Profiles of Engagement:
Putting a Human Face on Hunger
Telling stories of food insecurity through the unique medium of toy theater.
May 2008–Of the many problems pressing for society’s attention, perhaps one of the most invisible is that of “food insecurity.” Even the term, used by the government and social scientists, can mask the tough fact that people in Los Angeles County and elsewhere are going hungry every day. “Someone can function completely in society, you see them on the bus, you see them walking down the street, and you have no idea that person hasn’t had anything to eat,” says Frank Tamborello, executive director of Hunger Action Los Angeles (HALA).
Prof. Dan Froot (right) and puppet artist Dan Hurlin (left)
with Hurlin’s toy theatre set for the operatic story of “Burt.”
Photo by Rachel Benioff.
The Who’s Hungry? theater project aims to raise our awareness of the lives of people who, on a daily basis, must choose between food and rent, food and medicine, food and bus fare—the range of life’s basic necessities. But don’t expect a play performed by live actors. The stories of Who’s Hungry? will be told through the little-known, but improbably powerful, medium of toy theater.
This unique project is the brainchild of Dan Froot, an associate professor in UCLA’s World Arts and Cultures department and an award-winning playwright, composer, choreographer and performer. Collaborating on Who’s Hungry? is community partner HALA, whose executive director Tamborello provided the background information and community connections so critical to gathering and understanding these very personal stories. Also collaborating with Froot is Dan Hurlin, a nationally acclaimed puppet artist who is designing and constructing the sets and will co-direct with Froot. Through this combined effort, the partnership will culminate in three toy theater pieces, each telling the story of a food insecure person living in West Hollywood and distilled from hours of oral histories collected by Froot.
“I want us to stop thinking of hunger as an issue, per se, and to think of it more in human terms, says Froot, the project’s director. “When we think of it as an issue, we can distance ourselves, but when we become aware of the inner lives of the people who are around us, who are less fortunate, policy concerns suddenly become personal. I don’t know that I can say that the work rises to the level of activism, because I’m not exhorting people to storm the barricades, but I feel like it’s more of a moment for poetry for the theatergoer, to have a different feeling about the people immediately around them.”
Although the first iteration of Who’s Hungry? is for West Hollywood, which has a significant food insecure population despite its image as an affluent community, the ultimate goal is to offer it as a model to other cities.
Toy Theater: The Power of Small
Toy theater emerged in the 19th century, when revolutions in printing made possible the creation of printed backdrops and characters. Tabletop theaters using these printed elements became tremendously popular in homes across Europe and America. Explains Hurlin, “It was a parlor amusement that children would do. They would get these books and cut out the theater parts and the characters, and [the books] would come complete with scripts, and they would rehearse it and perform it for their families.”
Toy theater set (in progress) for the story of “Carl.”
Photo by Dan Hurlin.
Toy theater has since virtually disappeared—save for a small group of
passionate practitioners—but Froot felt this was this was the perfect medium
for telling these stories for a number of reasons.
First, toy theater’s scale creates a uniquely intimate shared experience.
Says Froot, “You’re looking at something very small, so you have to be
close. You’re sitting with a group of other people who are also trying
to see this small object, so you’re all very close together, so there’s
a sort of communalism that’s less anonymous than a big audience.” The size
and proximity also brings a “tightness of focus,” says Froot, “as if the
theatergoer is sitting across the table from the narrator.”
Secondly, toy theater places the audience in a more empathic role than theater with live actors. “When a human being is performing, we’re in a more receptive position in the audience,” says Froot. “But when we’re watching ‘object theater,’ we need to project ourselves with an active imagination into these objects that are just wood, and cardboard, and cloth. They’re not projecting anything. I really wanted the audience to be in that active position of putting themselves into the place of, at least in a small way, these narrators.”
Finally, toy theater’s economy of scale throws open the whole realm of possibility in terms of staging. “You’re not limited by budget,” says Christine Suarez, a master’s degree student in choreography in the Department of World Arts and Cultures, who worked on the project. “You can have God come in on a cloud if you want.”
From Oral History to Theater
“One thing we knew from the beginning, was we did not want to make victim art,” says Froot. “It’s not about feeling sorry for anybody. These people have their dignity, every one of them.” Froot chose to approach the project through oral history because he sees this technique not only as a good way of eliciting stories but also of creating a work that truly belongs to the narrator.
