Where Are They Now? MAAT Alum Olivia Harris (’14)

The priority deadline for the Fall 2021 cohort of the MA in Applied Theatre is around the corner on January 21st, 2021!

Wondering what you can do with a Master’s degree in applied theatre? We checked in with MAAT alums to see what they’ve been up to since graduating from the program, and how they’re making applied theatre work during the pandemic.

Next up is Olivia Harris, MAAT Class of 2014:

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Olivia is the Executive Director of Speak About It, an educational company that uses theatre and dialogue to address consent, boundaries, and healthy relationships on college campuses and beyond. During the pandemic, Olivia has spent a lot of her time talking about sexting and boundaries on Zoom. Seriously, a lot of her time–take that number you’re imagining and double it. Young people (and not so young people!) are seeking these skills for the digital world we all inhabit. Speak About It has been able to move all our programs online. We turned our live flagship show into a digital production, re-working our script and filming with COVID protocols in place. Our team is scattered across the country in various home offices, so we now lead activities and discussions with students online–and they have been surprisingly fruitful and interesting! Olivia also co-taught a college class in the pandemic, a wild learning experience. But centrally, during the pandemic Olivia has tried to focus on people. The pandemic has provided a chance for Olivia as a leader to re-focus on the human-centered nature of Speak About It’s work and take time to build sustainable working conditions during a stressful year.

Read more about Olivia’s journey through and beyond the program in this alumni profile from 2018.

A note from Olivia: I wanted to acknowledge that now that I am firmly in my ED role, Speak About It is very much my “we” and not a “they.” Also, we have deepened our understanding of accountability, particularly when it comes to cancel culture. Community accountability, restorative justice, and transformative justice are all different, and are all complex. One thing we say a lot at Speak About It is that we have to assume everybody is in the room, including queer folks, sexually active folks, and folks choosing not to be, and folks who have caused harm and folks who have been harmed (sometimes they are all the same folks). That adds a whole level of complication to our education and prevention. We are currently writing new programs about cancel culture and learning how to apply CA, RJ, and TJ in our work and workplace - stay tuned!

Where Are They Now? MAAT Alum Melanie Willingham-Jaggers (’12)

The priority deadline for the Fall 2021 cohort of the MA in Applied Theatre is around the corner on January 21st, 2021!

Wondering what you can do with a Master’s degree in applied theatre? We checked in with MAAT alums to see what they’ve been up to since graduating from the program, and how they’re making applied theatre work during the pandemic.

Next up is Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, MAAT Class of 2012:

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Melanie/Mel [she/they] is the Deputy Executive Director of GLSEN. Before that, Mel was the Program Associate Director of the Worker Institute at Cornell University, and served as Board Chair of the Audre Lorde Project. Melanie is a faculty member at the MA in Applied Theatre, and has taught Theories II: Community, Culture, and Diversity since 2018. During the pandemic, Mel bought a house – because WHY NOT add more stress and complexity to a really wild and transformative year? They are also leading their organization through a Strategic Refresh process to determine a clear, compelling, and exciting new strategic direction to ensure GLSEN meets this moment of incredible crisis and opportunity with a grounded, transformative and courageous intersectional approach to equity and anti-racism. 

Read more about Mel’s journey through and beyond the program in this alumni profile from 2017

Where Are They Now? MAAT Alum Mícheál Curtin (’12)

The priority deadline for the Fall 2021 cohort of the MA in Applied Theatre is around the corner on January 21st, 2021!

Wondering what you can do with a Master’s degree in applied theatre? We checked in with MAAT alums to see what they’ve been up to since graduating from the program, and how they’re making applied theatre work during the pandemic.

Next up is Mícheál Curtin, MAAT Class of 2012:

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Mícheál Curtin is the Project Director for Literacy Through Drama at the Creative Arts Team (CAT). He has also worked as an Actor-Teacher at CAT and as an Associate Director with the CAT Youth Theatre, and co-founded an afterschool drama program for LGBTQIA young people with Joey Schultz (’12). During the pandemic, Mícheál has learned how to facilitate on Zoom, been inspired by the creativity and adaptability of his collaborators (Ashley! Justin! Madelynn! Tyannie!), taken up the guitar, and painted his apartment.

Read more about Mícheál’s journey through and beyond the program in this alumni profile of him from 2018.  

Where Are They Now? MAAT Alum Sindy Isabel Castro (’19)

The priority deadline for the Fall 2021 cohort of the MA in Applied Theatre is around the corner on January 21st, 2021

Wondering what you can do with a Master’s degree in applied theatre? We checked in with MAAT alums to see what they’ve been up to since graduating from the program, and how they’re making applied theatre work during the pandemic. 

First up is Sindy Isabel Castro, MAAT Class of 2019:

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Sindy Isabel Castro is co-founder of Jugando N Play with Madeline Calandrillo (’19), which creates multilingual and multicultural theatre for young people. As a teaching artist, she currently works with Lincoln Center Theater, People’s Theatre Project, New York City Children’s Theater, Arts Connection, and is a Teacher Mentor through the Arthur Miller Foundation. While in the MAAT, Sindy was a CAT Apprentice, where she worked as an Actor-Teacher for the Literacy Through Drama team. She was awarded a Distinguished Thesis Honorable Mention from AATE for her MAAT thesis “¡BE PREBEARED! TEATRO EN EDUCACIÓN – THEATRE IN EDUCATION” in 2020. During the pandemic, Sindy has been looking for moments of joy through theatre. She has been teaching remotely and creating pre-recorded lessons to share with classroom teachers with various organizations. She also produced an interactive multilingual TYA play through Jugando N Play in September that reached audiences from around the world.

Learn more about Sindy’s journey through the MAAT in this profile of our CAT Apprentices from fall of 2017

Countdown Profile Week 5: Joseph Webb (’20)

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Photo: Daniel Nathan

So, Joseph, what are you up to these days?

This past May, I presented excerpts of a project that I’ve been working on with my partner, Barédu Ahmed, called Messages from Umi at Harlem Stage in New York. We just received some support to further develop the work and we’re set to have a share in June of 2020 at Harlem Stage again.

What is the project?

Messages from Umi is a multi-discipline performing arts piece. It incorporates [music] by Barédu Ahmed along with different styles of dance. You have tap dance, you have house dance, you have contemporary dance. I’m the choreographer along with some improvisational movement elements that come forth from the other dancers. Also along with poetry in the art form of emceeing. In this context, Umi is mother hip hop, Umi being the Arabic word meaning mother. The musicians, and the dancers, we are…we receive messages and downloads from mother hip hop that we share with our audience, through movement, sound, text.

That sounds beautiful.

I’m excited about it. I really am. You know, I have a notebook of ideas, you know, that I know that I just write down was something hits me. And a lot of times you don’t get a chance to actually work on all of these ideas. So I’m excited about it. But it’s also nerve-wracking. I always put, and I’m getting better at this, I put a lot of pressure on myself, because I want to make sure that I get as close as I can to the vision that I first received. So it’s a rainbow of emotions, but at the end of the day, it’s is a beautiful experience.

“Download” something, “what you received.” You see yourself as a channel for something bigger.

Definitely. As human beings, I think we all have this part of ourselves that is greater than who we see ourselves to be. And I feel like that’s where this information is coming from.

I want people to know what you’ve been up to. You’ve got a name as a tap dancer. You’ve been covered in major media outlets, including The New York Times. You’ve been doing it for a long time. Could you give an overview of what you’ve done as an artist?

Well, I’ve done some I’ve done some theatre. I’ve been on Broadway before [including Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk and Jelly’s Last Jam -MW]. I’ve done some national tours as well as some international stages, in Germany, in Canada and Spain as well theaters across the country, including the Kennedy Center and some other spots. And I’ve also done some TV work in the past. Commercials. A lot of people don’t know, but I had a role on the soap opera Guiding Light.

Yeah?

I played the role of Steam, you know, on Guiding Light for a little while [sure enough, there’s no record of that on the internet. Joseph has also appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and Live with Regis and Kathy Lee. -MW]. I also was a lecturer at Medgar Evers College for eight years. I really enjoy teaching and I also enjoy performing. I feel like that’s like part of a balance for me as an educator and a creative. I feel like this because as a teacher I just learn so much.

Why did you come back to complete the MA in Applied Theatre?

I really like the program and what the program stands for, and the people that come through the program. And I always wanted to finish [Joseph and I started the program together in the fall of 2009. -MW].

