Participate in discovering/creating responses to this question by attending the sixth Performing the World conference: Performing the World 2010, September 30-October 3, 2010, New York City (hosted by All Stars Project, Inc and East Side Institute for Group and short Term Psychotherapy)

“Can Performance Change the World?”

Performing artists, community organizers, theatre workers, educators, scholars, youth workers, students, social workers, psychotherapists, psychologists, medical doctors, health workers, and business executives are coming from 31 countries to discuss/perform that question and their responses to it.  Performing the World 2010 is well underway.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll share  with you some of the nearly 100 presentations, workshops and performances that will be featured at this year’s Performing the World. Here are samplings of theatre related sessions and presentations dealing with performance, health and wellness. Future posts will highlight sessions on performance and education, performance and trauma, and performance and mental health.

Play On Stage and Off

A Day in the Life of the World – The Living Theatre has been pushing the boundaries of the theatre and working to change the world since 1947.  Founder and artistic director Judith Malina and company members will lead a workshop on Living Theatre performance techniques and a discussion on the Living Theatre’s perspective on performance and social transformation.

Performing Change – One morning a group of young people fan out through the downtown streets stopping people at random to engage them in conversations about problems in their community and what they think needs to be changed in the world.  A few days later this group of young people present a performance illustrative of the concerns raised on the streets. Members of the Street Spirits Theatre Company, based in British Columbia will share their play-creation process.

Towards a New Educational Theatre with Chinese Characteristics – Huizhu Sun, President of the Shanghai Theatre Academy, will share his efforts to introduce devised and educational theatre in China based on traditional characters derived from Chinese Opera.

Reinventing Avant-Garde Theatre – Projekt Theater Studio in Vienna has transformed itself from a classical left avant-garde theatre to a community performance space, the Butcherie, creating new performance forms with immigrants, refugees, women and the elderly.  Founder and artistic director Eva Brenner will discuss these changes and lead a workshop in the Butcherie’s performance techniques.

Bubbles on the Subway – Play in Unexpected Places – Throughout 2009 Kristen Pedemonti played with people on the subways and streets of New York City using bubbles as a means to engage.  She wanted to help people remember what it is to play and demonstrate play’s potential to help people grow.  Pedemonti will share her experience and explore how adult play can change energy, shift focus and open us up to each other.

Performance and Health

Patch Adams – the Clown Laureate of Medicine, comes to Performing the World for the first time.  He will share his work from around the world, bringing performance and hope to the sick and suffering.  In addition to his own workshop, Patch will be joining Jim Mangia, executive director of St. John’s Well Child and Family Center in Los Angeles, and other innovative doctors on a panel entitled, “What is Health?”

The Performance of Resiliency at The Johns Hopkins Hospital – Oncology nurses from John Hopkins Hospital and performance coaches from Performance of a Lifetime share how performance games and workshops helped the nurses to regain the sense of humanity that initially led them to professional nursing.

The Power of Performing Our Story – Lewis Mehl-Madrona will share her work helping people transform the stories of their illnesses into performance and discuss healing as social performance.

Clowning at Hospital Changes the World – Clownetterna, a Swedish hospital clown group, brings performance to children in hospitals, and shares the special magic of the clown/child encounter.

Housing the World

The PTW 2010 Housing Committee is busy securing free housing for the hundreds of performance activists and scholars who will be attending. They have already secured, as of this writing, 80 beds for visitors in households throughout the five boroughs of New York City.

If you want to stay in a NYC home while at PTW, you must fill out a housing form (available at www.performingtheworld.org). The deadline to apply for housing has been extended to July 24. Housing forms will not be processed until conference registration is received. Additionally, if you live in the New York metropolitan area and would like to host a performance activist or scholar from around the world, please contact Jenny or Esther at 212-941-9400 x 414, or fill out a form on the website (http://eastsideinstitute.org/page63/page63.html).

Conference Schedule

Thursday, September 30, conference begins at 5:30 PM

Registration and Opening Reception

Friday, October 1

Concurrent Sessions and Evening Performances

Saturday, October 2

Plenaries, Concurrent Sessions and Evening Performances

Sunday, October 3

Concurrent Sessions and Closing Plenary

Conference ends at 6:00 PM

Registering for the Conference

Registration for PTW 2010 can be completed online at (http://www.acteva.com/booking.cfm?bevaid=204261) or contact Melissa Meyer at 212-941-8906 x 304.

