More Than A Story

“The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi Welcome to the ARTS3122 blog documenting the creation of the 'More Than A Story' project as realised by UNSW student, Bec Cross ARTS3122 course description: Based on an extended research project, this course invites students to reflect on their undergraduate program and to consider the social, ethical and practical state of the industries in the performing arts that they might be about to enter. After an introductory industry orientation program, students will work independently on supervised research projects in which they will plan seasons and/or curate performance programs for the arts organisations they are researching. ARTS3122 Course Outline       About       Proposal       Weekly Reports       Case Studies       Personal Blogs       Final Presentation

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Less than a week until final projects are due.

Terms 2, 3, and 4 are left to complete and a few parts of the budget which are awaiting a reply from Judy with the necessary answers.

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Status Update:

WIth just over a week left until the final presentations are due for the Uni side of things, I'm working on the budget and a more detailed (but still general) lesson plan.

The budget is proving to be rather difficult because there are certain prices I can't find simply through research - such as the cost of an excursion to a local play in the USA or in Haiti. 

Upon discussion with John, the lesson plans will not be a lesson by lesson plan, but rather an extension upon the brief overview included in my blog. It will discuss what the focus will be and the sort of activities and work involved and how the final project for that term will be laid out.

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Yoga Ventures offers spiritual retreats and yoga trips that allow you to celebrate your wellbeing, experience global travel and be of service in the world.

This is an organisation that Lisa Rueff Schneider set up herself. This is an example of why she is such a valuable resource, connection and friend to have during the creation of 'More Than A Story.'

Lisa has been involved in philanthropic work both overseas and in her home in the USA. Not only has she been simply involved in the work, but she has also initiated and organised such work herself.

I feel that Yoga Ventures is to Lisa what 'More Than a Story' is to me: a fusion of a personal passion with a personal desire. For Lisa, that passion is yoga, whereas for me it is drama but both of us share that same passion to do something in/for the world outside of ourselves. This is why Lisa is such a large inspiration for myself and this project, because to a certain extent she has already done it in her own way.

The overview of who Lisa is found below is taken directly from her Yoga Ventures website, and I can only hope that such an introduction could one day be applicable to me and work that I have achieved.

CEO and Founder, Lisa Rueff, has been leading international trips for over 10 years. She has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for global causes, focusing on sustainable solutions to provide basic needs for women and children.  She is currently building a home and school for 100 earthquake-orphaned Haitian children in Jacmel, The Jacmel Children Center in Haiti as well as a free medical clinic, Angel Wings Clinic. She taught at Yoga Tree, Yoga Works, Red Dragon Yoga, Bay Club Yoga 02 Aspen.  Lisa has been featured and published in Yoga Journal, Yoga International, Origin Magazine, The Examiner, Marin Magazine, Ode and more. She has served as an Ambassador for Lululemon and A Circle of Grace Member at Zobha.

Leading international yoga and service trips abroad, she encourages her students to discover the joys of philanthropy and volunteer work.

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The ACFFC have redone their website and it looks great!

The new page is easier to navigate and more appealingly laid out in a much more eye catching form. The key points of the organisation jump out more than before which is great to see.

It's great to see that as an organisation, they are aware of the need to keep up with the technological age we are in (with no end in sight).

This comforts me as my project relies heavily on technology, so it is good to see that it will not be completely foreign, and better than that that it is also valued by the ACFFC too.

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Currently:

After receiving  not only useful feedback but also valuable and practical support from Judy, Cinde, Lisa and others, I'm moving into the stage of solidifying the broader specifics of the project. I feel I've got a firm foundation built of the underpinning principles and goals i want to achieve, but now I want to move beyond this point and have a running order of what it is I'm actually going to be doing and needing.

WIth regards to the university side of things, it's coming up to the final presentation times, which means I need to decide on how I'm going to present my completed work. I've decided that putting together a full proposal or project outline will a) cover all the details the course requires and also b) something I should do anyway so I can approach supporters, partners and backers with a prepared and concrete basis. 

I've worked out that the outline is going to be made up of the following aspects:

Introduction

Goals and Objectives

Blog

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The Applied Theatre Reader

Art Creation Foundation For Children

The partnered American school

Challenges 

Project overview

Lesson Plan for Term 1

Lesson Plan for Term 2

Lesson Plan for Term 3

Lesson Plan for Term 4

My Role

Budget

Conclusion

References

I feel that this list will cover not only what the 'More Than a Story' is about, but also how it came to be which will convey the the wider scope of the project and why it is so important. It also covers the logistical details and plans that anyone involved in the project will need/want to know. 

