Creative Collaborations

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” ~ Maya Angelou

A lot has been happening in the last past months in the liberating arts, so i’m putting together some highlights, both across North America and in my little corner of it…

Conscious Dancer Magazine is a fabulous online and print resource for all kinds of consciousness-raising forms of interactive movement, which is an exploding area of creativity in the past ten years: Contact Improv, Contemplative Dance/Authentic Movement, Biodanza, 5Rhythms and more.  Their all-new Gift Visions Giving Guide was just released too.  Check them out on the web: http://www.consciousdancer.com/ or Twitter/Facebook.

Leaps and Bounds is making the rounds, a one-woman narrated dance performance conceived and embodied by Tevyn East.  I haven’t seen it yet, but multiple folks have shared their excitement for this event that “explores the intersection of faith, ecology and the global economy” using storytelling, song, poetry, prayer, movement, and music.  From the website, “this work of theater sheds light on the driving factors of our ecological crisis while awakening the imagination to a new way of living with and relating to Earth.”  It’ll be in DC on Saturday and Baltimore on Sunday.  Wish i could be too!  http://bit.ly/dXRGCL

A grand North American Playback Theatre Conference is now planned for June 16-19, 2011 at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA (somebody’s fair city).  This is the first event of its scale in the last decade, sure to encourage and inspire those who attend – whether experienced Playbackers or newcomers.  You can also join the incipient Playback North America network as an individual and receive a discount to the Boston event in addition to getting network support benefits: http://bit.ly/eeqflY

I was inspired by a gathering of Playback Theatre leaders in October organized by Arts Rising under the auspices of Christopher and Anne Ellinger and their team from True Story Theatre in Boston.  More than forty of us came out from across the East Coast (and well inland) to play, vision and talk about our common hope for this embodying and healing art form.  Out of that that gathering came momentum for the upcoming conference planned for Boston as well as my own conviction that i would take a break from expanding my own Playback Theatre work.  Well, so much for that idea…

River Crossing Playback and i have received a number of beautiful requests to bring this form (or other related forms) to a community-wide gathering, a home for troubled teens, a distant school district and a new Playback Theatre program at a nearby school.  Two of us also joined Baltimore Playback Theatre for Global Playback Day on November 14 and had a blast.  The good news is, we have a budding leadership team of five folks at the core who are beginning to lay the groundwork for a more solid performing troupe.  The challenge is that things depend a lot on me still.  So where to find the time?  Alas…

JubileeArts.net is open for (free) business.  Promote your artistic offerings at little or no cost, and minimal time investment.  This site was built to support artists and troupes who want to hang a simple e-shingle in a community of other embodied liberating artists.  The idea is, if someone visits your page and realizes that you’re not the only one doing this weird stuff, you’ll have all the more credibility, right?  So i have been testing the site for the past two years and we are now seeking “tester investors” to open an account, fill out a bio, and start posting events, photos and blog entries… and most of all, offer feedback on improvements or functionality.  Check it out at:  http://jubileearts.net/

Since August, i began new work as the Director of Development for the Brethren Housing Association, an organization in Harrisburg, PA that provides transitional housing and holistic support to primarily women and their children who are homeless or situations of dire transition.  I love the work.  And i love that i can support myself and my family doing this work.  And it also affords relatively little time for the liberating arts.  Emphasis on the relative… so stay tuned for another beautiful balancing act called life.

Many blessings to you in this winter-ing time.

Another Playback Theatre workshop is in the bag, and it’s been a thrilling ride. Eight intense hours with six others sharing a myriad of stories. By our conclusion at 5 PM, it was hot, and we were tired.  The day had been an intense sequence of stories and playing, and we’d struggled to name the common themes or “red thread” as we in Playback call it.  As we began to close, one participant suddenly interrupted, “you know what?  I think the ‘red thread’ is about forgiveness.”

I was bracing for a longer explanation, resisting another pull into a vast sea of discussion as I tried to facilitate a tidy ending. But that was it. “Forgiveness.” Hmm.  We moved to end.  And the more the day sinks in (now 36 hours old), the more it resonates. Sometimes the biggest gifts arrive at the most unexpected moments.

As with most workshops I facilitate, I spend the next day or so in evaluation, self-reflection and self-criticism. This one was no different. Even though i thought i’d wrapped things up emotionally with a spacious evening, the next day continued with somewhat humorous internal chatter of “what if’s” and “aw shucks.”  My practice of silent worship with Friends (Quakers) puts a spotlight on this kind of mental jabbering.  And so it goes.  Or does it?  When will i be able to just let it go?

The biggest realization for me, the facilitator is this: i also need to play our forgiveness.  Self-forgiveness.  The embodied art form that allowed us to develop a common story and process of seeking forgiveness (toward others) is also exactly what i need to enable forgiving myself.  In a world surrounded by disembodied media and disembodied social situations (including Friends worship perhaps), embodied arts seem to play an extraordinarily vital role in making forgiveness more than just a mental hoop to jump through.

This is about more than forgiving myself for choices made facilitating a workshop.  This is about the biggies:  the relationships i broke, the people i hurt, the family i grew up with, the anger i expressed, the jobs i lost, the people i let down, the oppression i supported, the victim i played, the ’stuff’ i demanded, the debt i went into, the frivolousness i indulged in, the fear i cowered under. This could go on a long time. And i know i’m not alone. Most if not all of us have a decent list of self-forgiveness agenda.  Indeed, it’s the only thing that keeps us from forgiving (and fully loving) others. So how do we check things off of it?

More doing, less stewing.  That’s the phrase that came to me in Friends Meeting today.  We need practices to work through forgiveness.  We need to do, to act, to walk the talk. Just like every guide needs a guru and every counselor needs their own therapy, so every facilitator needs a forum where they can be facilitated. Can someone Playback me?

We are only as effective as our integrity – how much we walk our talk throughout our lives.  But many of us also live in an very impoverished world when it comes to natural, embodied community.   It’s often much easier to play roles – or escape them – than truly act – act out our true needs and our unselfconscious calling.  The task remains for us: maximize our real community experience, our embodied existence and our opportunities for honesty. Somewhere in there is a way forward to checking off all the “shoulda woulda coulda’s” of my last workshop – and a whole lot more.

Now anybody want to play that back?

The Jubilee Arts networking site is a place for practitioners to learn more, promote their own work and collaborate in this and other embodied, improvisational liberating arts. Click to find out more and play a part!

Chris Fitz and Rachel Slater play a Pair at the Centre for Playback Theatre, July 2010.

This weekend will be another step in exploring “archetypes” through Playback Theatre.  Held at the Susquehanna Waldorf School in Marietta, PA, we will spend Saturday with the Warrior and the Altruist, two prominent characters that we see and play in our every day lives.  In the process, we’ll learn to use Playback Theatre to make these archetypes come a live more vividly on an intimate workshop stage.

The workshop will be held Saturday, June 19th from 9 am to 5 pm at the Susquehanna Waldorf School in Marietta, PA.  More information about the workshop is available here:  http://jubileearts.net/events