Creating Community Change - My Theater Making and Leadership

The job of an Actor is to be a student of life experiences, and that study has turned me into a researcher of the human experience through conversation.  I research the possibilities of community sharing to generate content focused on the intersection of performance, possibility, and change.  Leading with vulnerability and honesty guides my research goals of using experience sharing to bridge the gaps between us and our neighbors.  This is how I find the clearest and most applicable conversations for the community where I am trying to impact change. By creating a space where our experiences and actions can define who we are and what we want, rather than the labels placed on us by society. 

As an African immigrant who is perceived as a Black American, I’m sober to the reality of perspective and projection that comes from people having a lack of exposure to the experiences of other people in their community. That experience inspires me to imagine theater as an institution generating conversations through art, actively engaged in the growth and health of our community.   It inspires me to imagine a theater that looks to its community and its neighbors as fuel for how we plan, create, and develop the richest way to build the bridges that support us all.  How we treat our neighbors is the way our neighbors will treat us.  Daniel Banks, Co-founder of DNA WORKS shares this quote by Yavilah Mcloy ``We have to create spaces for people to fall in love with each other.”   I believe in creating art that starts from a space of community, vulnerability, and reflection.  We are connected in an ever expanding circle of shared experience. The cultural landscapes artists are exploring now, that we explored then, and that we explored way back when, are all generated from our experiences as humans existing in relationship with each other. How do the stories we tell engage us to learn from the past, in the present, to imagine a new future? How do we find the threads that connect us all? With art that is generated by desires to understand and share experiences.  Theater that sews those threads, quilting our experiences together. 

What stories we share, how we share those stories, why we share those stories, who we share those stories to, and when we share the stories must be in line with the voiced experience of our community.  I believe that’s how we take the institution of the “Theater” and transform it into an experience of Community.   My goal is to take the theater away from solely being a spectator sport, and turning it into a community event at every level. Making collaboration for change a community engaged event, thus leading to a shift in mentality for those that interact with our interpersonal ethics, by modeling a culture that demonstrates the necessity of community. 

Directing the Embodied Experience- Art imitates Life, or Life imitates Art?

Between the stories we tell ourselves, the stories we tell others, and the stories others tell us, we all have our own stories and we all choose the ones we believe.  As artists, I believe each collaboration is an opportunity to create a story that someone else will choose to believe.  Each collaboration is an opportunity to use theater as a medium that creates experiences for audiences to witness the stories of people that remind their bodies of something, or someone, they can’t quite put a finger to.  Each breath sends a goosebump down your spine as your body reacts to the taunt energy in the room. 

As a director I believe in looking reality in the face, and using theater to engage our empathy and question the stories we tell ourselves about our realities. People we don’t know, in places we may not know, in situations we couldn’t imagine, doing things we can understand because we’ve experienced something similar. As a performer, I’ve learned what it means to play a role in a process. As a producer, I’ve learned what it takes to make the process happen.  

As a director my method is to create an environment where all collaborators are able to voice their perspective and experience of the story.  I believe if everyone has a voice in the story we are telling, then the story will be real to everyone involved in the collaboration, and a story is only real when everyone has a voice in telling it.

After years of solely focusing on my craft as an actor, in the fall of 2016 I studied abroad at the Moscow Art Theater and was fortunate enough to be forever changed by the aesthetics and culture of Russian theater, and specifically by director Yuri Butusov.  Between my time abroad, years of working in local and regional theater, and studying at Northwestern University, the last 10 years of my creative journey has given me access to a plethora of life teachers and formal teachers.  These experiences have curated a collaborative style that highlights my ability to be flexible, process focused, and communicative.  

Directing is like being the captain of a spaceship on a voyage into an uncharted galaxy.  I have a North Star and a map (The Play), I have my Shipmates and all their individual talents, the hope of enough financial support or duct tape to get the ship there, and the determination that everyone that chooses to be on the journey will get there in one piece. 

The path we chart as we tell our stories will be a journey specific to itself and the collaborators working on the project.  The constant will be my dream of storytelling that demands physicality, tension, collaboration, and that will not allow you to disengage.