Froot is acutely aware of the pitfalls of interpreting another person’s story, and to avoid these, each adaptation is being done under the close scrutiny of the narrators. They are advising throughout the entire process: consulting on storyboards, texts and imagery; giving their feedback on musical choices; and considering whether the story truly expresses who they are—“existential questions, tough questions for them,” says Froot. Each person will also be present in some way in their toy theater performance so that that there is, explains Froot, “this sense that the narrators are regarding this interpretation of who they are. So, we’re not being voyeuristic, we’re listening to somebody’s story who is willing to have it told.”
Three Stories, Three Approaches
To whittle down 200 pages of oral history per person into a 10-20 minute theater piece, Froot is focusing on one facet that is idiosyncratic and essential to who each narrator is.
For the story of “Carl,” whom Froot describes as a “tough guy who lives a really gritty life”—sleeping on the street and recycling for cash—the toy theater piece focuses on his ritual of sitting on a park bench and watching the sunset at Santa Monica beach.
There’s also the story of “Darlene,” who lives in her van and whom Hurlin regards as “ingenious” for the way in which she has “put her life together with nothing.” Darlene’s toy theater will consist entirely of objects from 99¢ Only Stores®, where she does all of her shopping.
And finally, there is “Burt,” whose complex story, with its exhilarating highs and terrible lows, will take the form of a mini-opera, focusing on, says Froot, Burt’s “precipitous fall from high fashion couture, life among the ‘glitterati’ of Europe, to living under a cardboard box under a bridge in Hollywood.”
Complementary Collaborators
Froot found the perfect collaborator in Hurlin, an expert on toy theater, with whom Froot has worked for 20 years. Says Froot, “What I concentrate on when I make work is the narrative, the story, and more of the aural elements—the rhythm, cadence, melodic contour of language. And what [Dan Hurlin] brings to his work is an incredible visual sense.”
For the design of Carl’s theater, for example, Hurlin found inspiration in artist Martin Ramirez, a Mexican man who came to the U.S. in 1925 looking for work, only to be institutionalized for more than 30 years in American psychiatric hospitals. Ramirez, who died in 1963, made more than 300 drawings while in these hospitals and is now being hailed as one of the giants of 20th century art. The style of Ramirez’ artwork and the parallels with Carl’s life resonated with Hurlin.
Hurlin’s role as designer and set builder cannot be separated from his role as co-director. Explains Hurlin, “The storyboarding and the directing is inextricably tied into the engineering and the objects themselves. It’s not like in theater where you can just rewrite a line and have your actor do the new line. If you rewrite, you have to throw out the old objects and make whole new ones.”
Giving a Voice and a Face to Hunger
The toy theatre pieces, to be performed by professional puppeteers in West Hollywood’s Plummer Park on June 13 and 14, 2008 (see box above at right), will be marketed to people on food lines as well as to the West Hollywood theatergoer, and no admission will be charged (voluntary donations will be accepted). After all three pieces have been performed, the audience will have the opportunity to talk with the narrators as well as with Dan Froot and representatives from community groups working to end hunger.
Says Suarez, who was attracted to the activist aspect of the World Arts and Cultures department (whose theme for the 2007-2008 academic year is “Food and Democracy”), “I really believe that the purpose of art is to serve our community and to tell people’s stories that we wouldn’t hear. And that’s what [Dan Froot] is doing.”
By providing a forum for these unheard voices, Froot hopes that “folks who are living with food insecurity feel like there’s an outlet, that they can be heard. And that, at least for things like these performances, we can all be in a room together.”
Frank Tamborello, executive director of
Hunger Action
Los Angeles. Photo by Rachel Benioff.
Adds Tamborello of HALA, which educates the community, including homeless and formerly homeless people, on hunger issues and works with them on lobbying efforts, “I think what [Dan Froot] is doing is empowering, too, because a lot of people don’t know they have a story. In fact, some people will tell you, ‘my life has been worthless.’ And then as you talk to them, you find just the most incredible, interesting things. And they have resources they didn’t know they had.”
With the Who’s Hungry? oral histories, Froot is also launching the first collection of oral histories devoted specifically to food insecurity, which will be housed in the UCLA Library Center for Oral History Research. He hopes this collection will provide scholars, social scientists, students and other researchers with new source material—the human dimension that facts and figures cannot express.
Organizations in Portland, Oregon; Burlington, Vermont; and Providence, Rhode Island have expressed interest in seeing performances of the toy theater pieces, as they consider undertaking similar projects to raise awareness of food insecurity in their own communities.
Says Froot, “We’re not making a statement about world hunger, or even about county hunger per se. It’s really about, this is the guy who’s going through your recycling bin at night, and maybe you’d like to know a little bit about who he is. He has an aesthetic. He has stuff he likes to do that goes beyond his problems. That’s the human level that we’re interested in.”
