Seeing the chamber pot

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.

And this is what Buzz is all about.  The ability to inspire each of us to bring the pieces of ourselves to the fore who can see the chamber pot even when systems of oppression have taken them away.

Thank you Buzz.  And happy birthday!

With love,
Heidi Rosbe (PCAP, summer of 2004)

The common language of dance

Project Common Bond

Language is a challenge to peacebuilding projects and cross-cultural dialogue. It just is. And most often English becomes the lingua franca of the programs, clearly advantaging those of us native speakers.  I worked last summer at Project Common Bond, detailed more fully in the post below. The program brings together youth from around the world who have the "common bond" of having lost a family member to an act of terror. They come to the camp to meet other youth from countries as far away from each other as Sri Lanka, Russia, Argentina, and Morocco, among others, to process what they've been through with others who can relate, and to imagine together and work towards a better future. The camp's activities all run in English and most of the counselors and staff are American, however some of the youth have only a basic knowledge of English and rely on chaperone-translators to participate in the more verbal activities.

This year, our amazing dance instructor, Marcia, led the group in participating in a Project Common Bond flash mob (see video at right). All 120+ of us practiced the choreography for day to "Twist and Shout", "Call Me Maybe" and other pop songs. For some, this was great fun, and for others, not as used to shaking their hips, the practices were torture. But everyone did it, and it culminated in a flash mob performance on a hot summer day in Boston with onlookers clapping and taking pictures.

But the truly amazing thing is the large impact it had on the group. This was only my second summer working on the program, but others shared the same observation: This group was a dancing group and they did it all together.

Free time dance party

Every evening during free time, the counselors would set out board games, arts & crafts areas, a foosball table... and turn on the stereo.  Without fail, every night turned into the craziest, most fun dance party you've ever seen--with Irish youth teaching Irish line dances and some "Rock the Boat" dance I'm told is done at weddings, conga lines erupting spontaneously, Russian dance classes, and one of our young men from Sri Lanka inevitably finding his way onto a table and creating a makeshift microphone from a salt shaker or whatever he could find. And everyone danced--youth, staff, the whole group.

Marcia told me she thinks of dance as a language, and that in teaching dance, you're teaching a group how to speak to each other through movement. I think she's right. It's not that dance itself is one common language and in fact I saw at PCB the distinct differences between Nigerian and Ossetian dance and between Kandian (region of Sri Lanka) and Palestinian dance.  But through the use of dance in practicing for the flash mob, these young people were all learning a set of common phrases, from "the twist" to the moves we learned set to "Peace, Unity, Love... and Havin' Fun".  When free time set in and the music was on, they all had a basic vocabulary that got them moving.  And from there, it took off.  The language gap had been bridged for the group.

PCB handmade puzzles

Beyond the dance, this group was cohesive and really came together as one, trusting each other and opening up, making true connections across national and linguistic boundaries. There were many other crucial factors, from the Dignity Model workshops we led in the mornings, and the Peace In Action sessions, to the incredible drama, arts, sports, music and dance classes after lunch. There was the great care taken by the lead staff, who had put months of meticulous planning into the camp, and the genuine care shown by all of the counselors and other support staff. But I can't help but wonder whether the common language of the flash mob might have been that final magic ingredient to pull it all together, like that extra pinch of salt in a marinara sauce moving it from delicious to the best ever.

Peacebuilding and intercultural programs should never underestimate the power of the arts, and movement in particular, as a major catalyst, enabling real breakthroughs and real change. Sign me up for the flash mob next year.