Would you talk about your thesis project?

I have an awesome team that I’m very grateful to be a part of. Our thesis project as a whole is dealing with museum and gallery spaces: what do museum and gallery spaces represent? What work actually gets allowed to be in museum and gallery spaces?

My particular question that I’m entertaining right now–that could possibly change–is how can applied theatre and the performing arts be used to enhance and improve the experiences of museum visitors who are black, indigenous and people of color?

As a youth, I never saw myself represented in museum or gallery spaces. I always thought of them as white and European institutions. Recently, I’d say maybe about four or five years ago, I had been invited to perform in museum spaces like the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.–my dance company, Dancing Buddhas, was asked to come and perform excerpts of the piece that I’ve been working on called Monk, which is a celebration of the black American musician Thelonious Monk and some of the artists that he worked with, like Miles Davis and John Coltrane.

And then I was asked to come back and to present some work that was inspired by the American visual artist Stuart Davis, which was very exciting for me. I was grateful that I was able to bring in my love of dance and the performing arts into a visual art space.

So I started to see…and then also with the National Museum of African American History and Culture: when I went to go visit the museum the first time I remember saying, Yeah, this is something that is very inspiring for me—not only because I identify with a lot of the exhibits and what is being brought forth in the museum, but just the different aspects of art that take place in that space. I was able to do a lecture-demonstration [at the museum] of some of the social dances that took place during the ‘50s and the ‘60s. And so it’s just interesting that, you know, these places that when I was growing up, I just wasn’t inspired to be in or didn’t feel that I was being represented—[now] I’ve been able to come in and share.

Your research question is really alive. It’s personal.

Very much so.

And also, how can how can we use movement as an interpretation and/or a discussion of what the artwork means and what the artwork represents, as opposed to it always being a written assignment? How can how can you use movement and other various performing arts to say, “this is what this piece means to me. This is what this piece is lacking. And this is my interpretation.”

This is not just the shift in content, but a shift in paradigm. There’s one school of museums in which they’re teaching you the truth and you come in and soak it up. [In contrast], you’re asking people to respond. And not just respond verbally, but respond physically and through art.

Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

That will be great. Let’s take a look at where you want to go. What dreams are really alive for you as an artist and an educator?

As a creative I would like to explore more ways in which I can break that fourth wall. So more engagement between what I’m doing on stage and the audience. That’s one of the things I’ve been inspired by in the program that I want to bring more of in my practice. I would like to also do that more in the classroom as a dance instructor. I would like to…have the students understand that, yes, there’s something that I have to share [as the instructor], and that’s one of the reasons why you signed up. But I want them to be more invested in…they might be a “beginner” at a particular level, but there’s something that they’re invested and engaged [in] also in a different way, that that isn’t the “banking” dance method.

No matter no matter what, even if they don’t have a ton of skill, there is something happening for them. They’re not just being asked to hold on until they get good.

Yeah. So those are some of the things that I’m thinking about. I’m also a recording artist. I’m an emcee. So I have quite a few projects. I have some projects on iTunes. I want to work across performing creative arts disciplines, you know, with different artists.

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Photo: Annika Abel

It’s remarkable, all the different disciplines that you weave together. You must weave through different communities, too. Like, the hip hop community, the tap dance community, the teaching community. I also weave a lot. I’m always interested in how people pull it off, because there’s expectations and confusions like “oh, but I thought you were the tap guy.” How do you navigate?

That’s happened to me a lot in the past, and I feel like it still does happen from time to time. I think humans, we work very well when we place labels and we put things in boxes, because it helps us in a way, unconsciously, control what a person can do. One of the ways that I navigate that is to [say], “I’m an artist and I have something that I have to say. And today I’m saying it through this medium.” And that’s that.

When you say that, I don’t want to be thinking about “which one” you are, I want to go. Let’s do it.

Yes, yes. And even till this day [laughs], even till this day I still have people that don’t quite understand that I express myself in different forms, which really baffles me.

I liked your compassion but also that you’re not waiting around: “People need these categories to control the world.”

I remember when I was in Noise Funk… I joined the cast of Noise Funk in 1996, but towards the end of ‘95 I started writing, and when I got to New York, in ‘96 and ‘97, even though I was on Broadway, I started to started to produce my own shows that incorporated poetry—the art form of emceeing—with live music and tap dance. I think a lot of people enjoyed and appreciated what we presented. But I also had agents come through and they just said, “Oh, my goodness. We love this, but we just don’t know where to put you, man.” Essentially, what box to put you in.

Can you help us box yourself, please?

Yeah. “Can you help us box you please?” I just say, hey, this is what this is.

Is there anything about your growth in all these dimensions we’ve talked about that you haven’t gotten to say yet?

We know what we need to do. That message has been very strong over the last six or seven months. You know, it’s different for everyone, depending upon where they are and what they’re doing. But we know what we’re supposed to be doing. We have to remember that and stay in tune with that. You know, it’s so easy to get to get caught up in the illusion of things and to be wrapped up in what someone else is doing or the stimuli that we get from media, social media in particular. And living in this wonderful city that we call New York City, but it also can be a distraction sometimes if you let it. We need to remember that we know what we’re supposed to be doing creatively, artistically or otherwise, and we need to remember to stay in tune with that.

Thank you so much.

Yes. Thank you.

Countdown Profile : Week 4 Grace Cannon (’19)

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Grace Cannon (’19) presenting on her thesis project. Photo: Michael Wilson

In this profile series this winter, I’ve gotten to interview Sarah Meister and Brennan O'Rourke, on their work and connections in small towns in Minnesota and Kansas. You now moved back to Sheridan [Wyoming], so we have a mini series emerging here on applied theatre in small towns. Would you tell people a bit about what you’re doing in Sheridan?

I made the move in August, which means I’ve been back for about four months now. I lined up a job working at the local public high school, which I graduated from, to direct their fall play. The spring musical is this institution, and many people participate in it. The fall play was kind of like, “ehh.” It’s always a little bit different from year to year. And so taking it over was an interesting experience, because I went into it not knowing if anybody was going to show up for auditions. And it turns out that people did: a lot of younger students. We did a play called She Kills Monsters by Qui Nguyen. And to be very specific, the Young Adventures version.

I’m curious about your roots and how you got back to Sheridan.

Roots. So, I love origin stories and, you know, my origin story is so wrapped up in this place where I was born, I grew up, I now currently live. My parents met in the ‘80s because they were working together to save the Wyo Theater, which was an old Vaudeville house in downtown Sheridan. And, you know, somebody wanted to buy it and make a parking lot, right? So, very Joni Mitchell.

They banded together. They saved the Wyo, and the Wyo just turned 30 years old. They’ve become a huge hub in the community. You get acts that come through there, from Siberia and New York, but it’s also the place where we have children’s musicals every summer. And, you know, and I grew up in those children’s musicals and this spring I’m going to direct that children’s musical.

Wow, what a full circle.

It’s [also] a very conservative place. My parents were both pretty liberal. So, I also grew up in this space where I was a weirdo, for having different political beliefs. The summer before I left for college, there was this notorious guy from the town who was writing these really hateful letters to the editor. And that was like this was like 2006. So this was like: war in Iraq. You know, freedom this, freedom that. I started an exchange with him in the letters to the editor that got me a lot of attention–some that was good, some that was not good. This guy  was a sixty year old dude, right? He’s trying to fight me as an 18 year old, and I’m, “hey, man, you should be, more open minded. You know, there are more of us here and we don’t all think like you do.”

That really showed me, because people would come to me and be like, “that was so great what you said.” There were all these people in this town that didn’t feel represented, you know? And I think that’s what really laid the groundwork for me to feel like, hey, let’s just do The Laramie Project and people will show up. Even though it seems like some people will get pissed off, other people will show up and it will become a space for them to feel connected.

That was a big catalyst for you.

Yeah. It was. And then I was in Chicago for many years and I did different things. But most notably, I worked for American Theater Company—which no longer exists. At first I was in their new play department, helping them develop new documentary theater. At that point, I was like “documentary theater. That’s my thing.” American Theater Company was headed by a man named PJ Paparelli, who, while I was assistant directing the world premiere of his play, The Project(s), died, very suddenly. He was killed in a car crash while he was on vacation. Yeah. And I was co-assistant directing that production. And so we had to keep the ship going. And he had just offered me a job running one of the education programs with the theater company. I thought, “I don’t know what [will] happen to the theater company, but I told him I was going to run the youth ensemble. So here we go.” So I ran that youth ensemble, which was a two year program for juniors and seniors and high school students from all across Chicago to come and do play readings and masterclasses and see and study throughout the school year and then put on a play on the summer.

