So, How Are YOU Classified?

Hello!!

I’m Lauren Ashlee, a second-year grad student and a member of the Ensemble Performance and Community class. Woohoo! Let’s get started!!

First of all, I’ve been asked to explain what “community” means to me. It’s harder than you might think.

Go on. Try it.

See?

To me, “community” is more than just a show on television (though a Google search of the term would indicate otherwise.) When I hear the word, my mind instantly conjures up images of the small town where I grew up; grassy green fields, the smell of freshly cut hay, horses and tobacco barns, fireflies and crickets, and lots of old people who liked to tell me stories about my parents and grandparents when they were young. However, the idea of a community goes deeper than just common geography.

The Oxford English Dictionary has at least eleven definitions of “community” (I gave up after this, but there were more.) The one I considered most relevant to my purposes states: “Common character; quality in common; commonness, agreement, identity. nothing of community: nothing in common. community of interest: identity of interest, interests in common.”

My own definition isn’t too far off. To me, a “community” is a group of people who share common characteristics or ideals, which they acknowledge sets them apart from humanity at large. As such, community is a tool we used for self-identification. I see myself as a Henrietta farmer’s daughter, a Southerner, an American, a Christian, etc., and when I encounter another individual with whom I share one or more of those qualities, I instantly recognize the common ground. I feel a sort of kinship, even if only slightly, to the other member of my community, as though we are somehow separate from those around us who are excluded from our kinship. As the popular scripture says, we are “in the world, but not of the world.”

I won’t speak for everyone everywhere, but it seems Americans on the whole are obsessed with labels. If we don’t have a name for something, it frightens us. Therefore, identifying with a community can also be a way of defining, labeling, and recognizing those who are different. It’s our own version of scientific classification. For example, strictly concerning my philosophical communities:

Kingdom: I am a person (as opposed to a rock)

Phylum: With religious beliefs (as opposed to Without)

Class: Christian (because I’m not Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, etc.etc)

Order: Protestant (because I’m not Catholic)

Family: Baptist (because I’m not Presbyterian, etc.)

Genus: Southern Baptist (as opposed to Free Will or Missionary, etc.)

Species: a member of Mt. Hermon Baptist Church. (as opposed to Little Hope Baptist, etc.)

 File under "Really Cool Dead Things."

Each level of classification is a community on its own, and each step down becomes more and more exclusive (honestly, I could keep going… which services I attend, how long I’ve been a member of that church, what Sunday School class I sleep through, and on and on.)

In this same vein, those working on “community BASED theatre” are doing something different than those working on “community theatre.” The latter is a group of (usually) non-professional actors working without monetary compensation on a (usually) pre-written script to present to their geographic (usually) community.

Community BASED theatre is a group of people creating a show about a certain community (often of the non-geographic variety) with the intent to facilitate some form of change.

Get it? Got it? Good.