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"I am a story teller."

These are the first words said by Chimamanda Adichie in her TED talk that has been such a key influence in the formation of this project.

'More Than a Story' works to show students that they are story tellers too. But not just that they have the ability to tell their story, but that they have a story, and that their story is worth hearing. Their story is unique to them, and how else are we to work with one another if we do not know one another?

This project provides that outlet for students to tell their stories to people who are willing to actively listen.

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Compiled Weekly Reports

Week 1 The Challenge of Global Perspectives on Community Theatre in Malawi and Botswana, by David Kerr

Week 2 Performing Cross-Cultural Conversations: Creating New Kinships Through Community Theatre, by Eugene van Erven and Kate Gardner

Week 3 Theatre and Activism: The Agit Prop Theatre Way, by Swati Pal

Week 4 Change the World As We Know It: Peace, Youth and Performance, by Mary Anne Hunter

Week 5 The Applied Theatre Reader, by Tim Prentki and Sheila Preston

Week 6 Collection of articles on the ACFFC attending the Edmonton Fringe Festival

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Compiled Case Studies

Week 1 The Challenge of Global Perspectives on Community Theatre in Malawi and Botswana, by David Kerr

Week 2 Performing Cross-Cultural Conversations: Creating New Kinships Through Community Theatre, by Eugene van Erven and Kate Gardner

Week 3 Theatre and Activism: The Agit Prop Theatre Way, by Swati Pal

Week 4 Change the World As We Know It: Peace, Youth and Performance, by Mary Anne Hunter

Week 5 The Applied Theatre Reader, by Tim Prentki and Sheila Preston

Week 6 Collection of articles on the ACFFC attending the Edmonton Fringe Festival

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Weekly Report 6: Collection of articles on ACFFC attending Edmonton Fringe Festival

Fringe Theatre Adventures: KidsFringe Haiti Project

The Globe and Mail: Haitian students bring vibrant art, stories to Edmonton Fringe Festival

Edmonton Arts: Haitians bring magic to Edmonton's KidsFringe

Fringeopolis: KidsFringe Haiti Project

Edmonton Examiner: Haitian children get artwork in Fringe play

In my contacts with Judy Hoffman, she mentioned how the ACFFC have done previous theatre based work and there are plans soon to be implemented for a following project too. These works have been initiated by Patti McIntosh, who’s name Judy gave to me and who I have then done my own research on in order to better understand what experience the ACFFC have had and how that went.

One of the lines that stuck out the most to me was from the Fringeopolis discussion of the ACFFC, and a quote from Judy herself: “This type of collaboration is extremely important and meaningful for the ACFFC children, as their world is very small on the one hand (the farthest they have travelled is Port Au Prince) and yet global on a virtual basis, with their art work shown world wide” (p2). This is yet another aspect that ‘More Than a Story’ aims to address. The project is more than just adjusting the views of the comfortable Western-bubble students in America by introducing them to those who live less fortunately than them. If that were the case then the project would not need to be nearly as complex and detailed. But rather, it is a giving and taking project that holds up both groups of students as equally important and with equal amounts of lessons and experiences to share with one another. One school is not supposed to finish the project having got more out of it than the other, as both schools bring something to the table and also pick something else up at the same time. The ACFFC students have much to learn outside of their Haitian experiences too, and this sort of collaboration with people who live in those outside experiences can help provide some of that.

To see that the world of theatre is not a completely new concept to the ACFFC students is quite heartening. From these articles it seems as if there is already an understanding of theatre as a powerful medium for sharing and expressing. Which means ‘More Than a Story’ can hopefully engage with things on deeper and more complex levels if the basics are already evident.

It was also uplifting to hear the positive responses and attitudes that came out of both the ACFFC students involved as well as those who witnessed their contributions. Theatre is a movement of passion and it is good to know that that passion is ready and waiting to be awakened.

