While the practice of theatre demands multiple collaborators, traditional theatre research tends to be written from a single perspective, often culminating in the completion of a monograph. The Penelope Project: An Arts-Based Odyssey to Change Elder Care, published by the University of Iowa's new Humanities and Public Life book series, helps to bridge this gap by employing multiple voices to tell a single story. What is the Penelope Project? It involves a cast of unlikely characters represented by the book's three editors: Anne Basting, a professor of theatre at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee (UWM); Maureen Towey, an ensemble member of the professional company Sojourn Theatre; and Ellie Rose, a visual artist and former staff member at the elder care facility Luther Manor in Milwaukee, WI. As a project team, collaborators from the three partnering institutions created ‘a multiyear effort to engage a long-term care community in a retelling of Homer's Odyssey from the perspective of Penelope – the queen of Ithaca, cunning and courageous wife of Odysseus and hero who never left home’ (p. 1). The Penelope Project involved a series of artistic engagements with the elderly community living at Luther Manor, including imaginative letter writing (to Odysseus from Penelope), dance, song, storytelling, textual study of Homer's myth and the weaving of Penelope's famous funeral shroud. These artistic component pieces were then woven into a devised play, Finding Penelope, written by Basting and performed throughout the spaces of Luther Manor.
A 2016 MacArthur Fellow (sometimes dubbed the ‘genius’ awards in the US), Anne Basting has worked for over twenty years at the intersection of ageing and performance to improve the life of elders. This is significant because Basting's previous scholarship (she has already written the requisite monograph) and community-engaged arts practice in Milwaukee tilled the soil from which the Penelope Project would grow. But, even though Basting's vision provided the primary impetus, the project's wide-ranging scope required multiple team leaders, support team members and actors. This is duly reflected in the book's multi-voiced approach, which brings together authors from all facets of the project to tell an evocative story through essays, dialogues, interviews and script excerpts from Finding Penelope.
The book is organized in five parts to correspond to the project's five phases. In Part One, ‘The Landscape’, experts from higher education, theatre-making and elder care survey the states of their fields at the time of the project's beginning in 2009. This section includes compelling essays from theatre scholar Jan Cohen-Cruz, who overviews the importance of field-based learning in university settings, and artistic director of Sojourn Theatre Michael Rohd, who discusses the distinctions between social and civic theatre practice. Part Two, ‘Building Partnerships and Charting a Path’, explores how the three partners forged common goals. For applied-theatre practitioners, this section is particularly helpful in understanding how the project secured funding, employed rigorous evaluation methods (deftly completed by contributor Robin Mello) and was structured to incorporate undergraduate students and curricula. The book's third part, ‘Resistance, Realizations, and Adjustments’, discusses the project's numerous challenges, from creating art within the rigid routines of Luther Manor to the professional artists’ fear of working with elderly actors living with dementia. Here, Maureen Towey offers a poignant reflection on directing elderly performers. Part Four, ‘Rewards’, details the project's many high points, including a successful run of Finding Penelope. Most importantly, perhaps, this section documents the interpersonal and intergenerational bonds produced through the arts-based programming. ‘Evaluation and Evolution’, the book's fifth part, describes the results of the project's qualitative evaluation methods, including pre- and post-project interviews, focus groups and surveys; a series of appendices helps to demonstrate the rigour of this research. In addition, this section explains how the project led to significant changes within the structures of both UWM's theatre department and Luther Manor.
The interdisciplinary nature of The Penelope Project, along with the book's accessible structure, is sure to attract readers from several fields. Long-term care professionals, as well as social workers in elder care contexts, may benefit from considering how arts-based programming provided compelling and cumulative opportunities for the residents of Luther Manor. Alternatively, as more and more universities create field-based learning initiatives, administrators in higher education could learn from the meaningful and sustainable collaborations cultivated between UWM, Sojourn Theatre and Luther Manor. The readers with the most to gain from the text, perhaps, are applied-theatre practitioners and scholars. As the sub-field of applied theatre continues to expand, The Penelope Project offers a casebook of rich information – a rare glimpse into a longitudinal project conceived and executed at an exceptional level of quality. And, lastly, for the broader field of theatre scholarship, The Penelope Project proffers an intervention. By offering a multi-voiced account of a single performance project, it forges an alternative approach to book-length research.