I’m beginning to write a chapter on the state of Critical Psychology for a Chinese journal and I’ve spent a few hours flipping through writings, both mine and colleagues of mine. It’s part of how I create an environment for having a new thought, for allowing others (including myself!) inspire me. One of  the things I re-read was a piece I wrote in 2005 for a book of narratives by psychologists about their life and work. (There’s some interesting lives in the volume, so you might want to check it out:  Yancy, G. and Hadley, S. (Eds.), (2005) Narrative identities: Psychologists engaged in self-construction. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.) One part of the essay did spark an idea for something I want to address in the new article I’m writing. I want to explore the distinction between Critical Psychology as an academic subject and critical psychology as a daily practice anyone can engage in. Over the last decade, from what I see and experience, the distinction is blurring some, and that’s a good thing. Here’s the excerpt. (If you want to read the entire essay, it’s called Performing a Life (Story).

“Hi, my name is Lois Holzman. I teach psychology. I’m out here today because I think it’s so important to support young people doing something positive for their communities. That’s what the All Stars Talent Show Network, a city wide anti-violence program, is. I’m talking to people like you and asking you to support the young people of the All Stars by giving a dollar or 5 dollars or 25 dollars.”

This was the “R and D” for what became known in the activist community of which my work is a part as “the street performance.” Like all the programs my colleagues and I created, the All Stars Talent Show Network was built by volunteers like me reaching out to ordinary people—for financial support, for participants, for audiences, for fellow builders. For years we had gone door to door in city apartment houses and suburban homes. Now the idea was to talk a little bit to a lot of people. We created a 45 second “rap” that could stop and engage passersby on NYC’s busy street corners. Five or six of us set up a literature table as home base, fanned out a bit into the crowd, made eye contact with someone and delivered our personal versions of the rap. Those who were interested we would speak with in more depth at another time. (We invited people to give us their names and phone numbers so we could call them back, give them an update and ask them to contribute more. Many, many did.)

Of all the research I’ve done, this is the project I’m most proud of. Today the All Stars not only continues to reach tens of thousands of New York City kids, but through its expansion to cities up and down the east and west coasts, thousands more are participating. My involvement with this extraordinary youth development/supplemental education project is many-faceted (some of them more psychological in the traditional sense), but to have contributed in this way is very special to me.

How was it that I and artists, actors, social workers, teachers, doctors and secretaries could do this? We could and did by performing as other than who we were. We created the “stage” upon which we could perform bold and friendly and outgoing and proud of what we were doing, rather than behaving shy and intimidated and embarrassed. And in doing so, we became bold and friendly and outgoing and proud.

This kind of grassroots fundraising is essential if you’ve decided to be independent from government, university and corporate funding (as all the projects I’m involved in are). But it’s more than just a way to raise money. It’s community organizing. It’s relationship building. It’s giving people the opportunity to do something small. It’s allowing them to be touched and to be giving, if they choose. It’s finding out what people think. It’s discovering that they care. For about twenty years I regularly talked in this way to people on the street and at their doors, as a community organizer who happens to be a psychologist. It’s an antidote to cynicism.

Anyone who knows me and/or visits this site knows I’m an avid supporter of the All Stars Project and have been since it began some decades ago. The All Stars’ program are exquisite applications of the social therapeutic approach to human development because they are uniquely suited to the conditions that young people—especially those who are poor or “of color”—face today. So it was a special honor to be recognized this week at the All Stars Project’s National Gala Benefit, “Out of Crisis: Helping the World’s Youth to Grow.”

At the Lincoln Center event (which raised $3 million), I was given the All Stars Ambassador for Development award  by All Stars’ Board Chair Rich Sokolow and Dr. Elouise Joseph, youth programs manager for the Bay area All Stars and a member of the team I led in March bringing the All Stars’ approach to play to teachers in China.

