As an undergraduate student at a PWI (Predominantly White Institution), I was very aware of how the culture of colorblind casting and training focused on coaching actors of color to read performatively “neutral” — which means performatively White — could ultimately lead to a deadening of one’s creativity. Meaning that instead of approaching performance with the fullness of your creative and expressive archive, I saw actors approaching performance from a position of censorship of their creative inclinations and an erasure of the particularities of how they may or may not interpret a role because they were convinced that they needed to read “neutral.” I had this piece that I’d written and wanted to mount with Black actors as my senior project.  But I didn’t want a neutralized piece. I wanted a piece that was bursting at the seams with creativity and emotional power. One of the first things I remember thinking about involved how to get this kind of performance out of actors who’d had their creativity stripped away with years of this suppressive training. I remember thinking “How do I communicate how to get what I want as simply as possible?” --- without having to go through all of my philosophical ruminations which were forming at the time as well. In the process of working on my senior project, which became PEACHES and Progress Theatre’s (PT) inaugural touring piece, I began to create this vocabulary - like Unending Climax - to give people things to do as opposed to how to feel, of leaping off the edge of a cliff and not knowing where it’s gonna go. Of Emotional Availability, creating an emotional map to the piece. I was in my mind asking, “How did I learn how to do this?” and I kept flashing back to my childhood, really tracking my artistic genealogy and thinking of ways to reverse engineer both the immersive and directed training I’d received. How did I learn how to sing a song? How had I come to understand Call & Response as a creative and performative practice? How did I learn how to build and nurture an ensemble — where everyone’s input and voices contributed — and how to cultivate what we now call safe space? How did I learn how to devise work, to build civic, social and emotional power in performance?  Gratefully, I’d been able to cast folks who also had their first artistic training in African American communities and cultural institutions. And at first, I was really worried that I wasn’t going to be able to assemble a cast at all from this world of PWI training because I’d found a real hesitance, fear and resistance even, amongst my peers to being associated with culturally specific work. Many believed that perfecting their colorblind craft was the only way to go.  But I’d managed to assemble a cast and they knew what I was seeking. It wasn’t like they didn’t know how to work in the aesthetic that I was articulating. It was that they hadn’t been given permission in a long time. They hadn’t been allowed to bring the fullness of themselves to performance in this culture of colorblind training and casting. So, I’d asked questions like, “How do you know how to move this way?” “How do you know how to sing this way?” The consensus pointed back to what I call the “Cultural Conservatory,” things we knew because we’d been immersed and trained in artistic expression rooted in Black communal spaces. Everyone comes from a Cultural Conservatory of some kind and has learn the things we know and do because they’ve been passed down by doing and passed down in ways that were beyond words. So, for this first ensemble, we were working with methods from Black Cultural Conservatory spaces and that kind of ensemble workshop exploration space was how SoulWork was born. The next thing you know, Progress Theatre had a vocabulary. We had an aesthetic. And we had a process of how to make the work feel and look the way I wanted. I think I was always interested in essence: what’s the thing beyond words? Because that’s the kind of performance I wanted to see: something that moved me beyond words.

But to get back to your question of why I chose to call it SoulWork...

The concept of Soul as a part of African American culture: soul music, soul food, soul brother, soul sister, that type of naming that was big in the 60s and 70s in popularizing what it meant to have Soul are really an experience that is, in essence, beyond words. Having Soul represents a visceral experience and a journey that is a surprise. Surprising because it has some unexpected element that just happened to have happened this time, on this day, in this space, with these people. The process of experiencing Soul or doing something with Soul is exploration. There’s not an equation to get to it. For example, if you listen to old school Gospel or Soul and R&B singers — some contemporary singers too — but the point is people who understand Soul and are singing from an African American tradition... When these folks sing, the written or unwritten melody of a song is merely a guide. It does not have to be rigorously adhered to as the end all, be all. So there can be a note that is what it is in terms of being a part of the melody, but wherever the singer is, in terms of having Soul, means that she can take that one note and take it on a journey before she gets back to it. And every performance can be and will be different. Because, the soul singer doesn’t know exactly where she’s going to go or what she’s going to do with the song before hand. The experience of singing with Soul means the outcome can be different every time. And what’s more, in many Black communal spaces, people expect a song to be different every time. They don’t want to come to a live concert just to hear a singer do the same thing they could hear from the recorded album. They are there live because they want to witness the artist in exploration and expression and they want to experience it with you. Same with Jazz. There’s music as is written but there is also the culture and expectation and invitation for the artist to explore within that in performance.  So, the dream, my dream is to have theatre that lives in that way and that is the goal of SoulWork. Theatre that got Soul is theater that has the potential for exploration and surprise at all times. When you see a show made with SoulWork, it can be and should be different every time. The end goal is not to set a show for consistency, but rather to craft an experience that lives differently every time it is enacted. Everyone is always exploring and there is always an expectation and invitation to find something new in exploration that allows the artist and audience to live in the Soul of a piece or experience the Soul of a piece in a different way. So, I’m not saying that SoulWork is the only way that theater gets to have Soul. But for me the identification and naming of Soul as an African American and culturally-specific concept and tool and philosophy and practice is central to the methodology that I teach and the artistic training that I offer. 

Additionally, I’d say that Soul as a universal concept that is accessible to all living beings is also important because most people have some understanding or relationship to what they would call their soul. Not only or necessarily in a religious or spiritual sense. But in terms of the soulful quality of being a feeling human, having empathy and having experiences in life that impact your being in a way that is beyond words. Art is Soulful and can impact the soul. So in that sense naming what I teach and have developed, SoulWork is a universal invitation and acknowledgment that everyone has access to Soul. The way you do Soul is not gonna look like the way I do Soul. And that’s good. That’s the point. Be we all have access to Soul. SoulWork helps artists to tap into that.

So, all of the above apply. It’s called SoulWork because I never want the method to be separated from its historical, aesthetic and cultural roots stemming from African American performance traditions and techniques and concept of Soul. It’s called SoulWork because everyone has a Soul and access to it as a means of exploring and expressing the human condition artistically; but also in just connecting to each other Soul to Soul. It’s called SoulWork because it is Work. There is a method. There is training and a technique to cultivating artists that perform with Soul and to creating artistic experiences that got Soul. And to suggest that generations of genius artistic expression and performance rooted in African American aesthetics comes about solely as a natural, innate gift or the reality of circumstance divorced from study, practice, revision, refinement, understanding and effort is not only offensive; but it’s just not true. In my mind, all of those stories exist in the name SoulWork. And calling it the Cristal Chanelle Truscott Method can’t capture all of that. Everybody can’t make theatre with the Cristal Chanelle Truscott method because I am the only version of me. But everyone has access and the opportunity to make theatre with Soul.