Crossed Reading
“Sometimes in the papers, they publish news items which contradict each other or give the lie to each other—or, if they are linked together in a crossed reading, one can complete the other’s meaning. In a carriage on the train line which rises from the river Tigre in Buenos Aires, the Newspaper Theatre Group Team performed a crossed reading of two news items; the first was the legal decree instituting a state of emergency in the province of San Juan, in the light of an increase in infant mortality which had reached dangerous levels as a result of demographic underdevelopment. This news item was crossed with a report about Mirtha Legrand, a very well-known actress thanks to the TV programme Lunching with Mirtha Legrand, in which she used to interview well-known people from artistic and political life; in the report, she was asked if, apart, from her famous TV lunches, she was also in the habit of taking dinner. This woman, who made herself famous by eating in front of the cameras, answered in the affirmative, that she liked to dine, but never invited more than 10 people a night, for fear that the conversation might become too fragmented; apart from which, she always had a few surprises in store for her guests. For instance, when everyone was expecting that the dinner would start with cooked ham, she served them fine French cheeses. And the report on the famous gastronome went on from surprise to surprise, each dish cross-read with news items on the death of children in San Juan, from malnutrition.” Augusto Boal
Read the same news reported by different sources. The articles are read alternately to offer a deeper understanding of the text or highlight contradictory positions. The goal is to shed light on different viewpoints on the same news, giving voice to minority positions.
- Choose a topic that interests you.
- Search for articles on this topic. Use all sources: mainstream ones but also less visible ones, from online sources to print sources. You will find conflicting articles on the same topic.
- Select key phrases that you think tell the same topic from different perspectives.
- Read and write the selected phrases, alternating the different positions on that same topic.
- Build your performance: choose the characters who will read the selected phrases, explore timing, spaces, costumes, and props to best convey your message to the audience.
You can do this exercise in a group: each person chooses a different position to take on the chosen topic.
Preparatory Exercises:
- Each person reads a position on the topic and debates with the others, trying to convince them of their position.
- Open space exercise: each person stands in a different position with their eyes closed. They open their eyes for a few seconds and describe only the portion of the space they see. Together, they try to reconstruct the general layout of the space.
Note: This technique is different from complementary reading! While in this technique the articles bring different viewpoints on the same topic, in complementary reading the news is different and combined to have a more complete reading.