I did that for a year and I learned so much about what it’s like to work with 16- to 18-year-olds and in documentary theater and to do work that was based in telling stories from real experiences. But I was doing that job with so little guidance and mentorship and oversight that by the time I did a year of that, I was like, “oh, man.” You can learn by being thrown in the deep end, but you can also make more mistakes than you need to. I really wanted to go back to school because I had some stuff that I needed to really reflect on. And that is what was missing from that year: that ability to pause and reflect and figure out what I just learned.

How is it for you to engage with the reputation that you have as the person who wrote to the editor and directed The Laramie Project?

Well…I love it. That’s the other thing, right? Live in a small town and you can become well-known by people for doing these little things. So I don’t mind being a rabble rouser. I enjoy it because I can be a shy person and I can be somebody who gets really afraid of confrontation in my personal life. But how funny is it I have this reputation as somebody who will like, you know, stand up and in a crowd and be like, "no, we don’t all think that way.” I enjoy engaging with that because it feels like a contradiction in itself, and I love those kinds of contradictions.

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Grace speaks at Stand up to Your Presidents Day, an event she organized in Sheridan in 2017. Photo courtesy of Grace Cannon.

Back to the present. You wrote a piece for WyoFile about the decision to produce She Kills Monsters.

I did. I did a series of workshops with students who were interested in fall drama and tried to really approach that with, “where are my students at? What are they interested in? What do they want to explore?” How can I give them an opportunity without forcing on them something they’re not actually looking for?

And who were they? What were they looking for?

They were really curious and interested in exploring relevant stories: relevant to them, relevant to their community, and the world. Things that would address topics that are normally considered taboo. Things that would explore LGBTQ issues. Things that would explore mental health issues. They said these beautiful things like they wanted to explore “magic into normalcy.” And, you know…they were just beautiful responses.

So after I looked at that data gathering, I was excited and a little bit relieved to say, I think this fits the play I wanted to do. I did have another option or two, but I wasn’t as excited about them. So then I announced “this is the play we’re doing. I’m holding auditions. Come one, come all.”

She Kills Monsters, the original version especially, there’s plenty of strong language. There’s some sexual innuendo. And they made this Young Adventures edition because they saw that…well, I’m extrapolating a little bit…I believe they saw how many high schools and colleges wanted to do this and help adjust it so that we weren’t all just changing the bad language ourselves.

Okay, I just said “bad language.” [Laughs] I don’t believe in that term. This is one of those examples of the context that I’m in: trying to remain in this context without just succumbing to some of these ways of thinking.

I really appreciate that you picked yourself up on that. That makes it concrete, what you were saying earlier about being stretched between the worlds. Because you can’t just look like a New Yorker coming around, because people will be like, “oh, look, it’s Grace, better than us, bossing us around.“ But you don’t want to be closing the door on people who don’t fit inside those [“good language”] norms.

If you’re the outsider coming into somebody’s situation, you have to be able to communicate and have an understanding for where people are coming from. And that is…a lot of the pushback that I got was, "we’re fine, we’re fine with the gay stuff. The language is what we’re worried about.” And so that was interesting, right? Because I think there’s a lot of coded stuff going on there.

Coded how?

[Saying] "we’re okay with this message of inclusion. But what makes us really nervous is the word 'ass’” feels like, “um, I think you’re uncomfortable with putting some of these characters on stage because it’s not typically done here. But you don’t feel like you can say that anymore.” You know, there’s a history of them doing that in the past. [They] don’t feel like [they] can say that anymore. But it is safe to say, and it is “reasonable” to say, “this language isn’t school-appropriate.” And I was clear with them about, “look, I can work with you on a word here or there. But I can’t change what the play’s about. Because if we’re going to do this play, we’re going to do this play.”

How was it for you to fight that fight?

Well, I felt myself prepared for it coming out of the MA program. We’d had a lot of conversations from day one about situations you can find yourself in trying to do the work that you care passionately about, but coming up against different obstacles. I felt prepared because we’d explored that so much–and because I know my community pretty well. But also nervous. That’s ultimately why I wrote that piece for WyoFile. I would come out of those meetings with the administration and the school, feeling nervous. The fear had rubbed off. I tried in the meeting not to show that that fear had rubbed off. But it had. Fighting that back a little bit was a part of that process.

Another piece of this is that I have a history in this small town of doing theater that some people think is not a great idea [laughs].

“Here she is again!”

When I was in college, I with a group of friends put on The Laramie Project during the summer between two school years. And that was actually a direct response–we tried to do [the play] at the high school and they said, “no, that’s not a good idea.” And that pissed me off so much that I was like, well, we’re just going do it.

This is Wyoming. And Laramie is in Wyoming.

Everybody asks about The Laramie Project when you go out in the world. We should know what this play is. And I also believed in the play as a beautiful piece. And it wasn’t until the MA program when I fully began to understand, like, oh, right. Like, telling someone else’s story and then packing up and leaving isn’t totally fair.

And that’s the critique [of the Laramie Project].

I had this compassion all of a sudden for people from Wyoming that I hadn’t had before, and I’m one of those people.

You also went back to Wyoming during the program. That was for an independent study, right? "Sheridan Speaks”

Yeah, Sheridan Speaks. We did that in the middle of the program. The summer between the two years, for me.

That was you, Ashleigh Bragg (’19), Elise Goldin (’20), and Nicole Kontolefa (’19)

Exactly. I got to bring some folks here and show them around Wyoming for the first time, which is like my favorite thing to do. That was a successful independent study and we  learned a lot through that process. We used forum theater as our main technique and we’re actually hoping to remount that. It’s very in-process right now. But we’re trying to see if we can’t take that to other communities across the state of Wyoming, since we just did it in Sheridan last time.

What do you know about the future that you want to build in theater, education and social justice?

I feel like my goal here, where I’m headed, is to continue work as a community-based theater artist and facilitator, and I hope to work in multiple spaces, not only in Sheridan, but across the state of Wyoming and outside of that as well. But I do want to maintain a focus on this region because of how I feel connected to this place.

And something I am grateful for and excited about is that I recently was hired by the Posse Foundation to be a retreat facilitator there. And I was just trained in that.

Was Dorcas involved in that hire? [Dorcas Davis (‘14) is National Director of Strategic Projects at the Posse Foundation -MW]

Yeah, exactly. Through Dorcas–[and also] through the MA program I found out that they were looking for applicants. And it was really exciting to go to that training and to see a lot of the people in the room who were connected to the MA program in some way. And another cool opportunity to be connected to and plugged into work that’s happening all over the country in terms of social justice.

What will you be doing?

I will be a retreat facilitator. Posse hires retreat facilitators to run these weekend-long workshops for their cohorts at the many different college and university partners that they have.

Thank you. Anything else?

I don’t think so. I think that’s everything.

This is a pleasure. I really enjoyed getting to learn more about your work, Grace.

Yeah. This was so much fun, Michael, I really am grateful for this opportunity.

Read more about Grace and her work on her website, tiltwild.org.

Countdown Profile : Week 3
Sarah Meister (’20)Sarah Meister (’20) facilitating with classmate Stephen Morrash (’20). Photo: Michael Wilson
Hey Sarah.
Hi Michael.
Thanks so much for doing this.
Yeah, yeah, of course, of course.
So what are you up to,...

Countdown Profile : Week 3
Sarah Meister (’20)

Sarah Meister (’20) facilitating with classmate Stephen Morrash (’20). Photo: Michael Wilson

 Hey Sarah. 

 Hi Michael. 

 Thanks so much for doing this. 

 Yeah, yeah, of course, of course. 

 So what are you up to, Sarah? 

The biggest applied theatre work in my life right now is my thesis project. I’m working with three of my cohort mates who I really love and admire–I’ve worked with all of them before–on a project at a community college [in New York City]. We’re doing a project in collaboration with a theatre class that’s a bunch of non-theatre majors and also working in collaboration with two of the museum spaces on the college’s campus. We’re exploring how Applied Theatre might be a tool for catalyzing some conversations and exploration around the relationship between members of this class and the museums on campus and between the campus community and the museums. And trying to figure out what it means to be yourself or feel connected to a museum or its contents. 

