Hurricane Sandy, October 29, 2012

So this is my video from Hurricane Sandy.  I went exploring this morning along the route where I run in the morning, along the East River.  This was at the morning’s high tide mark, so things were not great.  The storm itself was still quite a ways off.

I’m writing this around 6:45pm that evening, and we’re about to enter the evening high tide, which is supposed to be worse.  The news is showing that the East River has breached the sea wall at South Street Seaport, which is not good.  We’ll see what happens.

Thanks, Jennifer Livingston, for paying attention

Take a look at this news reporter’s response to a man who emailed her saying that her obesity sets a bad example for young girls.  She makes some very eloquent statements about how bullying is a learned behavior.

Thanks, Jennifer Livingston for a gutsy, controlled call to arms in this battle against social combat.  Thanks for paying attention.

Project Pay Attention

Project Pay Attention is an initiative that asks people to pay closer attention to their actions and the words they use, either verbally, in writing, or via social media. When you sign on for Project Pay Attention, you pledge to speak up for others, choose your words wisely, track your online behavior, inquire, challenge yourself, and spread the word.  By educating people, Project Pay Attention proposes to change the way our society thinks about language and to ultimately reduce the negative effects of ignorance and intolerance.

In Fall 2010, when so many young people took their own lives, the media reported that bullying and social combat based on perceived sexual orientation and gender non-conformity had caused these individuals to kill themselves.  Regardless of how the young people actually identified, they were often verbally and physically attacked at school and relentlessly tormented via social media on the internet.

The suicide of Tyler Clementi, a Rutgers University student who was spied on with a webcam by his roommate, Dharun Ravi, became a rallying cry for a number of movements, including Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” video project.  Thousands of people have uploaded videos to testify that it does in fact get better, that the bullying stops, and the pain of youth can be overcome.

In February 2012, New Yorker writer Ian Parker wrote an article about the then pending Ravi trial, and it included Facebook posts, text messages, and tweets of Tyler Clementi and Dharun Ravi.  These online communications provided a glimpse into how these two young men and their friends “talked” about one another via social media.  The actual words used in those communications illustrated that today’s young people, and probably many adults as well, are woefully unprepared to navigate the multicultural and globalized society in which we live. 

Project Pay Attentionresponds to that lack of preparation.  By fostering an understanding that our language choices and our actions have power, Project Pay Attention asks people of all ages and backgrounds to think carefully about what we do, what we say, and how we say it.  It recognizes that educating people about the power of language is an active way of shifting our daily lexicon so that disrespectful and hurtful language choices can be avoided.  And it embraces the notion that people can shift their behavior and ultimately create a more respectful society for the future.

Bottomline: Young people learn behavior from adults.  If adults can become more aware about their language choices and actions, the next generation of children may live happier and healthier.

Please take the pledge to Pay Attention at projectpayattn.com, and then spread the word!  Change happens slowly, one person at a time.  Please do your part!

Michelle Obama tells the story

So I’m embarrassed to admit that I went to bed last evening without watching any of the Democratic National Convention.  I thought about turning it on, but then I got sucked into an email vortex instead.  I woke up this morning to the tweets of Andrew Sullivan, Anderson Cooper, and others, proclaiming the strength of Michelle Obama’s address last evening, and proceeded to kick myself for missing it.

I just finished watching her speech, and I’m sold.  She sold me.  I wasn’t sure how I was feeling about anyone in this election.  I watched Ryan and Romney last week and felt distanced from them and from their experiences.  But Barack Obama generally doesn’t do it for me.    The commentators like to talk about his aloofness now, more than anyone talks about his ability to speak.  He’s gifted, but I’m very rarely sold.  Too much smoke and mirrors and not enough action for me.  Probably unfair, but that’s how I’ve been feeling for three years now.

Michelle Obama sold me.  She convinced me that Obama has been trying, maybe harder than anyone else, and doing what he committed to do.  I’m not sure why I believe her but I do.  Maybe it’s because of lines like these:

Being President doesn’t change who you are, it reveals who you are.

It’s not how much money you make, it’s the difference you make in people’s lives.

[Barack] reminds me that we are playing the long game.

Doing the impossible is the history of this nation.

That is the story of this country.

We must work like never before.

I’ve learned that research is about telling the story, and of course, theatre is about telling stories.  It’s evident that the Obama family understands the power of story, particularly how their personal narratives connect them to a large segment of the American population that still places stock and value in the American Dream.  The ability to convey that story last evening illustrated the stark difference between Romney, Ryan, and the Obamas.  I did not see Ann Romney speak, so I need to go back and watch her as well.  But people want their stories to be told and heard.  Michelle Obama achieved that by extension last evening.  Commentators are calling her speech historic.  We’ll see.

Clearly, the speech was strategic, but it was also deeply sincere.  I study actors when I teach acting.  Sounds exit from the mouth, but feelings exit from other parts of the body.  The combination of those two exiting forces, voice and feeling, is what moves audiences to action.  Michelle Obama exited through her mouth and her chest last evening, allowing us to see that her speech came from the heart.

