Posts in Art & Design
On Theatre as Worldwork: Hands Up and the August Wilson Red Door Project

To demolish racism you have to dismantle the system. You have to dismantle the parts—the beliefs, the attitudes, the values and the behaviors. ... We have to dismantle the culture of white utopia.  Kevin Jones (on OPB’s State of Wonder, April 16, 2016)

 

Most people I talk to feel very unsettled. As it should be. Things are heating up.

I go to sleep worrying. I wake up pressured to act, to somehow be helpful. Mostly I don’t know how or what to do. So when I experience something that feels transformative, that I believe does make a difference, I want to shout it out.

Last week, in the midst of everything bad, I witnessed the power of art, specifically theatre, to create a situation that almost forcedpeople to empathize.  I've written before about this special power of art. Sarah Lewis calls it aesthetic force. Not force by gunfire. Not force that maims or leaves us lifeless. But force that leaves us “changed—stunned, dazzled and knocked out.”  

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THE USE OF ART AS FORCE

It was 1861, a time of unthinkable national fracture. Frederick Douglass stood before an angry crowd at Tremont Temple, the integrated church one block from Boston Commons, and made an audacious claim. He said that art could play a role in the abolition of slavery.  

From the famed abolitionist and volcanic orator who said, “it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, the earthquake… the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed (1) ,” his views on art must have seemed irrelevant compared to the issues at hand.

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On Being Ready

Anything worthwhile, any project worth doing has an outcome that can’t be predicted.

My brain doesn’t like that.  And if you’re human, neither does yours. We humans are pre-wired to feel vulnerable around risk and change.  When we move towards something new or unpredictable, a little voice in our head warns us off. 

Be safe. Stay with what’s known.

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