In museum studies there has been this shift in recent years from museums as these authoritative, positivist, top-down institutions that disseminate knowledge to spectators who are relatively passive, towards more interactive, more visitor-centered exhibitions that privilege using multiple narratives and having multiple voices in the conversation and letting spectators engage and decide for themselves how they feel about the work. I’m curious about how Applied Theatre–this participatory form that does those things in so many ways and so many other spaces–might support that in museums. 

What do you know about the forms you’re going to use? Applied theatre forms? 

We know that because it’s a theatre class that we’re probably going to make some theatre in some way. We’re thinking about maybe creating this kind of living museum at the end, maybe physically in one of the museum spaces, or maybe not, that allows participants to respond to what’s in the museums or create their own content inspired by visual art. But kind of performing and sharing in a lower-stakes way than making a full-scale production. 

I think there will be some TIE [Theatre in Education] and DIE [Drama in Education] role work and TO [Theatre of the Oppressed] in there, too. And our community partner, who is this really, really awesome professor of this class that we’re collaborating with, has told us that when she thinks about teaching theatre and teaching acting, she’s really thinking about the performance of everyday life and what it means to move through the world. So when we’re thinking about acting and performing and building theatre skills in this process, we’re thinking about them in some of the ways we think about them in Applied Theatre. Also, I’m super excited to be apprenticing on the [CUNY Creative Arts Team] Youth Theatre show in the spring. I really wasn’t sure I was going to do it, but I decided to kind of at the last minute. 

You know, before I entered the program, I’d worked with adults and young people, mostly high school-aged people. And I really have spent a lot of time and effort finding ways to work with adult groups in the program, and have felt myself moving away from working with young people and…I decided I wanted another opportunity to work with young people and also I think of the forms in the program, playbuilding is the one that scares me the most. And I think that the logic of TIE and DIE and TO come more naturally to me, and so I figured I’d take an opportunity to scare myself a little bit and do some more playbuilding and work with young people. 

You know, I know you as someone who challenges themselves a lot. What are the areas where you’ve dug in like that and grown the most in the program?

I think I do tend to work best when I set kind of scary, maybe impossible challenges for myself. One of the earliest things about theatre that I fell in love with as a young person was this…completing this impossible task, I mean, you have this quick change where you have this effect or you have this role or you have this impossibly long monologue, but you just have to do it because you have to do the show and that’s the way it is, and so you figure it out. And that’s something that I have intentionally done in the program. 

I really started doing it in my second semester in the program, last spring as a full timer. In Theatre of the Oppressed, for example, the group I was working in we was making this piece and we were really struggling with whether to make…you know, in theatre of the oppressed you usually have a protagonist who the audience can step in for and try to act on behalf of, in a situation where that person is experiencing oppression of some kind. But there are also these models where you can step in for an ally, that are newer. We were really going back and forth about what to do, and I was like, “Can we just do both? It might totally fail. But what if? What if we just tried it? This is an opportunity. We’re only showing the piece to each other. Let’s just do something a little bit out there and see what happens.” We did, and it totally paid off. It was a really, really exciting project. And I think another good example, which I’m pretty proud of, is the summer project, the independent study that I did with three cohort-mates this past summer. 

Yeah let’s take a little more time there. I want people to know about that project. 

Yeah. So I collaborated with Amelia Hefferon (’20), Meghan Grover (’21), and Amanda Fredrickson (’21) [all of whom have lived or worked in the Midwest]. 

We got excited about returning to Minnesota and doing work there and started to really think deeply about what people call the urban-rural divide in our country, and the kind of narratives that are dominant about rural communities, especially in our current political context. And it’s worth noting that we really took inspiration from Grace Cannon (’19) and a project that she had done in Wyoming the summer before. 

So, we developed this workshop that was three hours long that used community mapping and story circles and a bunch of theatre of the oppressed image work that explored the challenges that rural communities face because of this so-called divide. And also part of what we wanted to do to kind of push back against the narrative was to really, really celebrate the qualities that made that make rural communities unique, [whereas] rural America is often painted as a kind of monolith. 

We found folks in five small towns in Minnesota and ended up spending about three and half weeks traveling to those five different places. We borrowed a car from one of Amanda’s friends and we paid him 50 bucks and a pint of ice cream and we drove all over the state.

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 The Defrost Project Team in Puposky, MN. Photo: courtesy of Sarah Meister

We were connected to this really, really amazing practitioner named Ashley Hanson, who just, I think, finished her year as an Obama fellow and does rural arts work and makes original plays with communities all over Minnesota. 

We went to Granite Falls, Minnesota, Milan, Minnesota, and Puposky, Minnesota, which was our smallest town, which has a population of 89. And then we went to Wykoff, Minnesota, which…there’s this really awesome woman named Eva Barr who started a farm in a place where her grandparents, I believe, had previously owned land and has this really awesome, totally self-sustaining, totally off the grid solar panel kind of operation and also brings community art that’s thinking about outdoor spaces in rural America to her farm [DreamAcres Farm]. 

We also went to Roseau, which was Amanda’s hometown, which was a really, really interesting experience and ended up facilitating the workshop for a room that was mostly her family members. It was a huge crowd. 

The name of the project was The Defrost Project? 

Yeah, yeah. We called it the Defrost Project. It’s also worth mentioning while I’m talking about this project that we had the really, really awesome support of Jan Cohen-Cruz, who was our advisor. And this was, you know, all technically an independent study. 

We could have gotten credit in this program by doing a lot less work…that’s what I mean by setting these kind of wild, unbelievable risks and tasks for myself…so, yeah, Jan was thinking about applied theatre in rural spaces, as well, so it’s really exciting to work at the convergence of all of those things. [Follow the Defrost Project on Instagram @thedefrostproject.] 

I’m gonna move us along, although I think it’s adjacent. Where do you see yourself headed? 

Hahah. I don’t know. I’m figuring it out. I’m so inspired by people like Ashley Hanson, who we worked with in Minnesota, who has done the thing where she’d rented a school bus and gone around to towns all across the state of Minnesota and all across the country and worked with other, and observed other, practitioners making socially engaged art. And that’s also something that’s really, really hard for me. I love challenge, and I love mixing things up, and I also crave routine. 

I also have questions about where I want to be geographically. I’m from the suburbs of New York City. I moved back here when I started the program in the fall of 2018. After being in Minnesota for six years I also feel really connected there and I feel like New York City is so saturated with this kind of work and that there are really exciting opportunities in a lot of places in Minnesota. And that’s also where I kind of figured out that this was the thing I wanted to do, since I feel connected to a lot of the companies and projects I worked on out there, that I would love to keep working on.

 And I also think I am increasingly feeling a responsibility to, as a white person, to be doing work around race and other social justice issues with other white people, and think I really experienced the beginnings of that this summer during the Defrost Project. And it wasn’t the core of our project, but obviously it was present and our current political situation was present. I think I really felt some electricity around the conversations. 

 What was the electricity?

I felt people in those spaces…mostly cis older white men, hearing us, hearing what we were saying. You know, we would walk into spaces and immediately get questions. “Oh, you’re from New York. Let’s talk about this identity politics issue. Let’s talk about this gender issue or this sexuality issue.” And we would push back in a, you know, learning to balance pushing back, but not putting people down. I can’t claim to know a lot about change-making, but it felt like those conversations were the beginnings of something, and I’m trying to figure out how those kinds of conversations and work can be part of my work and life moving forward. 

You’ve got the spark and the impulse and a lot of questions about how and where. 

Yeah, and also, I’ve done lots of Applied Theatre work in a lot of different settings outside of the program. But I’ve never been a “capital TA” Teaching Artist, and so I feel like I’m emerging in the field and I got to take the jobs that I can get and survive. 

You’ll graduate so soon. 

I know. The full-time track moves so fast. It’s kind of unbelievable. 

Is there anything that you want to talk about that we didn’t talk about?

Well, I feel like I haven’t really talked about where I came from and how I got to the program, if that’s useful for anyone to read about. 

Yeah, go for it.

