I was recently asked to write about a memory of my mentor and friend Buzz Alexander for a book being compiled for his upcoming birthday. (I don't believe he reads this blog so I'm not worried about it spoiling the surprise!) Buzz is the founder of the Prison Creative Arts Project (PCAP), whose mission is to collaborate with incarcerated adults, incarcerated youth,
urban youth and the formerly incarcerated to strengthen our community
through creative expression. I know them as the organization that gave me the gift of being a part of workshops working with women in a prison and girls in a juvenile detention center to create theater art.
Here is my Buzz memory. Happy birthday, Buzz.
I can't remember the exact moment I first met
Buzz Alexander, but I do know that by the time I met him, he'd already
been way talked up by my friends Megan and Molly. And
he definitely exceeded expectations, which is usually hard to do.
I had just joined PCAP for the summer, since I had found out I didn't need to be a University of Michigan student to join in a training session to lead workshops in Michigan prisons and juvenile detention centers. Molly and Megan told me all about their experiences and I knew I wanted in. I participated in an orientation and training session and the next step was to shadow an existing workshop and I would then be assigned my own workshop as a co-facilitator for the summer season.
For my
shadowing session--the first time I'd ever entered a prison and the
first time experiencing a PCAP workshop, I had the good fortune of being
placed with Buzz and Suzanne's group, and then I think someone dropped
out or they needed a third person for some other reason and... I got to stay in their group,
in addition to working with another workshop at Vista Maria. It was
incredible.
I experienced not only what I'd expected--Buzz as skilled
workshop facilitator, but also all of the less tangible things. The
things you can't learn from reading a handout or hearing someone lecture. I witnessed the care Buzz showed and enacted with each and every
participant in our workshop. The way he clearly demonstrated that none
of us was better than another, whether we were incarcerated or not,
whether we were "leading" the workshop or "participating" and no matter our gender, race, class or age. We were all
participants and all bringing genuine pieces of ourselves to the work.
This experience has influenced me in everything I've done since.
During
that summer workshop, the play "Urinalysis" came into being. The play focused on a group of aging people in a nursing home who realize their urine was being secretly collected and sold to a manufacturing plant, after the head of the home stumbled upon it's value as a radioactive fuel. The nursing home residents quickly realized they were being exploited and given no part of the proceeds. It was
hilarious. It was allegorical. It was deep. And most importantly, it
was good.
On the day before the play was to be performed in the prison rec room for other prisoners and a few select people from outside the prison, we found out the warden
was reversing a ruling that we could bring in props, all of which had
been meticulously sorted and approved by the prison. We faced a dilemma
of what to do. We'd planned on those props and rehearsed with them in mind, from mumus to chamber
pots. Could the show go on?
No one who has ever been involved in PCAP will be surprised to hear that of course the show went on.
And it went on stronger and ever more heartfelt. There was a sense of
emotion in the air from all of us performing that day because we knew we
were creating together. We could all see the mumus and chamber pots
and I feel confident our audience could too. Heidi Rosbe (PCAP, summer of 2004)