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Weekly Report 6: Chosen Case Study

(Collection of articles on ACFFC attending Edmonton Fringe Festival)

Fringe Theatre Adventures: KidsFringe Haiti Project

The Globe and Mail: Haitian students bring vibrant art, stories to Edmonton Fringe Festival

Edmonton Arts: Haitians bring magic to Edmonton's KidsFringe

Fringeopolis: KidsFringe Haiti Project

Edmonton Examiner: Haitian children get artwork in Fringe play

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Feedback on my Proposal:

"As we’ve discussed in class I like this project very much.  Your vision for it is clearly expressed in the proposal – we understand exactly what you are after – and reflected nicely in the title.  The other details are sketched in in the proposal but have been fleshed out a bit in class.  I hope you will be able to do more of that as the reports progress. 

You might like to give more thought to organising the internet connections around more of a drama project, with specific stimulus materials and online role play, rather than/as well as a short story.  I know of one that I can tell you about in class, as an example."

I definitely agree with and would like to get behind the suggestion in the second paragraph of including more theatre aspects into the project as opposed to having it so broken up into different areas. A more cohesive project that flowed and built up towards a connected goal would be great - especially if it meant I could engage more thoroughly in theatre. However I've had difficulty coming up with ideas for how to do this, which is why I arrived at the short story suggestion.

The example John gave me was:

"It's a project a friend is doing involving schools in three countries on water conservation. The drama component is to give the students boxes of 'ancient artefacts 'and assign them roles such as 'archaeologist', 'scientist' 'anthologist' etc.  They role play unravelling the secrets of the civilisation that produced the artefacts, within their schools at first but then eventually on-line with other schools.  It's a bit complicated but that's the gist of it."

I'm not quite sure how to achieve a similar type of task in my project without (unintentional) cultural ignorance/insensitivity/unawareness coming into play too strongly. The short story aspect does make the distance, communicative and relational aspects easier to overcome, but like I said, I'd really love to engage more with theatre.

I think I need to move beyond the base ideals and pedagogies of the project that I've been devoting most of my research to up until this point as I (and John) feel I've got a strong grip on those aspects. I need to start looking at some more concrete and practical examples of similarly based projects in order to get some ideas flowing.

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Weekly Report 5: The Applied Theatre Reader, by Tim Prentki and Sheila Preston

Tim Prentki, Sheila Preston (ed.) (2009), ‘The Applied Theatre Reader’, New York: Routledge.

The Applied Theatre Reader is a compilation of recent case studies by a variety of leading practitioners, academics and activists in the field of theatre and philanthropic work. The entire text was compiled and edited by Prentki and Preston, with the chapters written by the likes of Mikhail Bakhtin, Augusto Boal, Noam Chomsky and Chantal Mouffe. The book is divided up into key themes:

Poetics of Representation

Ethics of Representation

Participation, Intervention

Border Crossing

Transformation

Applied Theatre and Globalisation

Each section looks at applied theatre as a transformative vehicle for bringing communities together through open sharing. It presents the performing arts as a means for promoting conflict resolution, reconciliation, therapy, development and most of all, understanding.

I found this text to be much more applicable than my previous readings. It drives right to the heart of what I want to achieve in my project rather than dealing with an aspect of it or something lying adjacent to it. The book itself opens stating that “Applied theatre has emerged in recent years as a term describing a broad set of theatrical practices and creative processes that take participants and audiences beyond the scope of conventional, mainstream theatre into the realm of a theatre that is responsive to ordinary people and their stories, local settings and priorities” (p1). This is precisely the purpose of ‘More Than a Story’ – using the tools of the theatrical trade to respond to ‘ordinary people’ and what they have experienced in their lives.

The opening lines go on to state that “Applied theatre usually works in contexts where the work created and performed has a specific resonance with its participants and its audiences and often, to different degrees, involves them in it.” This is something I wholeheartedly agree with, and yet it also poses a challenge. As someone coming from the outside and trying to enter the world of the students at the ACFFC, there’s only so much guiding I can give whilst still leaving the created and performed work accurately ‘resonating’ with them. And yet my role will require a certain level of interceding. This is where the communicative and relational aspects of the project will come into play, so that we have a comfortable friendship formed between the entire group where we have an understanding of what is needed from one another.

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Weekly Report 5: Chosen case study Tim Prentki, Sheila Preston (ed.) (2009), ‘The Applied Theatre Reader’, New York: Routledge.

Hardcopy. (online access to source)

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Status Update:

Since my first positive discussion with Judy, I have reached out to 3 of the contacts I listed in my proposal: 

Lisa to get feedback on the idea in general

Cinde to discuss the possibility of sponsorship

Cyril to get local information on the logistics of living in Haiti

Lisa was instantly supportive and encouraging, opening a three-way discussion with her, myself and Cinde. Cinde has also been equally as supportive and has got some possible sponsorship ideas in mind. I am now working on a more detailed outline of expenses and overview of the project details with the students.

