(upbeat music) - Welcome to "Forum 360," where we have a global outlook from a local view.

I'm your host, Leia' Love, and today I am so excited, we have Dr. Howard Pippen with us today and he is the Executive Director of Genesis Theater.

We are going to talk about how they use mental health through the form of art of theater.

Thank you for joining us today.

- Thank you for having me.

- So tell me a little bit about your background.

How did you start Genesis?

What is Genesis Theater?

So that our audience will know.

- I started Genesis with my wife in 2019.

We met in 2010 and we both had a love for theater, a love for God, a love for helping people.

And we started it, because we wanted to impact people's lives.

We both care deeply about mental health.

Not only for ourselves, but for others in the community.

And that just is a little bit about how it got started.

We incorporate mental health, faith and theater arts.

Those are our three main components and they vary at different levels depending on what shows we're doing.

And a lot of times, because theater illustrates the everyday lives of people, they are always in every show, you can always find some component of life that needs to be lifted up and some component of how mental health can impact the characters in the shows that we're doing.

- Okay, so talking a little bit more about that.

How do you add it into your theater?

I feel like you said there's a couple different ways that you do.

And then can you share any personal experience where you've been participating or observing a theatrical performance and it's had a positive impact on your mental health?

- So at Genesis, let me just share some examples, our first adult production was entitled "To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday."

And Gillian had passed away on her 37th birthday.

So the show really revolved around a husband and a daughter overcoming or working through their grief.

So that's a natural mental health component.

And what we did as a theater company, on the Saturday night performance, we invited people to stay afterwards and we had a talk back with the cast and the audience and we brought in two mental health professionals to talk about the process of grief.

We included the actors and the actors shared that some of them had unresolved grief in their life.

And they were grateful for the opportunity to talk about that.

The audience too, had chances to ask the actors question, ask the mental health professional questions.

So that's one way that we incorporate mental health in what we do.

In our most recent production, we didn't do a talk back after the show, but we incorporated two mental health check-ins with the cast members, to see how they were just feeling about the characters in the show.

The show that we just closed is entitled "The Clean House," and it had several different components.

There was a another grief component, dealing with cancer component, dealing with a breakdown in marital relations.

So there were a lot of components in that show.

So we first checked in with the actors to see how they were doing with their characters around those issues.

And then we had a second check-in with them, just an overall mental health check-in.

And as it turned out, we had, one of our actors had recently lost their father to cancer.

So, because as a theater company, we had set aside two moments just to check in with our actors.

We were able to provide this one actor, who had experienced loss very recently, with a sense of support and community to help her through her initial stages of grief.

- That's awesome.

I feel like that is one of the things that may make your company more unique than other theater companies around, would you say?

- I think so.

I think that we strive to care about our actors and create an environment that is non-threatening, healthy.

We work very hard to create a sense of ensemble and we do the same for our audiences.

I think other theaters do it, maybe in their own special ways.

I think our theater is unique.

One, because as executive director, I'm also a United Methodist pastor, so I do have a little bit of pastoral care experience.

And our artistic director who happens to also be my wife, she's a marriage and family therapist.

So we really have kind of the mental health area well covered in the leadership of our theater.

Other theaters do care deeply about their actors and their audiences.

- [Leia'] Absolutely.

Absolutely.

- I don't wanna discount that.

I think Genesis, we just kind of put it out there that this is who we are.

It's who we are as the founders and it's just a natural part of who Genesis Theater is.

- Was there anything in particular that kinda drove that in as a highlight for you?

- I would say that, and I'll speak on behalf of our artistic director.

She always says that theater saved her life, because she was able to connect with the Cleveland Playhouse at a young age and used that as an outlet for her.

That's part of what drove it.

And to a certain extent, theater played a very important part of my life too.

It gave me an outlet.

A place to be at home when there was unrest in my family, when my parents went through a divorce.

I leaned on theater when I was in high school.

And I think a lot of actors use theater as a way to maybe escape from things in their lives.

So as the founders, we both had this not only love for the art of theater, but we knew how theater can be very therapeutic, because it was therapeutic in our lives.

- Love it.

In what ways do you believe that theater can serve as a platform for de-stigmatizing mental health issues and promoting open conversations?

And I know you mentioned that you guys have the open part at the end of your sessions.

- I think that was, bringing in mental health professionals into a open environment like that and allowing them to speak into the lives of people right there who may have never gone to therapy.

I think that was a powerful way of de-stigmatizing the benefits of sitting with a professional.