Like a lot of folks, I was working at the confluence of different areas and fields. During college and after college, I worked in state government in New York, for the State Assembly. I worked on political campaigns for city council. I taught writing and literature and some theatre and history to high school students over the summers. I went to work full-time (really more than full time) for a college access organization in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Also I had been doing theatre for my whole life and it had been a powerful force for connection and empathy building for me, and I had seen it do that for other people. [Then] in college, at a very insulated small liberal arts college, I had started to push up against some boundaries and barriers, and even in our really homogenous theatre scene I started to direct plays that were about social justice issues, about feminism and about abortion. There were some folks who were not thrilled about that or thought that, you know, “this is our fun extracurricular thing. It shouldn’t be about ‘stuff,’ about issues.” And I got really upset by that and reacted by doing some really reactionary theatre, but all still in the confines of, you know, presentational fourth wall plays, plays with a script and a cast and a director. 

So after college, I thought about how to incorporate theatre, but I felt really exhausted by that model and the power dynamics of that model. I wasn’t interested in making theatre that wasn’t about something or didn’t do anything. I started to ask around and somebody I knew from college had worked for this theatre company in Minneapolis-St. Paul, called Wonderlust Productions. And they make original plays with communities that are mostly evolved out of story circles; they are inspired by and use a similar model to Cornerstone Theater in L.A. I worked on a few projects with them, but I was involved the longest with this really big project at the Minnesota state capital called the Capital Play Project. It was a site-specific promenade production where we took people through this majestic Capitol building and investigated what it means to work in government. There were voices of lobbyists and activists and legislators and protesters and custodial staff and everybody you can imagine. And we had folks from all of those areas in the production as well. My experience of Wonderlust really kind of catalyzed…all of these threads for me that I’d been exploring in different ways. 

I have so much respect for the folks who run Wonderlust, and I still consider them real mentors and shapers of my experience. And at the same time, I started to question the focus on product and putting up a play and what it might look like to engage with theatre in a way that was less product-focused. I started to investigate what was out there and of course stumbled across the MA in Applied Theatre, and I think had that feeling that so many people have, where I was like, “wait, was this program invented for me?” Like, “how did they know that all of these things are converging in this way for me?” I did not think I was going to move back to New York this soon. But here I am. 

You mentioned threads: you went from presentational fourth wall theatre to the promenade production to “wait, well, what if it’s not even so product oriented?” And now you have a thesis project in the Applied Theatre program where there may be a performance but you’re really working towards education and community goals. 

Yeah. Yeah, and I’m excited to have the Youth Theatre apprenticeship happening alongside that, because I think that’s another kind of investigation of what value there is to creating a product. I’m excited to end my time in the program with a little bit of both things. 

Thank you, Sarah. Anything else? 

Yeah. You have so much agency in this program, and especially as you get into the second half of the program, to determine what populations you’re working with, what content you’re working with, what project you’re working on. Part of the reason that I’ve gotten as much out of it is I’ve advocated for what I am interested in. I think it is easy to slip through the program and miss opportunities to do the things that you’re really excited about. So I would say to anybody who’s thinking about the program, or if you’re in the program already, think about what you really want and where you want to go. Obviously I don’t know the nuts and bolts and where I’m going to be next year or the year after that. But I know what I’m passionate about and where I really want to grow. Think and push and create those spaces for yourself.

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Countdown Profile : Week 2
Brennan O’Rourke (’21)

Photo: Lauren Pratt

What are you up to these days, Brennan?

Right now, in terms of applied theatre work, I work for two organizations. One is called Arts for All. And I work with young ones: second graders. A lot of the work is literacy-based, through artistic expression. And I see that more broadly than just language acquisition. I see that as also social-emotional learning, and we can broaden it to other subjects as well, like math. I think a lot about working as a team and drawing on the assets of the young people in the room. Do they like to dance? Do they like to sing?

The other thing is called Project Reach Youth. I do sexuality education and theatre facilitation. In sexuality education I bring a lot of this applied theatre work with me. You know, we [show] little skits and sometimes ask them to improvise or make a short little scene. We talk about songs and music lyrics and the way that affects how we think about sex and sexuality. That’s with high school students, schools in central Brooklyn mainly. And then—we have an afterschool program—after school, I work with high schoolers and they make scenes about what they care about. Often that looks like peer education around sex and sexuality. So, around HIV prevention, STI prevention, birth control methods, gender and sexuality…but it also looks like whatever they want it to be.

The last [project] that we did was about climate refugees. Our theme was “Let’s Unpack That.” We started talking about packing and what does it mean to unpack, and then we got to moving. And we got to: some people choose to move and some people are forced to move. And they got interested in why people are forced to move. And so then we started thinking about natural disasters, and climate refugees came up, and they made this really beautiful scene…a lot of the work that I’ve done in the program started to help me in figuring out how to support them make the best scene possible, to get across the ideas that they want to get across.

And actually, through the [applied theatre] program, a few folks and I are in talks to maybe bring something together around queerness and applied theatre work. It’s still in the beginning formation, but we’re working on that, chatting about it.

What would you say to someone who was like, “oh, I’m sorry, this is a sexuality education program, you shouldn’t be working on climate refugees.”

Family and forced migration affects people’s heath in different ways, so, actually, those things are linked: our health is linked to our ability to find shelter, our ability to have insurance…our lives and the way that we live our lives or are forced to live our lives directly impacts our health and our sexual health. We’re seeing that crisis play out at the border and also affect our young people differently as well.

What did it take/does it take to be able to hear and learn what the young people’s interests actually are and to able to respond to them, as you have done?

What I think we’re good at is collaboration. At the center, there’s a lot of staff. And we also have young people who are seniors in high school, they work with us on the staff. They help us come up with these themes. And in working together, I found that I have started to really get to know them better. And I facilitate with a young person, as well. They’re called senior assistants. My senior assistant and I, we facilitate together and then we usually meet after every session and talk about how it went. You know, we did a little graffiti board of, what does “let’s unpack that” mean? We started talking about what is really interesting to us. But also, that senior assistant can check in with other people, the young people in the group, and be like, hey, how did you feel? And so we get to understand the ways that they like to work too, not just about the ideas but like, do they like making images? Or do they find that really restrictive? Do they like soundscapes? Do they like just improvising?

We found that this group really, really loves improvising. We brought some other different methods then that they’ve ended up really liking because they gave it a try. I think it’s also about gaining respect and trust. Like, I’m willing to try their ways and give it a shot. And not assume that I have all the knowledge or the expertise in the room. And rely on them: hey, how do you want to work this today?

This is a beautiful place for you to be. You get to practice things you care about. Dialogue, relationships, immense creativity. A really grounded commitment to their health and well-being.

Yeah. I love it.

Oh, and justice, too. I imagine that they wouldn’t bring up social justice topics if they didn’t sense that it was going to go somewhere. So I feel like that’s a good resonance for you, too.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. How did you get here? Tell people about where you come from.

I grew up in Kansas. And then I think my childhood, my teenage years really like informed me. My dad has schizophrenia. So I from a young age…I was learning about oppression. I didn’t have those words to name it. But you know, I was learning about how people treated people differently because of something they have no control over.

And to be clear, people were treating your dad differently, because he was schizophrenic.

Yeah, correct. And at times me as well. But definitely my dad. Examples of…people wouldn’t let their kids come over to our house to stay the night. Right? Very simple things. But at the time, I didn’t quite fully understand. All of that is to say that I think my desire to do the work started from learning about oppression from my father.

When I went to college, I was at NYU and I wanted to study theatre and molecular biology. I was interested in drama therapy at that point. I slowly realized that being a therapist wasn’t for me. I started getting involved in student activism and started thinking about the theatre of the street and how protest and performance inform each other. And then that slowly became for me….protest is one way that makes change. For me, it can be exhausting and really hard to do that work. And so I became more interested in the grassroots, community-based approach to meeting people, having dialogue, because that’s the way I thrive. And I think that that’s an important part of social justice and making change. We need the folks out there everyday protesting, folks fighting for abolition and…policy change, too, right?

But that work also requires cultural work. And I think we as applied theatre practitioners, we’re cultural workers. And I think, if we don’t have the cultural work, the small grassroots cultural work…this time is evidence of that, right? A lot of people thought there was tons of progress being made. And then 2016 hit and all this “progress” went away. But really, there wasn’t as much progress as we thought, because we were ignoring a part of the work. And I think that’s the cultural work that needed to be done. Not everybody was ignoring that. There are tons of people out there doing this work. But I think particularly a lot of white folks that I know sat on this idea that, you know, “we’ve made all this progress, we’re doing so well.” And I think that for me, as I got involved in student activism and things like that, this cultural work became how I saw I could make the most impact.

