BUILT happened

last night, Wednesday May 28th, we finished our 5th and final Chicago area BUILT public event

below, an email i sent out to a friend a few days ago that gives a sense of what happened-

"Just wanted to share the news that Sojourn is having a
super-interesting experience in Chicago right now.

Much of the company has been in residence with me at Northwestern
University for a month, and before that, i'd been working for months
with community members and students

we're now thru 2 nights of a 5 night run, 3 events in evanston and 2 in
downtown chicago
20 performers, 60 person audiences, and i think we've
moved into an area of connecting experimental performance and civic
engagement, that is, at least for us, an interesting development...

we've developed a site -specific travelling game-based dramaturgy that
is half set performance, and half improvised and facilitated
interactivity, all deepening and complicating a conversation about city
growth, housing and urban change. We're staging it in a the bowells of
an old university building, and its main 2 level lecture hall, and
downtown in a beautiful old formal law forum. Within the structure,
each night's event has 3 different community 'experts', or coaches, who
spend a few minutes helping the audience consider the way they're
playing the game (a board game we play with them in three phases
scattered thruout the show), and these coaches complicate matters from
their own experience

last night, for instance, legendary public housing advocate Beauty
Turner, Evanston's Alderwoman of the first ward Cheryl Wollin,and
Chicago historian/author Bill Savage took on this function...they were
fantastic, and pushed us all in unexpected ways

the 75 minute event, which is a mix of scenes, movement, media and
public conversation, ends with the cast moving throughout the audience
with cellphones, asking the audence for their priorities for visioning
a city, and then the cast calls other cast members onstage, who tell
our designer, shannon scrofano, who draws by hand a map of chicago with
statements and questions from the audience that is projected live, and
immense, on a screen at the front of the room, as the live cellist
grows louder and louder

we have a full house coming tonight, and almost full next week in
chicago,
and so far, the audiences are an interesting mix of geographic, age and
cultural diversity partly due to, i think, the assignment my students have had
since march, which has been to build community partnerships/audience
constituencies...

just wanted to share, mid experience, because we're having a good (and
challenging) time and learning a ton.
And, it seems to be going well.

This project continues for us with 3 days of research and collaboration
with HartBeat Ensemble in Hartford, CT in June, and then we are home in
Portland from July on, working to create the premiere of what this
evolves into, hosted and commissioned by The AIR program at the South
waterfront and presented as part of this summer's TBA Festival. "
-----

I wrote that last Saturday.

We are learning so much, with and from the students here at Northwestern...and Chicago, with its scale, history and scores of amazingly active community members, is an incredible place to be thinking about city growth in these times...

More to come here soon.
From Hartford, and from Portland.

first night

last night, we had our first public event

it was nervewracking, and tremedously exciting
around 40 people came, age and geographic area diverse, from the community on and off campus (which made for rich conversation)

our community experts/coaches, who are different each 'show', last night were an engineer, an urban transportation specialist, and a journalist who has covered public housing for 15 years

the event ran 72 minutes
people stayed and talk
the performer/facilitators did a great job

and tonight, we will be full at 60, with new coaches and i'm sure a different event

more details on the conversations here soon

how we make decisions

last night, sunday, at the end of tech weekend
we had some folks come in and move thru a rough run of parts of the event

we were especially interested in their experience of the game

it seemed to go well
and, we got useful feedback

i fel like the more we experiment with our combination of direct exchange with the audience. leading conversations, game playing, and whole group spectator moments, the more it becomes important to think about the larger conversation we're moving people through, and in fact joining them to have

ehren brought up yesterday a question about whether a certain scene helped the event move on to its next moment...or, if it was placed a bit early in relation to the flow of ideas

and that got me thinking about the decisions we make in making art
and, the decisions we make in our daily lives, as we try to make sense out of the swirling moments and choices we encounter each and every day

when those decisions cause our needs to intersect with the needs of others...how in the world do we make those decisions in conscious ways, day after day...?

when do we practice that?
does this piece simply ask that decisions themselves have to, for an hour or a bit more, be the focus of experience...

in a similar vein, this site
http://transopoly.cnt.org/
i think, asks very similar questions...

Who comes?

A civic planner from Evanston generously came and spoke with us last week

In addition to discussing how Evanston conducted 3 years of civic engagement to arrive at the West Evanston Plan, she also brought up what, as we approach next week's public events, has become a primary challenge and topic of discussion-

How do you get folks to your event that don't see themselves as a part of the conversation?

Who aren't interested in public conversation?

Who think public participation is a waste of time?

Who don't see these issues as significant in their lives?

or, as theatre artists and companies often ask-
How do you diversify audience and create a desire for what we have to offer?

In the case of this event, how do we engage theatre audiences in an event that has a level of participation to it?
That isn't a play, but a dialogue of sorts?
And
how do we engage those who may be interested in the topic, but turned off by the notion of an evening of theatre?

How do we make participation ok?
How do we share the sense of fun we hope the event will generate and entice people to come?
To call ahead of time?
To bring someone?

We are attempting to fill 300 slots over 5 nights.
Five events with 60 people
With a hoped for mix of community members from off campus, campus folk, and family/friends of those involved.

How do you build audiences who you want to be more than audiences, but who, in the end, you do indeed need to show up...?

This is something we've been working on everyday.

We'll see how the coming weeks go...

A couple of links

Here are two interesting things I stumbled across while looking for stories and thought might be of interest to everyone:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-code-overviewjan27,0,6181305.story?page=1

this is a story from the Trib that was a culmination of an investigation they did into how upzoning happens in chicago, and how much of it is dependent on contributions to aldermen, etc.

http://neighborsproject.blogspot.com/

this is a blog that finds stories about neighborhoods and gentrification all over the country and collects them

enjoy!