It was almost like a sample therapy session.

There was an act.

So if we go back to our first production of "To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday," the actor in the presence of audience members who stuck around, other cast members, really through conversation with a mental health professional, came to an understanding of what she needed to do to work through some unresolved grief in her life.

And she thought, not only did the play and that moment with the professionals help her, she realized that, I'm sorry, in the conversation with the professionals, she realized that she had some breakthroughs.

So I think that's a powerful way.

And then another way we de-stigmatize it, is it's just who we are.

It's out there.

Our actors know it, it's on our website.

It's like, this is who we are.

We love theater.

Faith is important and mental health is important to who we are.

- I love that different industries are now really making it a point to say, "This is not a bad thing, you know, "let's have a open conversation about it.

"We realized that life is hard."

Right?

- [Howard] Yes, yes.

- Things happen and sometimes you just need somebody else to help you process through.

My pastor always says, "Some people need a couch, "some people need a couch and some pills, "some people just need the prayer."

- Yes, exactly.

- So it's like, you know, however you need it.

- Exactly.

Exactly.

- (laughing) You know, I just love that it's being able to be more acceptable and people are like, "Okay, I can, I can do that."

If you are just joining us, we are talking to Dr. Howard Pippen, who is the Executive Director of Genesis Theater and we are talking about mental health through the art of theater.

Tell us a little bit, are there any specific theatrical techniques or genres that you believe are particularly effective in conveying the complexities of mental health experiences?

- That's a good question.

I would say, when I think about different genres of theater arts, one thing that all actors are encouraged to do is to remember that our bodies, as an actor, are the instruments that we have to perform.

And if we are not taking care of our bodies, what we're able to present on stage is maybe not as good if we're not taking care of our bodies.

So, one thing that I encourage all of the actors who I'm working with is that one, you need to take care of yourself and we need to warm our bodies up.

It's almost as if being an actor is like being an athlete.

There's not a professional athlete in this world who steps out onto the field or steps onto the court who has not stretched, who has not warmed up their bodies mentally and physically.

And I would say the warmup period for every actor is really vital to their own physical and mental health as they step out onto the stage and present different characters.

- Absolutely.

I really agree with that.

And saying that too, do you think that there is a therapeutic value in engaging in theater activities such as improv or role playing?

Like let's say there is a teacher, a high school teacher who's looking for some tips and techniques to incorporate into their classroom.

What kind of advice would you give them?

- Whew.

(Leia' chuckling) I think I'm not really, I don't think I'm good at improv.

But I do think, I do think.

- So don't put you on the spot until you recover.

(laughing) - No, please don't.

Please don't.

But I have seen and I know how improv can be very therapeutic, because improv can be fun.

And when you are engaged in improv, you tend to, when you really get into it, you get relaxed.

And I think sometimes through improv, different things that you're going through might surface and come out, that may not necessarily come out in a more scripted environment.

So in terms of maybe helping people, get some things out of them that they may not get out other ways.

I can see improv used as a tool to help maybe young people.

Maybe a young person's being bullied and hasn't shared that with anybody.

In an improv setting, something like that could come out.

They might feel safe letting that bubble out and come out of them.

And then that teacher can use that as an opportunity to reconnect with that student and hopefully get that student to open up some more about what's been going on in their lives in terms of a bullying situation.

So that's one example.

Improv, when students or people really get into it, stuff bubbles up.

It's safe.

You feel safe to let things come out, in an improv situation, that you may not feel safe otherwise.

- Now, for the people who are around and supporting in that atmosphere, is there anything that they should not do?

That you have found that has been a, you know, we try not to make sure that we do x, y, z to continue to help to support this person?

- Well, I think it's hard for me to say what not to do.

- It depends on the situation?

- It depends on the situation.

I would think what we are all learning in terms of mental health is I would encourage everyone to check in with whoever they're working with, whatever ages they're working with, check in.

How is this impacting you?

How is this scene, how is this character, how is this play?

How was this exercise?

I think if teachers and professionals and directors and producers did nothing else than to check in more with individuals, I think that'd be a huge help.

I mean, 'cause you don't even know.

So this last production we did, two of the actors had a lot of physical contact and we made a point to always check in with the actors individual, how is the physical contact going?

Do you feel safe?

Are you comfortable?

Is it too much?

So I would encourage teachers, directors, producers, if nothing else, check in, check in and check in individually.

So that the person has an opportunity to share if something is making them uncomfortable or if a scene or a character is bringing up something in them that they need to work through.