What made the honor even more meaningful was that it was followed by the 2010 Bridge Building Awards for Leadership in Community Relations, presented to five countries for their exemplary leadership in providing aid to Haiti in the aftermath of January’s devastating earthquake.  All Stars’ youth leaders presented the awards to: Ambassador Osmar V. Chohfi, Consul General of Brazil in New York;  John McNab, Deputy Consul General of Canada in New York; Ambassador Pedro Núñez Mosquera, Permanent Representative of Cuba to the United Nations; Philippe Lalliot, Consul General of France in New York and Asaf Shariv, Consul General of Israel in New York. And Haiti’s Consul General in New York, Felix Augustin, accepted them. It was an honor to be in such company.

You can help New Yorkers play by voting for New York Plays in the web-based grant competition Pepsi Refresh. It’s the entry of the East Side Institute, the non-profit I direct. Our idea is

• To conduct at least 3 community PLAYgrounds throughout NYC
• To introduce the power of play to 300+ New Yorkers
• To train NYers interested in being community “play workers”
• To create a model program replicable in cities throughout the U.S.

You can vote as many times as you want (Pepsi Refresh rules, not mine) through April 30th.

Just go to our entry

I don’t usually post news items but I’m so thrilled about the All Stars Newark expansion plan — a partnership through which everyone grows — that I want to share it!

From The Star Ledger

NEWARK — The All Stars Project of New Jersey today announced a $9 million fundraising project, comprised of private donors, to foster after-school programs here, and with $3 million already raised, the group is hopeful the goal will be reached within four years. Read more

I just returned from a week in China – specifically, Deyang, a city in the Sichuan province very hard hit by the 2008 earthquake (more than 17,000 people died and over 70,000 were injured; the schools in neighboring areas collapsed). I was there to train middle school teachers in play and performance, so they could incorporate play breaks with their students into the otherwise very serious and very stressful school day and help with the trauma that is still present for many children and adults. The training was a partnership with the All Stars Project and the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation (CFPA) and along with me were co-trainers Elouise Joseph, a pediatrician and director of youth programs for the All Stars in San Francisco and David Nackman, actor and creative director of Performance of a Lifetime in NYC.

CFPA had gathered 70 teachers and volunteers from 40 schools in the province to work with us for two days. It was a joy! All agreed that children needed to play, and the many teachers who initially said they themselves had forgotten how to play very quickly either remembered or learned anew. Over the two days we taught them many improv games, gave them time to practice teaching them to each other (performing as children), had them create and perform short plays as responses to the training – as we interpersed  the theoretical basis for this approach to learning and development through conversation and video.

Some of the teachers and us

A scene from one of the improvised plays

It was very moving and challenging to support the work already being done by CFPA and others for earthquake survivors in Sichuan by bringing to them the unique approach to human development I’ve been part of developing for so long. The teachers took to performance – playing improv games and creating dozens of improvised plays – and in their comments they shared ways they saw its value and potential: their thrill that “they did what they thought was impossible;” how they “gained confidence and related to each other with a more open mind;” the way they “learned to work together” and “discovered so much about themselves and others;”  and that they “see children in a different way now.” One teacher said that on Monday morning when he came to school he was gong to be different – he would smile.

While in Deyang we visited the nearby small city of Mianzhu. The entire city had been rebuilt, including the school which we visited.

Brand new school in Mianzhu

After the training we traveled to Beijing to meet with the national staff of CFPA, share our work with them, and learn about the many programs the organization runs, including their plans for expanding internationally.

A view of Beijing

Fred Newman and Patch Adams

This past Saturday I had the privilege of hosting Patch Adams  for the day between two university presentations he was giving that morning and evening. The meeting was a long time coming; Patch (“the clown who is a doctor”) and I have been communicating for a few years with the goal of him visiting the Institute and the All Stars Project, meeting my mentor and Institute co-founder Fred Newman, and spending some “quality” time together. Patch and the community he has buit around free health care, doctoring as caring for the whole person, and global clowning has much in common with the performance-based development community I have helped to build — in particular, the inseparability of the well-being of persons and community, and a radical commitment to taking risks for social change.

A highlight of the visit was Patch’s guest appearance in Newman’s weekly Developmental Philosophy Group where performing philosophy took on the added forms of clowning, singing and poetry reciting. If you aren’t familiar with Patch’s life and work, check out his Gesundheit Institute where you’ll find  infromation on humanitarian clown trips to places all over the world, news on the Gesundheit Hospital Project, commentary of health care reform, and more.

