice projection. Since the class has evolved, we developed a lot of different types of activities and projects. For instance, we watched some of the scenes from the video and we analyzed expression and body language and saw how much was communicated without words. That led to them getting together in small groups where they told each other about first-time experiences such as first job interviews. They then developed pantomimes portraying these situations. One student acted out her experience at the airport where she was carrying lots of heavy luggage and she encountered her first escalator. She did a wonderful job with it, and there were lots of other great silent performances as well. I realized right away what a huge difference there was between giving them a script that was written and letting them act something out without words because all their energy and creativity could go into the expression of what was happening. They didn't have to worry about Is this the right word? Am I pronouncing it the right way? and all those things. We added words to some of them, and the difference was like night and day. That's what we chose to demonstrate at the MCAE Network presentation our group gave this past October: how to go from improvised silent pantomimes to scripted vignettes. When students perform my scripts for the first time, the result is usually very flat expression with no intonation and dreadful pronunciation, so I've learned how important it is to have students working on developing scripts all the way through.

Karen:
How do you think this class differs from the typical ESL class or from other classes you've taught in the past?

Kathleen:
I think the main difference is that we're using language as opposed to studying language. After about a month in the class, after the class had whittled itself down to those who had decided that this was really a good way to learn, they began to work very well together. Students are speaking much more to communicate, to accomplish something, rather than to practice talking about their families for the umpteenth time or things like that. What I found is that they became very comfortable with offering their opinions and making suggestions. During rehearsals there were a lot of suggestions about where people should stand or other sorts of directorial things. Of course, in a theater production, it's possible to have too many directors, but as a teacher it was wonderful. We were working together as a team, and I didn't feel so much that I was teaching as that I was facilitating this interaction. The creative suggestions were coming from all of us. Another great thing about theater is that, if your group has the right chemistry, you develop a very trusting, cooperative environment. You can talk about emotions, which after all, are the tools you need to use in theater. In everyday life, you may have to swallow your anger or ignore your frustration, but actors are only effective if the audience understands the human emotions being portrayed.

Karen:
Can you talk a little about the social action aspect of the theater group? What are some of the projects planned for the future, and how do they fit in with the Immigrant Learning Center's mission of educating the public about the realities of immigrants' lives and their contributions to US society?

Kathleen:
In December 2004, we're doing a presentation that shows some of their experiences, but it starts and ends showing some of the common complaints that you hear if you listen to AM talk radio programs about those awful immigrants. Immigrants don't pay taxes and they don't want to learn English. But the play has scenes showing that actually immigrants pay a lot of taxes and they want very much to learn English. They're cleaning buildings at night, they're delivering our newspapers, they're working in nursing homes taking care of our elderly, they're paying a lot of Social Security taxes that also help support our elderly. In the spring we're planning to work with students from Social Studies classes at Malden High School to develop a dialogue between American teenagers and immigrants. We also hope to develop an oral history project with some nursing home residents in the area. We're also planning to make another video production through Malden TV to keep getting our message out to the community.

If You Could Hear My Voice
The Immigrant Theatre Group's video desribed in Karen's article is available from the SABES Boston/ALRI library or the Northeast SABES library. Copies also may be purchased for a small fee through the Immigrant Learning Center. Contact Marcia Hohn at 781-322-9777 for details.

Karen Oakley has been teaching and working with ESOL students for about 20 years. She can be reached at karen_oakley@hotmail.com