And so that’s kind of where I came from. And then my academic advisor in undergrad told me about this program. I looked it up and I applied. And actually, that’s how I found one of my jobs. I found it through the MA in Applied Theatre listserve. Yeah. The job at Project Reach Youth, somebody had placed up the job.

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Photo: Salomé Egas

Now, where is all this taking you? Where do you see yourself in five years?

I came to the program wanting to do work with queer youth and potentially intergenerational work with queer elders and queer youth, and maybe even more specifically trans- and gender-nonconforming youth and trans- and gender-nonconforming elders. I was really…that’s that was really what I was thinking as I came into the program and I still think that’s a large part of the work that I want to do. But having been in the program and making friends in the program and starting to make connections with other facilitators that might have expanded it maybe a little bit more now.

I’m not 100 percent sure, but I do think at some point my work will take me back to Kansas. They just passed a nondiscrimination policy in my hometown’s Board of Ed, Wichita, an LGBTQ nondiscrimination policy that includes gender and sexuality, which is exciting. And I think it would have made a difference as a person growing up.

And so and there’s a lot of opportunities there and potential training that might be coming up. I feel like that might bring me back there.

I have this dream of opening up a queer center in my hometown, a place for community, a sober place because I think a lot of spaces aren’t sober. I’d love to see that as well. Particularly for young people, right? Young people can’t participate in spaces that aren’t sober, or they end up doing and, you know. Yeah. So I think that at some point I feel like my work might bring me back there.

I really also love to travel. So I’d love to do that.

Wait, hold on a second. In dreams unfurled—I don’t care about practicality—what would it feel like for a young person walking into your center?

I would love to have a little cafe. I was in Ireland in January 2018. And they have this thing called Outhouse. And it had this little cafe that supported the space. I would love to have a little local cafe shop that helps support/pay for some of the bills and provides jobs for folks that need jobs.

I’d love to have rehearsal space for some queer groups in Wichita. I’d have tutoring or help with school. Health services. If my biggest dream was to come true, it’d be an all-inclusive space where folks’ social and emotional needs are being met and also an organizing space to organize for justice that is queer, that is intersectional, that is rooted in Kansas.

I went to the Pride Youth Theater Alliance conference in July of this past year. And I think what was so inspiring and exciting is that they talk about, “we want queer people to be able to live where they live.” Right? Queer people in rural places should feel safe and comfortable and happy to live there. And some people are living there. And I think a lot of the…rhetoric that I had growing up is like, “queer people don’t live in the Midwest” or, “don’t live in the country. They live in the city. And if you’re queer, you go to the city and it’s super like accepting and liberal and progressive and you’ll be fine.” And what I really found coming to New York when I was eighteen was the same people exist everywhere. And actually, there are more people here. And so actually, I probably experienced more hate or more things like that or the nasty looks or whatever, here, than I did there because I was in my car most of the time in the Midwest. So, you know, I think, for our young people, particularly knowing that they can live in the space, that they can be here and that they have the power to make change. They have the power to organize, to fight for what they believe in. And I didn’t get that growing up.

You’ve really created a beautiful picture. What would be your dream title…I don’t mean this in a corporate sense, but like what would you be called, like, “Oh, that’s Brennan, the…”

Oh, my God. Um. I would love to see myself live to be a trans elder. You know, live a long life. I want to be known for…I used to say this a lot, but in the work I want everyone to feel seen, at least once, because I think the feeling of being seen can be really life-changing, even if just for a moment. “Trans Elder who Makes People Feel Seen.” Something like that.

“They who make people be seen.” “They Who See.”

“They Who Notice.” Something like that.

It’s full circle: you leave home. Study and articulate your philosophy for theatre, community, and justice. Practice the work. Return home.

Yeah. Yeah. I think one thing that also informs all of that is my family. I really think living with a person who has a mental illness and also being raised by my grandmother…[she] gave me a sense of…I knew what right was. I knew what justice could look like and I…if it wasn’t for my grandmother, I don’t think I think I would be here doing this work. She taught me to question and to build critical consciousness from a young age. It was not “kids should be seen and not heard.” It was, “learn to question at a young age.” That was a skill that she gave me that really informs why I am here today.

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Courtesy of Brennan O’Rourke

Is there something that she would always say like, “oh, grandma always said…?” And what would that be?

Oh. I mean, it’s not related to that, but we were always "two peas in a pod.”

Oh, come on! That’s so sweet.

We were very similar. Still are very similar.

She’s still alive?

Yes, she’s still alive.

Okay. Good. Thank you. Is there anything else you would like people to know?

No, I think that’s good. I’ve done enough talking.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much, Michael.

Countdown Profile : Week 1
Shanté Skyers (’20) We’re kicking off the countdown to the MA in Applied Theatre application deadline for Fall 2020 with final year student Shanté Skyers!
You were saying before we started recording that your office is...

Countdown Profile : Week 1
Shanté Skyers (’20

We’re kicking off the countdown to the MA in Applied Theatre application deadline for Fall 2020 with final year student Shanté Skyers!

 You were saying before we started recording that your office is having a party and that makes you joyful. Where do you work and where does the joy come from? 

 I work at an organization called Harlem Stage. We are a performing arts organization where we commission and produce work from artists of color. We are the only institution in the nation that focuses only on artists of color. And we have an education program. And I’ve been here for, gosh, over a year. 

This is the longest time that I’ve been at a job in the U.S., and I really like my coworkers a lot. And here we are, not only an organization that works with artists of color, most of the staff are people of color. So that makes a big difference in how I feel, how I can enter this space. I can be more my whole self.

 I work in development here as a development associate. I work in grant writing and grant management. So, you know, I’m really worried, honestly, once I do decide to leave, if I will find a workspace that is similar, being mostly people of color, being comfortable.

 So what would make you leave? 

 You know, I’m graduating [from the CUNY SPS MA in Applied Theatre] in May. And I’ve been thinking about like, what am I going to do? Do I want to solely commit to applied theatre or do I want to stay here in Harlem Stage? Or at least stay in the field of development? 

 I’m really interested in working at an organization that is more a social justice focused and more community based. And I think being in the applied theatre program has activated that part of me where I see how beneficial it is to have folks in that space, with as many people who are committed to doing the work in that space as possible. And I think in my next chapter, I would like to do more of that. 

 Well, what is your dream? Suppose that you had a magic wand and could create a really fulfilling life that weaves together all your passions. What would that look like? 

 I think it would be a mixture of me living in different places across the globe and doing pretty much what I entered the Applied Theatre program to do, which was to work with young girls and women within the African diaspora. 

With a magic wand, I’d also magically be able to speak whatever language they needed me to.

 Beautiful. 

 Yeah. I entered the program because I wanted to find a way to connect black people, especially black women, girls, and identified folks across the globe.

 How I entered the program was: this woman, I met her at an event, Margo, I know she’s an alum of the program. 

 Margo Brooks (‘13)

 I live in a place called Co-op City, which is not too far away from City Island [both in the Bronx, for non-New Yorkers -MW]. And so I occasionally volunteer with the City Island Theater Group. I think I went over to her, either we were introduced by the director or I went to her because she was like the only other black person in the room. City Island is pretty white. 

And so I told her about this dream that I had. I had no idea how I wanted to work with people—the form—I just knew I wanted to connect black people across the globe. But it would be like a fun sort of way. And she was like, “oh, have you heard of applied theatre?” I was like, “No, I have no idea what this is.” I don’t really even have a theatre background. And she was like, “you should look into it. You should apply.” 

 I had returned from Korea not too long before that. I was unemployed. I was at home. I was feeling really stuck. And so I thought, well, I’ll just apply for this master’s program. And so I applied and, um [laughs] I got in. 

 You sound surprised. 

 I didn’t think I was that great of a candidate. Now that I’m in the program, I know you don’t need to have a theatre background, but I really didn’t have a theatre background or anything like that. I just wrote about what was essentially a dream. 

 I deferred my enrollment for a year because I was like, “that’s cool. But what is this really?” I wanted to get a job first to save money. And so I did that. And also, I read a couple of things about applied theatre and I started to see more theatre shows. I was like, okay, I think this is pretty interesting. 

