Awards Daily speaks with Procession director Robert Greene about the overlap between acting, theatre, and documentary genres, and why it was important for his cast of survivors to dramatize their own abuse.
If you’d never heard of drama therapy before watching Netflix’s documentary Procession, then you are not alone. Director Robert Greene didn’t know what it was either until he started working on the project, even if his filmography includes drama-therapy-influenced work like Bisbee ’17 and Kate Plays Christine.
“I really do feel like [Procession] is a culmination of a lot of my work leading up to this,” says Greene. “And the evolution came by reading the book The Body Keeps the Score. In that book, it talks about how trauma is buried in your body and in your muscles, and one way to work through trauma is to do theatrical work and drama therapy.”
Before working on Procession, Greene was thinking about the overlap between acting, theatre, and documentary (“You put the camera in someone’s face and you’re effectively asking them to reenact their feelings about what they might be feeling about their own past or where they are”) and even questioned the point in making films in the first place. But then he saw the TV press conference that opens Procession, which details the sexual abuse suffered by six adult men at the hands of their priests when they were children, and it was a light-bulb moment.
“Maybe all of these ideas could somehow help these guys.”
“You Cannot Take Their Power Away”
The first thing Greene did was call the men’s attorney Rebecca Randles to see if they would be interested in participating in this project.
“Rebecca said very early in the process: ‘You just cannot take their power away.’ That’s what causes retraumatization, having your power taken away. That’s what would reinforce the same structure of abuse they had already experienced and then had to deal with for such a long time.”
He got the men to agree to the project, knowing that at every point in the process, it could be the end of the process, as he didn’t want to do anything they didn’t feel comfortable with.
“We filmed that first day, when you see us all in a circle and we’re talking through things, that could have been it, and frankly if that was it, that would have been helpful to the guys. I was completely liberated by that.”
Greene says this confidence comes from working with his producers [Susan Bedusa, Bennett Elliott, and Doug Tirola] and only wanting to do the project if it was helpful, which he calls a liberated way of making something.
“The truth is: When they walked into that room and sat down for the first time, you could see that just being in the room together was so powerful for them. It was really just listening to what they needed. Sometimes they would say, ‘I’m not sure I can do this,’ and I’d say, ‘Then, let’s not do it.’ And they’d say, ‘Really?” And I was like, ‘Of course.'”
“Let’s Reclaim this Moment of Joy”
The film walks a tightrope between fiction and nonfiction, with the men dramatizing real-life experiences by casting each other in specific traumatizing scenes from their adolescent abuse. While the process of filming was depicting very serious issues, Greene wanted them to have fun and explore filmmaking and being directors.
“You know that these ideas are coming from a place of almost pure creativity. What I mean by pure is that these aren’t sophisticated visual ideas; in some ways, they are imported from culture. The guys are really almost energized to communicate something they’re desperate to communicate, and I think that’s what you feel in those scenes, this desperate energy to communicate. It becomes this extra layer when you watch those themes.”
Each of the survivors had a different style and approach to tackling their story, with Greene having to adapt on a case-by-case basis.
“I found myself, as director in those spaces, with a very collaborative crew, but I ended up being more of an advocate for those guys in the moment for their ideas.”
In fact, Greene would have never thought to go back to spaces where the abuse occurred or would have asked the men to do so. But one of the survivors, Ed Gavagan, wanted to go back to the cathedral and ring the church bell.
“Once he said he wanted to do it, we were certain to try. And then he goes and walks upstairs and suddenly he’s ringing this bell. This dream he had, if only he could do this one thing he’d feel better. And he did! And not only did he feel better, but it was such a seminal moment for us because Dan [Laurine] and Michael [Sandridge] felt good about helping him get there. All of the sudden, it’s not just about let’s face this darkness, it’s about let’s reclaim this moment of joy.”
Gavagan ringing the bell, the joyous look on his face, becomes one of the most memorable moments in the film for audiences. Even if Gavagan originally thought he looked silly.
“I took a lot of their notes, but I was like, ‘Ed, this is one place where you have to trust me.’ And he now talks about it because it’s people’s favorite scene.”
“To Raise the Level Up of What We’re Doing”
Greene says that there’s a scene with survivor Dan Laurine, that didn’t make the final cut of the documentary, about the reason why the six men are playing the roles in each other’s films, rather than hiring trained actors to perform.
“He said, ‘It’s a way to raise the level up of what we’re doing.’ If we hired actors off the street, it wouldn’t be the same.”
And in intense scenes like Mike Foreman’s, where he yells at one of the other survivors as a way of dramatizing his pain, a professional actor might not understand the situation enough to fully absorb what taking the abuse meant to Mike.
“By that point [at the end of filming], everybody was really geared up to help Mike. Everybody knew what Mike needed to get to. There was no fear that day. They wanted to be there for Mike. Tom [Viviano] really took that abuse, and then afterwards, they were laughing about it. Tom knows what he gave Mike that day.”
Since completion of Procession, Greene and the cast have become a family and keep in touch daily in the form of an epic text chain, where chatter includes talk about the positive reception of the documentary.
“I don’t think this is a film that could have been made five years ago,” says Greene. “Collectively, we are really getting the conversation going. Not just recognizing trauma, but what to do about it and how to recognize what it does to your body every day and how to live with it.”
Greene hopes that other survivors of abuse can find inspiration from the six men in his film.
“The power came from joining forces and opening up, and saying, ‘I’m not going to let you, this force of shame, dominate my life anymore.’ I hope viewers can feel that love coming through the screen.”
Procession is streaming on Netflix.