I am awaiting reply from Cyril as his answers should help with the work I'm putting together from Cindey.

Basically I am feeling very thankful for the support I have received, and very uplifted by it too. It is very encouraging to know that people believe in my idea and think that it is not only worthwhile, but possible too.

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Feedback I've received:

"In your Logistical Requirements & Potential Issues, you should take account that most ACFFC students have very low knowledge of computing and Internet (when it's not any) as a restricted access to it. Not to mention frequent power cuts in Jacmel."

"I think the differences between Australia [Now USA] and Haïti are more than just languages barriere and time zone."

"It sometimes may feel as if you don't have a handle on what you're doing or that you are unsure as to which avenue to explore next, but you're on the right path. I really liked that you've been reading material that you both agree and disagree with."

"It's essential to understand and not undermine the powerful medium that is theatre but it is also crucial that we don't use that to our advantage and fill this art form with forceful Western ideas. With that being said, I'm so glad that you're ideas are grounded."

"Like you said, you're working with children so they probably won't be the first ones to call you out and say, "why the hell are you coming in here and telling me to do theatre this way and express myself that way" but at the same time it is important not to underestimate the intelligence of the kids just because of their age and language barrier."

"When the completion of your project draws near (let's say you've been fortunate enough to return to Haiti and work with this kids on this subject), what are you most hoping to take back home with you? What is the central message that you're trying to convey to those that read about your study?"

"Do you have any idea on how you want to introduce the kids to theatre?"

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Weekly Report 4: Change the World As We Know It: Peace, Youth and Performance, by Mary Ann Hunter

Mary Ann Hunter (2011), Chapter 3: ‘Change The World As We Know It: Peace, Youth and Performance’, ‘Acting Together II: Performance and Creative Transformation of Conflict Volume II: Building Just and Inclusive Communities’, New York: New Village Press, pp73-92.

Mary Ann Hunter’s piece looks at the hypocrisy of young people being set up as the symbol of the future and yet being so often denied a hand in actually shaping it. In her chapter, she looks at the work of numerous groundbreaking projects that support Australian youth in finding their own voices and using theatre to discuss important issues such as peace and change.

One thing I appreciate in Hunter’s work is her practical approach to achieving any impact, which she calls “transformative practice” (). She is aware that the important changes that need to occur can not be made over night, instead requiring a long-term approach. She works to instil this entrenched commitment in youth so that they too will continue to work towards their goal, and not just disperse once the individual project has finished.

In order to instil this commitment and desire for progressive change, Hunter incorporates elements that the participants are already familiar with and partial to. For example, in her ‘Sk8 Grrl Space’ project, skateboarding and the theatre were combined in order to look at a range of issues affecting young women. In doing so, those involved in the project can take ownership of it as they have relevant skills and interests, which helps develop a vested interest in the project as a whole (p85,86). This is why in my project, the students will begin by simply discussing what they know as from there they can springboard into what can be done with what that information.

Another aspect of Hunter’s ethos that fits with what I too am trying to achieve is her work with debunking stereotypes and assumptions that people seem to have of certain groups. Whilst I am attempting to remove the ‘first world’ and ‘third world’ labels in order to see the real people within this worlds, Hunter’s work has been to use the arts “as an intervention that could contribute to consciousness-raising, relationship building, and sustainable long term change in cultural attitudes and awareness” (p190). This proved particularly successful in her 2001 Contact Inc. initiative, where rather than simply labelling youth as violent and leaving it at that, the project used dance to promote a new community of respect for each other, and thus work through the previously prevalent issues of the youth in the area (pp76-81). 

Hunter’s projects are about youth ‘changing the world as (they) know it’ through combining what they do know with a medium through which to share it with those who don’t. The ‘More Than A Story’ project aims to allow students to ‘share the world as (they) know it’ in the same way.

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Weekly Report 4: Chosen case study Mary Ann Hunter (2011), Chapter 3: ‘Change The World As We Know It: Peace, Youth and Performance’, ‘Acting Together II: Performance and Creative Transformation of Conflict Volume II: Building Just and Inclusive Communities’, New York: New Village Press, pp73-92.

Found at (source location)