- You know, I think that's good in everyday life too, because I've had some people that I just say, and it's just as a normal, how are you doing?

And some have said, "No one has ever asked me that."

So just giving people that opportunity to be seen.

- Right.

Okay, so let's talk a little bit about Genesis Theater.

What age group do you work with?

- All ages.

- Okay.

- We have, coming right outta COVID, we were blessed.

We were able to do a production of "Lion King Jr," with kids ages, I think we did, 5 to 16.

And we were in that sweet spot where things opened up just a little bit.

And we got two performances in.

So we worked with kids and young people and we do adult shows.

We've had probably, I don't know anybody's age, but I think we've gotten up into the high fifties, maybe sixties, I don't know.

(Leia' giggling) And as young as five.

So it's all ages and it just depends on what show.

- [Leia'] So how do you select the shows that you're gonna do for the year?

- Well, we try to find things that both adults would like.

We think about our audiences.

We think about actors.

They're not a lot of shows where female actors have the main roles.

And we've kind of leaned towards that the last two shows.

We did "Steel Magnolias," which was an all female cast.

- Saw that one.

- This last show we did "The Clean House," four females, one male, so strong female cast.

So we think about actors, audience, what will people pay to come and see?

So those are some of the things that we think about.

And then it's the same thing with kids.

What's appealing to kids now, that they would feel comfortable getting on stage and really getting into.

- Good.

What kind of resources is Genesis connected to?

- We have received some financial resources through the Akron Community Foundation, Through the United Way, Peg's Foundation and the Ohio Arts Council.

And then we also rely heavily on monthly donors from individuals who like what we're doing.

We love monthly donors.

Monthly donors are important, because we have, you know, we're still a young theater, but we have monthly expenses that we have to pay to really just do anything.

People joke about websites, you gotta have a website today.

You gotta have social media - [Leia'] Absolutely.

- And that stuff is not cheap.

We have rent and it comes every month, the same time.

So we would love to build up our monthly donor base, 'cause that's really key.

- Speaking of rent, so where are you located at?

- We are located inside of Summit Art Space, downtown Akron.

It's a wonderful facility.

We rent there.

That is our address, that is our home.

We have office space there and performance space for smaller theatrical productions.

It's a challenging space to put on a large or even a medium sized youth production, because when you have youth in a show and kids, they bring grandparents and aunties and uncles.

And we need a lot more space to accommodate our audiences when we do a youth production.

So when we do larger productions, we have to find a venue outside to rent, to house.

- Okay.

And do you have like a certain amount of those that you tend to do every year that are the larger ones?

- We're trying to do no more than two of those a year.

We are trying to do at least one youth production a year.

So that will be outsourced.

We'll have to find another venue.

And then in the future we're looking to do a larger adult production that we will probably have to find a space to accommodate more people.

- Okay and what's the average cost of your ticket range?

- Between 15 and $20.

- Okay, very affordable.

Very affordable.

On the last piece about mental health, how can theater spaces and other spaces look at a way to make it more inclusive and supportive for individuals who may have some mental health conditions or who may not even know that they do need to seek help?

How can we make that more inclusive?

- I think one thing we can do, and as I think back to "Lion King Jr," at the time when we were producing that, we were wrapping up a partnership with the Akron Public School systems.

We had provided two seasons of a short term, drama program with Akron Public Schools.

And when we had that more intimate relationship, we offered both of the schools that we were working in free tickets to our production.

So I would say that's one way to give access to and give exposure to our program, to those who might not otherwise seek it.

Now when we did "Lion King," because it was a kids production, we didn't have any post show talks back, but it gave exposure to who we were as a theater company.

So I would say if other organizations and other theater companies who are promoting any kind of mental health, just finding ways to either invite people to come to free performances, offer a discount for those who might not have access to it.

That would be a way to bring people into the environment that might stimulate an interest in them or desire to seek additional help.

It's as our theater company grows, we would like to do more of that.

Helping those who we're contact with, get exposure to more traditional, therapeutic help.

Not just through talk backs, but really provide them with opportunities to connect with different resources to help them with mental health issues.

- Awesome.

Thank you so much.

We could talk forever, I'm sure.

(laughing) I really appreciate that.

And understand that exposure and accesses is the keys to life.

So thank you all for joining us and tuning in today.

We hope you have a wonderful week and this is "Forum 360," where we have a global outlook from a local view.

I'm your host, Leia' Love.

Thank you.

Bye-Bye.

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