Play

So, civic planning, when it involves more than one person, is essentially an exercise in collective imagination-
yes?

With facts and studies and history and law and multiple perspectives, there is -
where we are now
and
where we want to be-
and though the result is given as much weight as the credentials and institutional support of the sponsoring host,
its still the same exercise that arthur c clarke undertook when he imagined our world in 2001...

Civic planning is work of the imagination.

So, how does civic planning make certain that imagination is engaged in the process?
How does the process utilize creativity, and play?

And
what information is needed to ground that creative work?

For the imagination to do more than fantasize in a vacuum, but still have room to play,
what information is necessary, and what isn't?

Is being heard enough?

Last night in rehearsal, the Sojourn artists met with all the student collaborators and interviewed them about the community research they've been undertaking.

Fantastic conversations. We were searching for questions that community members would like us to examine in the show- so, not looking for only stories and opinions, but really asking- what conversation would you like to be in with people about these issues? What needs to be asked and wrestled with?

One thing that came up in multiple conversations, that seemed to rise to the surface
was how often people, many different people, express frustration at not being able to get involved in decisionmaking processes...while at the same time, many people talk about working hard to make space for community involvement.

Which brought up the question-
what does being involved mean to you?

Does it mean a space to be heard?
Or
do you consider involvement real only if your ideas/opinions are actually acted upon?
Does being involved mean- getting what you want?
Or, is it feeling a legitimate part of a process?

What are your expectations for involvement?

Neighbors

I think we've taken a leap forward in the past few days in our conversation-

A bridge that seems to get at a variety of issues we're exploring
and, at some of the discomfort this conversation can raise
is the question-

Who are you willing to live near?

which seems connected to the question-

How comfortable are you with people who are different than you?

which led us to...

Who, on a daily basis, do you choose to see
and not to see?

If a conversation is engaging issues of growth, and housing
which leads to notions of mixed housing, affordable housing and changing neighborhoods
it seems that attitudes, and then behavior, and then policy
are somewhat responsive to our own willingness, or not, to live amidst and among diversity...and a diversity defined in many different ways...

what do you think?

Conflict and Complexity

we spent some time yesterday working around the idea of dialectic
of opposing forces
of conflict

Its at the heart of drama, but, as Harry said
does it help us invesitgate complex social forces, or does it simply perpetuate dualities
and prevent our conversations from being truly multi-voiced...does it harden hierarchies
rather than make space to consider power differently?

A question-
can you name an instance in the modern history (small h or big H) of community growth
when conflict was seemingly about opposing forces
but was solved, or opened up, by the realization that the probelm wasn't simply a duality...?

Public housing

so, this weekend
we worked alot with stories, and ways to exchange stories

and today, we listened to a podcast from a Chicago Public Radio panel event in February
about "Gentrification"

It raised some great questions for us
some of which have been brought up before on this blog, some of which
not so much...

a question i'd ask anyone to respond to, here, just to launch a conversation-

If your tax dollars are supporting public housing for those in need, who should have what level of voice in determining the nature and design of that housing?
You?
Those who live there?
Neither...?

The personal and the political

In rehearsal last night, Thursday night
we explored scenes that put the drama between 2 people
at the heart of the larger issues we've been investigating

a grandfather planning to sell the family hous when his granddaughter leaves for school, and her urging him to hold onto their home

one woman welcoming another into an apartment building, but judging her lifestyle and placing the sense of community they both crave in peril

a man coming to see the new home he's renting, and having an awkward conversation with the young single mother soon to move out because she can't afford the rent anymore

my question to you, anyone reading this, is-
what ideas can you share for specific situations that put the political and ethical dilemnas
of commuity, growth, housing and responsibility
into moments between 2 people involving story, conflict and instances of relationships with something at stake...?

Trying to organize this blog more clearly

Its Thursday morning
and in an effort to understand how better to make use of this online resource as project participants pass it around, i'm trying to take some suggestions from project collaborators.

For one, the top of this page now is links to articles and sites we have found interesting and useful.

Second, I think instead of random thoughts that reference what happened in rehearsal or in our process, i need to take on the responsibility, and/or get help with the responsibility, of posting each day in a manner that someone not in the room with us can get a sense of what we've been doing, and comment on our experiences/discoveries, rather than these comments being just for our cast.

So I'm going to ask of all us using this blog to be more conscious of putting whatever we write here in a clearer context, and, i'm going to also ask everyone to comment on posts when that seems appropriate ather than always starting new posts.

Yesterday, Wednesday, we had a shortened class/rehearsal session. In it, we made some physical work, and then we spent a lengthy period of time in small groups working on activities that I assigned. Some groups were given the tasks of making scenes; some, of creating participatory activities for the rest of us, to try some ideas out that we might use with the audience. And some were creating exercises for use in our rehearsal process, to help us bring research in the room. This is one of our largest challenges- utilizing what we are learning in active dynamic ways, and not simply sitting and talking through al our experiences in community.

We finished the session with a giant game of red light/green light aimed at giving everyone the opportunity to shout out loud moments of Chicago history that seemed important to them. This brought us back to an important conversation about the fact that what history is important is incredibly specific to each person's values, knowledge, and point of view.

Today, Thursday, here's a question I throw out for anyone to respond to in the comments at this posting-
10 years from now, what physical living situation would you like to find yourself in?
What kind of space, place, neighborhood...?

thanks