Final Reflections on Ireland 2012

In the final days of the applied theatre course in Ireland, we conducted a series of debrief conversations with the students and facilitators as a way to find some closure on an experience that flew by.

The debrief following the original performance projects took place on Thursday morning, and included full group and smaller devising group discussions. We began with affirmations for the two developed pieces shared the evening before, and then Jenny and Declan met with each of their groups individually to talk through student observations about the processes. We then recombined to allow for students to share in pairs and trios about their actual creation processes. This interchange allowed the students to learn more about the work of their colleagues. Following this conversation, students continued to work in small groups to think through the immediate and long-term implications this experience might have on their individual practices. I encouraged the students to be specific in this conversation and make links directly to upcoming projects they would like to complete in the near future.

One interesting and important point that came up in the discussions with Jenny and Declan had to do with the composition of the audience for an applied theatre project. In reality, a large proportion of the audience will often be friends and family of the performers, and this can invariably affects the overall aesthetic of the performance, which in turn, in my opinion, could also affect the quality. I wonder if in an applied theatre context, practitioners might often sometimes make choices with the community’s audience in mind, thus creating an insider experience for audiences who know the performers and an outsider experience for those who do not. And if this occurs, whether on purpose or accidentally, how does that affect the perception of quality? This phenomenon is not limited to a devised piece within an applied theatre context, as I know that more traditional theatre productions in school settings and in community theatres in the US can also experience the same insider/outsider assessment paradigm. I want to think more about this potential dichotomy, as I’m not sure that one can or should apply one standard to all work. I firmly believe that applied theatre should always have a strong and consistent aesthetic, but the phenomenology of that aesthetic may take multiple forms as the audience-performer-character triad has much more fluidity in a community-engaged project.

Friday marked the conclusion of the course, and the teaching team worked together to take the group through some additional reflective activities. We began with an informal assessment activity. Each student received a large notecard, and s/he was asked to write on one side of the card up to three elements of the course that they would keep for future iterations and on the other side up to three elements that they would modify or discard. This exercise does not replace the more formal, school-imposed evaluation, but it does provide informal data for me and subsequent directors of the Ireland experience.

Joanna Parkes then led the group through a timeline exercise. Using a large sheet of butcher paper, Joanna marked the start of the course and the beginning of weeks two and three. She then charged the group with the task of placing key moments from the experience onto the timeline. Using markers, the group drew pictures and wrote sentences and phrases to describe their individual and collective experiences. As I looked at the group’s mural-like creation after the fact, I was struck by the evidence of learning and growth apparent. One student also noticed that the left side of the mural, or the beginning of the course, was largely populated by individual moments, and as the mural moved to the right, it reflected more experiences common to the community-at-large. A great example of what might happen to a community of people moving through an applied theatre process.

I followed the mural with an exercise that I typically facilitate at the end of any course. While I recognize that I assign marks to the students in the course based on their accumulation of points and mastery of tasks that I assign and that the teaching staff evaluates, I’ve also come to realize and believe that assigned marks do not always accurately reflect the depth of an individual’s learning. I am committed to providing students with a university-sanctioned mark for an experience, but I also think that true reflective practice demands that we investigate and acknowledge our own learning. This is learning that might not be measured by standard assessment techniques. To facilitate this investigation, I ask students to consider their learning through three lenses: awareness, connections, and ownership. I asked the Ireland study abroad students to consider these lenses and to write one sentence for each lens that illustrated their learning in the course. I used the following questions as prompts:

What are you more aware of as a result of your work in this course?

What connections have you made as a result of your work in this course? The connections could be to your own practice, to concepts within the course, to concepts in this course and another course, to your past experiences, or to your future goals.

What do you now feel that you have ownership over as a result of your work in this course?

Students had the opportunity to record these observations in their own journals, and then I noted that ultimately this is the learning that truly matters, as it will follow them into their practice, more closely than the final marks for the course will follow them. I was promptly corrected by two students who pointed out that the marks would matter for PhD and MFA applications, as their GPAs would reflect the marks. Fair enough, but I stand by my position. The learning articulated in this exercise has just as much or more value for the individual than the mark.

Orla Hasson conducted a final set of exercises with the group, starting with an image theatre exercise where the students revisited images of Ireland from our very first session, and then transformed those images into current perceptions of Ireland as they finished the course. Orla followed this with an exercise of take aways and giving thanks. A ball of string became the literal representation of our community connections. Each student shared a take away from the experience and then thanked one individual from the course for something that they appreciated, then passed the ball of string to that person. When the group had created a complete web, Orla asked us to lean back slightly, allowing the weight of the collective to be supported by the web, thus illustrating the strength of our community. We then released the web as a group. A powerful way to end our experience together.

The students then presented the teaching staff with gifts, and the course concluded. We went our separate ways, having learned much about Ireland, applied theatre practices, community, insider/outsider experiences, and of course, each other. I’m grateful to my Irish colleagues for their commitment to the program, and I’m impressed by the work of the students on the course. Their final projects come to me on August 22, and I’m looking forward to seeing how their experiences translate into potential applied theatre projects.