NET/TEN Shareback: Faultline Ensemble - Participant‐Directed Interview Practices
Spring 2019 Travel Grant
Faultline Ensemble (New Haven, CT) and Open Flame Theatre (Minneapolis, MN) will develop interventions to reduce the risk of sexual violence and harassment in small theaters. Inspired by the #metoo and Not In Our House movements, they will pioneer the application of occupational health research on workplace sexual violence to the field of ensemble creation, and harness current national attention to create culture change across the ensemble theater community.
I am trained as a community‐based theater practitioner, EMT and public health professional. Each of these modalities comes with a variety of beliefs and practices surrounding interview techniques, and somehow I have never found one that quite fits with my instincts. This past year, with the support of a NET travel grant, I spent three weeks interviewing theater artists about preventing sexual harassment and abuse in rehearsal spaces – a continuation of a project I’ve called Brave Space, undertaken by myself and members of my ensemble, Faultline. The process included 16 interviews with 24 artists and many more informal conversations. It has made me think more intentionally about interview techniques and the ways we interact with interview participants.
My work tends to focus on topics related to mental health, psychological trauma, and other potentially difficult and triggering topics, where interviews can be challenging for the participant and interviewer. In conducting interviews, I realize I am not following the protocols I have learned from either of my fields, but finding my way to an organic and participant‐directed format that is somewhere in between and also separate.
I am not a mental health professional and have been trained in multiple interview protocols I do not follow. So with that disclaimer, here are some lessons on interviewing that begun to crystalize for me over the course of this travel. They are in the form of informal guidelines I make for myself, and I offer them not as rules, but as thoughts that may or may not be of use to others conducting interviews on loaded and complicated topics. I would welcome additions and feedback.
Recognize participants’ generosity. This is perhaps the largest lesson I have learned on this travel – the incredible generosity of the artists I interviewed cannot be overstated. Artists opened their spaces, their rehearsals, their stories, their minds, and in some cases their homes to me, and spoke to me about taxing and complicated experiences. The necessity of gratitude was cemented over and over in my mind. Thank people for participating in your project. Make clear that you know they are giving you a gift. Respect their time. Be clear about your time expectations, and check in if your conversation is going longer than planned. Make sure they know your project would fail without them. Thank people and thank them again.
Be clear in your description of the topic. Describe your project and the interview subject as specifically and clearly as you can in advance. Help participants make informed choices about what they’re agreeing to get involved in and what they’re willing to talk about. The more information you can provide ahead of time, the less likely you are to blindside a participant with a question about triggering content they were not expecting, and the less likely they are to feel dragged into a conversation they did not consent to join.
Let participants choose the location. Offer to come to them, find a quiet space, or meet somewhere public, as long as those options feel safe to you. Remember that people may have very specific needs for the spaces in which they talk about difficult topics, or just have time constraints on their ability to travel to you. I met people in cafes, rehearsal spaces, around dinner tables, in the woods of their land, and on footpaths by the shores of lakes.
Be clear about confidentiality and information use. This project was unusual for me in that I do not know the end format it will take. Usually I know the material will inform a performance, and I can be very specific about the parameters of how interview recordings will be used and how participants will be credited or anonymized. In this case, I was transparent about not knowing the end product, and committed to contacting interview participants before any use of the recordings. This means artists I’ve interviewed get to opt in to having their words included, and active consent is present at each stage. Along with transparency of use comes transparency regarding my funding, my own positioning in relation to the subject, and biases or conflicts of interest. If you feel unsure about disclosing it, it is probably the kind of information your participants should know.
Invite participants to direct the interview. Letting a participant dictate the direction of our conversation lets me know why they decided to share their story with me. It also gives them a chance to steer the interview in a direction they are comfortable with, and helps prevent me from dragging them into a topic they aren’t comfortable speaking about. By the time we sit down for an interview, most people know why they want to be there, and what experience they want to share. If I can accept what they want to give me, I lessen the risk of demanding something from them that will be emotionally challenging or triggering.
Design your questions to be broad and gentle. I do not ask people to share intense personal stories with me. During my travel, I heard stories of past sexual harassment, assaults and other difficult, personal experiences – but I did not ask for these stories directly. My questions were about the ways people build safe rehearsal spaces, where they see gaps in the industry, and what supports they would like to see for artists in the future. This meant artists could choose to answer in broad generalizations, or could become as specific as they wanted. I trusted participants to judge how much of their experiences they felt safe sharing, and tried not to ask for more.
Remember people are the experts of their own experience. Those of us with backgrounds in journalism, social science, and even theater are trained to believe that individuals are embedded in a wider context that they are blind to and we can see. Resisting this imperialistic model means trusting participants to be the experts of their lived experience, taking them at their word, and asking them who else you should speak with or learn from in order to understand. Ask participants what you are missing with your interview questions, and what else you should be asking. Remember they are being generous enough to help you expand your knowledge. While you can make your own decisions about whether to use their words in your project, your role is not to correct, educate or contradict their experience. Listen carefully. Give people’s words weight. Apologize if you make a mistake.
Have a self care plan. When I choose to put myself in a position of hearing hard stories, it is important to me not to rely on the storyteller for my own emotional support. This means knowing where I am during an interview, and planning how to gently redirect a conversation if it gets to a place that is emotionally unsafe for me. It also means having a self care plan I can use after the interview – for me, that means knowing who I can call, even on road trip in a different time zone, to process my emotions and be ready for the next conversation.
Credit your supporters, mentors and teachers. Show your gratitude to your participants by showing your gratitude to your other supporters. Be someone who is outwardly and obviously grateful for the support you have received. Demonstrate that you credit others for their contributions, that you lift up the work of those around you, and that you genuinely appreciate the opportunity to learn from those willing to teach you. Keep in touch with people who have contributed at all stages of your project. Remind people that their contributions are valuable.
Remember, as you move forward in developing your work, that you are responsible to every person who has entrusted stories to you. Carry that responsibility with humility, gratitude and care.