 I actually looked in into the program at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, at the University of London. I interviewed with them. I went to an informational [session]. I got accepted. I was like, OK. So now I need to decide if I’m going to stay in New York or go to London. And I bring this up because I’m really, really, really happy that I stayed in New York. You know, being in the program has given me…this is the first time in a school setting where I have felt comfortable, or like, that I have been able to make community—which out of all my years of school I was never able to do. And even though I have had my moments of being insecure in class, I know that I am a valued member of the MA program and of my cohort and that is so important to me. And just, you know, recognizing that I, too, can have a space wherever I feel I deserve.

 That is really important. 

 Yeah, it really is. And I don’t think I understood how important it is and how much I needed it and would value it until it happened.

 I want to know more about the vision that you have. Tell me more? 

 Maybe close to ten years ago, maybe eight, I began volunteering with an organization called Girls Who Rock. They put on benefit concerts in support of an organization called She’s the First, which supported girls who were the first in their families to go to school. Whether that be like high school or college, they supported girls in developing countries. And up until that point, I was honestly trying to get a job in the music industry. I’d gone to school for arts management and I’d worked in college for a label, Warner. My plan was just to continue in that world. And I began volunteering with them, helping them plan the concert. I learned so much about the impact of girls’ education worldwide. I knew at that point I wanted to work in service for young women because we are at such, such a disadvantage globally. When you train women who are helping the community, that is the gist of how communities not only survive, but thrive and go on for generations and generations. 

 Then I moved to Korea and I got to meet so many people— 

 —this was to teach English? 

 Yes. Yes. And I met so many people, especially black people from so many countries. And it really expanded and changed my idea of like what blackness was, what it looks like in other countries, the black identity. And while I was in Korea, I also did plan benefit events as well for girls’ education. And I just knew I wanted to combine those two things. By the time I left Korea, I knew there had to be a way to combine giving attention and serving girls and women, black women, across the globe. 

 Let me wind back a bit. Teaching English in Korea. How was that for you? 

 I love Korea. I said I would do the first year [of teaching] and then I would make a decision. But I felt like the first year went by so quickly. And at the end of that year, I just thought, well, I don’t think I’m ready to go back home. I don’t know what I’m going back to and why not just stay here and try to figure it out. 

So I was in Korea for nearly four years. 

 Oh my gosh. 

 I think that’s where I really began to learn about myself. I didn’t have the space to do that in college. I had really bad anxiety. I was severely bullied as a child, and so even though I’m a friendly person, I still, internally, could be jumbling all around.

 And so college just wasn’t a place for me to grow as a person. I ended up being just another number. Maybe if I’d gone to a different college, I would have gotten that room to really grow and be challenged. But that just didn’t happen. For me, that happened in Korea. I had no choice but to grow: I was surrounded by nothing that looked familiar. 

 You started the interview talking about black community being so important, and that’s been a thread throughout the conversation. Did you have black community in South Korea? What was that whole scene for you? 

 Yeah, I did have community. So my first job [in Korea], community was sort of built in. I worked at—it’s called a Yeong-eo mal. That’s an English village, like a year-round English camp. I not only worked there, but I lived there. We would teach English on the first floor. The students stayed and slept on the second floor. And the teachers, we lived on the third floor. 

 That was my first, I think my first real sense of community. We had each other. Korea was all new to us. We all handled it in different ways. We all had different experiences, but we stuck up for each other. And so not only there, but also in Korea, there are black people in Korea. 

There was a Facebook group called Brothers and Sisters of South Korea. They would have meet ups and events. And that was another thing that I really, really grew to cherish. 

My last Thanksgiving there, we had a bunch of people go over to my neighbor’s house and we all had Thanksgiving together. Korea was…now that I really think about it, the first place that as an adult, where I was able to build community.

 Since our time is coming to a close, let me rapidly change subjects. Thesis. What’s your project? And I know you’re working on your proposal right now, so it probably seems cracked wide open, but introduce it simply?

 My partner Kamrin and I are working together with an overarching question of how can applied theatre explore what blackness is in New York City. 

And my personal thesis question is something along the lines of, what is the role of applied theatre in exploring blackness and self-perception? Like how, how do you build these ideas or determine that you’re black?

 It seems simple on the surface level: “well, you’re black.” But I’ve been really curious about what makes someone black.

 I can imagine, especially with all that international experience

 Yeah, it could be so many things. Is it phenotype? Is it like physical features? What is it? Is it a culture? Is it just identity? Like how? How are people black? Because it is different, like you say, internationally. Even in New York City. And it’s a sensitive and personal topic that is filled with joy and pride, but it’s also filled with trauma. I’

m really excited. I’m really excited to see what people are going to do, how they’re going to express it, how they’re going to take to applied theatre, because as of now, my partner and I aren’t too sure about what type of applied theatre frameworks are going to use. We’re thinking about some playbuilding, we’re thinking about some process drama and/or some TO. 

And we’re going to be doing the project in the Bronx, which I’m also really excited about, because so many of these things happen like in Brooklyn or something, but none of this, like artistic development work doesn’t come to the Bronx. 

Thank you. Anything else you’d like people who are thinking about the program to know? 

 I want to say, reach out to Chris or Adeola. I mean, that’s sort of a given. But like, if you really have doubts or questions, they will be able to help you. I know I called and e-mailed Adeola and stopped by her office. Like multiple times when I was trying to make a decision on whether I wanted to enter the program or not. And she always made time for me. 

 Thank you so much for your time, Shanté. Now go back and enjoy the party.

 Well, it might be over now. But I had a wonderful time with you, Michael, so this was a party in itself!

This weekend, the MA in Applied Theatre hosted its 5th Annual Racial Justice Conference. Over two days, more than 100 participants attended a total of eleven interactive workshops, three performances, one keynote panel, and had countless moments of reflection and questioning.

We are invigorated and encouraged by the conversations, questions, and action steps that came out of the weekend, and also know that the work is far from over!

Alumni Spotlight : November, Lenni Yesner (17′)Hey Lenni!
Hi. How you doing Michael Wilson?
I’m good. You know, we were just talking, catching up, but I feel like we’re talking to a radio audience now.
You know–coming to you live from Court Square,...

Alumni Spotlight : November, Lenni Yesner (17′)

Hey Lenni!

Hi. How you doing Michael Wilson?

I’m good. You know, we were just talking, catching up, but I feel like we’re talking to a radio audience now.

You know–coming to you live from Court Square, Long Island City.

Court Square, Long Island City. That’s where your school is?

Yep. I’m just a few blocks from where I work at Bard High School Early College Queens, in Long Island City.

Could you describe what it is, so that people know where you’re working?

Yeah. I work for a public New York City, DOE, highly selective, high school early college. It’s a partnership between Bard College and the Department of Education that provides students opportunities to earn both a high school diploma and an associate degree in liberal arts, for free. And my job there is to help the students move from our school to their next institutions or to their next post-secondary plan. My actual title is the Director of the College Transfer Office…but I have recently been toying with changing my title to the Director of Future Planning.

My students are bright and really really curious, and weird, in good ways, and very stressed out, because the demands on them academically are intense.

What’s drawing you to calling yourself a “Future Planner?”

Well, I have a colleague who calls herself the Director of Future Planning, and I really loved it, because I think what I do is so much more than helping students think about a college that they can go to. It’s about sitting down, helping a student holistically think about themselves, what they may want in their future, what they want in their present, and to plan for it. I do a lot of coaching with young people around their future goals, even if their future goals are only like six months from now…or ten years from now, I help them map a path to that, or if they don’t know what they want to be but they have multiple interests, I help them think about how to knit their interests together.

And, I think I do a lot of “present” counseling. Like, using mindfulness techniques, using art and theatre, and social-emotional to help students stay present, just as much as I’m helping them to plan for the future.

So, I’m reminded–you’re involved in meditation, right?

Yes. I’m a peer leader with another MA in Applied Theatre grad, Denise Hughes. We are peer leaders of a meditation sangha or collective, in Brooklyn. It is called Love Circle Sangha and it focuses on meditation as tool for collective liberation, centering black, indigenous, and people of color, as well as queer people, trans folks, and folks with a wide variety of historically excluded backgrounds from things like meditation. And we use mindfulness in Thich Nhat Hanh’s tradition as a tool for justice work.

I’m struck by how many different tools are in your toolbelt. I know that in addition to counseling that you do at your school and in addition to what you do at the Sangha, you founded the Trans Generational Theatre Project.

