“Mining the Museum for Relevance”

As an actor, I struggle to keep performances fresh and exciting.  I have performed some plays hundreds of times, but it may be the first time the audience has seen it.  I must deliver lines, discover thoughts and experience feelings as if they are just happening.  If my performance is believable, I can connect with the audience on a deep and personal level.  If they see themselves in the story, it becomes relevant to them.

 

Sometimes it isn’t easy.  Life gets in the way, and while one side of my brain speaks the lines of an injured Italian coal miner, the other side makes a grocery list.  The mind is an amazing thing, but if my pot roast becomes more important than the show, I will forget myself and as actors say “go up” on my lines.  It is a horrible feeling to be lost and alone on stage.  Wondering, “Where am I?”  “What did I just say?”  “What is the next line?”  Perhaps that’s what a trapped miner feels like.  Alone and scared.  Helpless.

 

Face of the "A" coal on Riley Fork of Long's Creek, Breathitt County.

URL: http://205.204.134.47:2005/u?/Jillson,104

 

For several weeks now, thirty three miners have been buried deep underground, in a copper mine in Chile.  It will take several more weeks to dig the tunnel that will allow them to escape.  They must feel helpless.  Luckily they are not alone.   They have each other down below and they have family and friends above ground scrambling to rescue them; sending food and supplies down a long line of pipes.  A line that reaches out to the miners deep underground.

 

A good script should be that kind of connection for an actor:  a long line (or a series of lines in this case), that reach out and connect the actor to the audience.  The script must be clear, and speak to a number of different people on a number of different levels.  It must have relevance.

 

 

 

I’ve been performing “In the Veins:  Conversations from a Coal Town” for almost ten years now.  It is fun for an actor.  In only twenty minutes I must become a young boy who has just moved into town, an injured Italian coal miner, and a union supporter.  The characters are composites of real stories from the collections of the Kentucky Historical Society.  Dozens of oral histories and primary sources were researched to create the characters in the play.  Stories of people like Frances Turner.

 

When the play is over I stop pretending and talk to the audience as myself.  Sometimes I answer questions, but I always listen.  I listen to the audience share stories of their youth in a coal mining town and we connect through the lines of the script.  It isn’t just a play to them, it is their life.  I don’t want to forget their stories so I keep a journal beside my computer.  After one performance many years ago, I wrote:

 

“A woman told me, ‘You brought tears to my eyes.’  She removed her necklace and showed me the “scrip” she wore around her neck to remind her from where she came.” – July 20^th, 2002

 

I can’t help but recognize the significance here.  Scrip is a type of money paid to miners, that could only be spent in the company store.  Her "scrip" necklace connected her to the place that she was from, while my "script" connected our collections to her. 

 

Did you grow up in a coal town, or do you remember stories of a relative who did?  Share your story by posting a comment below.  You never know who you might connect with.

 

Visit the Kentucky Historical Society on Thursdays in September to experience “In the Veins:  Conversations from a Coal Town”.  Connect to the new and improved Museum Theatre webpage to download playbills, view the online calendar for more performance dates and times, and plan a tour.

 

- Gregory Hardison, Director of Museum Theatre

 

P.S.  Please, keep the chilean coal miners in your thoughts, until they return home to their families.