Riggs Theatre

In this video, Theatre Director Kevin Coleman talks about his work within the Austen Riggs Center Activity Program.

Theater is the epitome of collaboration, of working together. Each member working on the production participates in creating an environment where risks can be taken, where support is tangible and felt, and care for each other and appreciation of people when they take risks. That's how we work. There's no other way to work except to be supportive of each other and to take deep interest in each other's story.

My name is Kevin Coleman. I'm the theatre director in the Activities Program at the Austen Riggs Center. The Activities Program gives the members of the Riggs Community an opportunity to immerse themselves in an art form. The fabric arts, ceramics arts, woodworking, and theater is one of the art forms where there are multiple arts involved. Movement, choreography, stage combat, clown music, singing, and acting. And they all combine under the umbrella of theater. We do big productions twice a year - in the fall and winter, and then again in the winter and spring. Before each production, we'll make an announcement that we'll begin the play readings, and over the course of a week or a week and a half or two weeks, we'll read a number of plays, and the patients will then choose which of those plays they'd like to work on. The actors that work in the production are both members of the Riggs community and members of the larger community. And some professional actors that come together and work on these plays. The patients that participate in this theater program often join with no experience whatsoever in theater. It doesn't matter. The art form itself draws on aspects of yourself that are easily available as a human being. When we work on productions, when we're in rehearsal, the process of working on a play, embodying a character, speaking their lines, embodying the movement work, the voice work, the choreography, you're fully embodying these characters in addition to lights and the costumes and the sound and all of that. But on a deep level, you're revealing parts of yourself that, in the safety of playing a character, start to come alive. It's in an environment that's noninterpretive. You're working as a student in this art form and not as a patient and member of the Riggs community. You're actually working as an actor, or a technician, or a sound designer, or a stage manager. It's a deep dive into this art form in a manner that is celebratory, creative, collaborative, and really really fun. Theater answers the question, what does it mean to be a human being.