Yeah. TGTP as we call it. It was me and Christian Hansen Appel and Amanda Thompson’s thesis project. It was a group of multi-generational trans and gender non-conforming people, housed at SAGE. I facilitated the first two years, and then when I went back to get a master’s in school counseling, I stepped back as a facilitator and went to more of an administrative role, supporting fundraising and things like that. In the facilitation team now, Christian stayed on, and Kai Pelton, who is a former CAT Youth Theatre member, is a facilitator, as well as L Tantay, who is an MA grad and Renee Imperato.

L and I were in classes together. I didn’t know that they’re on the project!

Yeah. So it’s still in the Applied Theatre family, which is really cool, as well as one of the participants the first year of TGTP, Renee, who’s an older participant, is now a facilitator, as well as another one of the other participants. Now that person, she stepped up as a facilitator. So, the facilitation team now is…it started at three white people—two trans and gender non-conforming people and one cis woman, all of the same generation. Now it is all queer and trans people of color led, and multigenerational. That was always our goal to transition leadership.

I didn’t know all that. I’m really moved. Congratulations.

Thank you. And the project has been awarded funding from the Trans Justice Funding Project for the last three years, which is how we’ve been able to pay participants.

Okay one last stop on this tour of things you do. What’s going on with music in your life?

I make music in my free time. I am a song writer and I mostly create for myself right now. I don’t have a lot of performance right now…but you know, keep an eye out on things coming down the road. I’m looking for some musical collaborators. Always.

Me and Christian collaborated on the song that I made to propose to Ivorie, my fiancé.

Um. So, yes friends. Lenni and Ivorie. QUEER ENGAGED!

Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah YEAH! Excited. And it was nice. The weekend that we got engaged, there was definitely applied theatre representation. Shanti, and Denise, and Christian were there, so that was great.

Wow wow wow. I was saying to you before we started recording the interview, that I’d just snooped on your social media, and so much has happened since I last caught up with you.

Mmm hmm. Graduated with my Master’s in School Counseling. Lots of cool stuff.

So. All these pieces, all these modalities. And there’s a person in the middle of it. What are the threads that run across these things that you do?

I think relationships are the thread. They’ve always been my thread. Relationships, in my counseling with students. Relationships in terms of the ways in which I use art and theatre and music to deepen relationships and explore relationships. Relationships across difference. Relationships that serve justice. Relationships that really center being accountable to each other and have difficult conversations.

I had never received an education degree, as being a counselor. I was just counseling from instinct. What I got from the MA in Applied Theatre was an opportunity to learn radical pedagogy, in the form of Paulo Friere’s work, and other theorists around applied theatre. It was like: I have these ideas about how I should be interacting with young people and with other people, and people I’m teaching and people I’m learning from, but like, am I really doing that? I got the opportunity to look at whether I was really doing that or not, after being a counselor for many years, but an untrained counselor, an on-the-job trained counselor. And so the MA in Applied Theatre was my opportunity to reflect and see, huh, what’s the actual framework that I’m coming from when I’m doing this work? And Paolo Freire’s work really has informed everything I do from there on. And Paolo Freire led me to bell hooks, and bell hooks led me to Thich Naht Hahnh, and Thich Naht Hahnh led me to—right?, So all these things, in terms of the through-line of, you know, my growing as an educator and as a person, has come from that.

And the process of how to ask really good questions, and how to ask questions that will elicit strong and creative answers, I feel came from the playbuilding process and learning from Helen, and learning from other practitioners. How a well-placed question in a moment can totally open a scene, or open up work that you’re doing.

And you know, I was able to come to myself as a genderqueer person, through the playbuilding process in my thesis. And [before that] I did an educational piece of theatre about a young gender non-conforming person who was stuck between two binary identities. It was set in prehistoric times, and instead of “men” and “women” it was “healers” and “hunters,” and I played the head hunter. I got to be in drag, so that was really fun. And I also got the chance to craft a story about a young person really refusing to be a part of that binary.

Through crafting that story, I was able to ask myself questions about like how I related to this young person, and realizing ways in which I actually saw myself in this young person’s story that we were creating. And through that, and other influences, really came to the realization of who I am, my gender expression, and my identity.

image

I was there for that. I remember the piece ended with this image of stars and looking up at literal constellations of possibilities for gender.

Yep. Yep. That came from a piece that was put out by the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, “Trans 101,” because I was just googling trans stuff, because I was trying to understand myself, understand the piece…it talks about gender identity in this really powerful way and it says, “what if, instead of a spectrum, with man on one side and woman on the other, it was…where’s the space on the spectrum for a butch trans woman? Where’s the space on the spectrum for a sissy faggot? And where does that fit? Instead of thinking of a spectrum and lines, what if we thought of gender as a three-dimensional space, as a galaxy?”

I read that and the lights went ON. You know you have those like, turning point moments in your life? That was absolutely one of them, in the process of creating that piece. That wouldn’t have come without the applied theatre degree.

So I think it’s changed who I am as a person at the core. It gave me a place to unveil parts of myself, and it also has changed who I am as an educator. I knew pretty quickly into the degree program that I didn’t want to go the route of becoming a traditional teaching artist, but that I wanted to figure out how to bring teaching artistry to what I did. And I think that I’ve done that.

What advice would you have for a person who’s got all the heart and passion for social justice and arts and has no idea about how to start?

I think asking themselves, who are my influences? Who are the educators I really admire and whose style and intention and practices I respect? What are their influences? Setting up mentoring relationships with educators you respect.

I would say, figuring out the level to which you can bring your full self to your work. So for me, a lot of my strengths as an educator came out as I came out at work. Not just came out as queer and genderqueer, not just that. Came out as an activist and came out as an organizer, and came out as a mindfulness practitioner, and came out as someone who cares about consent, someone who wants to talk about sexuality and sexual health, financial health…

I would say, start thinking about what young people’s issues are. Whether it be black lives matter day of action in schools, or climate justice, or guns in schools, or lgbtq issues…figure out what are the issues that students care about in their lives…or maybe it’s none of those things and it’s something else…but, start reading about those things. Watch the media that they watch. Listen to the music that they listen to. Not because you’re trying to be them, but because the older we get, it can be challenging to stay connected.

And, have good boundaries. Don’t take it all home! Take some of it home but not all of it. Because you can’t get it all done in a day. And you’ll burn out.

Oh, and join NYCORE, which is the New York Collective of Radical Educators.

What, if anything else, would you like people to know about you and your work?

That I’m trying to be the genderqueer guidance counselor that I never had.

—aww, cutie!

I think that being in the Applied Theatre program and working full time was the most stressful times—I was one of the only people who was working full time while in the program—that was the most stressful thing I have ever done in my entire life. But, I think, like, it gave me a different perspective on my work and I was going to bring all that stuff I was learning to my students and to the rest of my personal life. It bled into every part of my life.

I think, you know, the program is a cool opportunity and not without fault. I think that it’s something to investigate, to what extent it fits in your life, and it’s the right fit. I think at the time I tried to do it, I was going through a real crisis, so I needed something, you know. But I almost didn’t make it, at certain points. I didn’t want to keep going. I’m glad I did, but I definitely got to the place where I was like, done.

Also, part of one of the challenges I had with the program is that when I was in it, I felt like I needed to do things a certain way to do it the right way. And, yeah. I finished my thesis a year after it was due, because I created a different timeline and a different path. If I’d tried to set myself up to be on the path everybody else was on, I couldn’t have done it.

I think that’s one of the big gifts and big risks of the program, is this highly scaffolded ensemble progression, straddling arts and academics, because one person’s timeline isn’t another person’s timeline, and there’s shame that comes when people aren’t ready to move on.

I think…the program is still a program within a university. If I’ve learned anything from sending students, particularly students of color—historically excluded students—when they’re invited into academia, some of us really flourish, but some of us really don’t. It can be a blow to the self, and a feeling of losing yourself in the structure of it. I don’t have an answer about how to alleviate that. Pain and beauty both.

I will forever be grateful to the program because of the relationships I have developed and the fact that the Transgenerational Theatre Project came out of it. That has impacted people’s lives in such a giant way. And it exists because we created it as part of the program and through the things that we learned along the way with Helen and Chris and Piper and you know, all these other educators, and with Herukhuti’s guidance [Lenni’s thesis adviser], and with the guidance and support of our trans and gender-non-conforming community who were part of it.


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