Here’s a poem Patch shared with us, which was new to me:

Franz Wright, “Pediatric Suicide”

Being who you are is not a disorder.

Being unloved is not a psychiatric disorder.

I can’t find being born in the diagnostic manual.

I can’t find being born to a mother incapable of touching you.

I can’t find being born on the shock treatment table.

Being offered affection unqualified safety and respect when?and only when you score dope for your father is?not a diagnosis.

Putting your head down and crying your way through elementary?school is not a mental illness, on the contrary.

And seeing a psychiatrist for fifteen minutes per month

some subdoormat psychiatrist writing for just what you?need lots more drugs

to pay his mortgage Lexus lease and child’s future tuition?while pondering which wine to have for?dinner is not effective

treatment for friendless and permanent sadness.

Child your sick smile is the border of sleep.

Abandoned naked and thrown to the world is not a disease.

She was unhappy just as I was only not as lucky.

And two more  photos…

Patch and me

Patch and Improvisors of the Castillo Theatre

In 2004 I initiated a program to support grassroots social entrepreneurs and activist-scholars whose work is too new or innovative or radical to get much support. The program is called  The International Class of the East Side Institute. As of today, over 50 people from five U.S. States and 16 countries have been a part of it. Among them are psychologists from India and Brazil, applied theatre practitioners from Kenya and Canada, community organizers from Uganda and Taiwan, psychotherapists from South Africa and Argentina, youth workers from Nicaragua and Mexico, and educators and social workers from the Philippines and the United States. Coming from different places and professions, they share a desire to change the world-and an eagerness to take advantage of the unique opportunity the International Class offers them to create a global support network, to engage the philosophical, political and psychological issues of their practice, and to study and train as developmentalists with the creators of social therapeutic methodology.

Here is the first issue of The International Class alum newsletter, Reports from the Field.

Enjoy!

That’s the question for the sixth Performing the World conference taking place September 30-October 3 in New York City. I’m what you could call the “chief organizer” for Performing the World (PTW) conferences and community. It’s a great job because there seems to be no end to the people and projects I find out about through word of mouth, referral and inquiry. Since the first PTW in 2001 performance has gained a lot of ground in the humanitarian, human rights, and social entrepreneurial fields—which just adds more to the performance movement-coming-into-being.

The sponsors of Performing the World 2010 are  the East Side Institute for Group and Short Term Psychotherapy (my organization) and the All Stars Project, Inc. For decades, both organizations have worked to create a performance-oriented culture and community, in conscious and direct relationship to progressive social change. Our activities involve all neighborhoods and social strata in New York City, and have created an international network of connections.

For PTW 2010, we ask performance activists and scholars to reflect on and address the political aspects of their performance work; at the same time, we invite social change activists to reflect on and address the performance aspects of their political activities. We are looking for proposals —for panels, workshops, performances, demonstrations, installations, etc. — that address this overarching question.

Performing the World 2010 will be a three-day “performance of conversation” with people from all over the world — scholars and researchers; teachers, therapists, social workers and community organizers; doctors and other health workers; theatre and other performance artists; union activists and business leaders; economists and political activists — on the subject of performance and the transformation of the individual, the community, and the world.

Proposals are due March 1. Spread the word!

Watch Joe Spirito’s Performing the World video!

These days, la Cuidad Juárez in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico is pretty much known for one thing—violent crime. No denying the destruction of life and transformation of culture that’s hit this city so hard. But it is not the whole story (it never is).

Looking at El Paso and the fence that divides the countries

Houses near CASA

I had the privilege and challenge of spending four days last week in this city on the US-Mexico border just south of El Paso, Texas. My colleague Carrie Lobman and I were invited to share the social therapeutic approach to learning, development, therapy and community building with a diverse group of people in Juárez. Our visit was hosted by CASA (Centro de Asesoría y Promoción de Juvenil, A.C.) and the Department of the Humanities, Universidad Autónomia de la Cuidad Juárez, and arranged and organized by CASA’s Miguel Cortez, a graduate of the East Side Institute’s International Class.

Work/Play Under the Mexican Sun

Our work began Thursday morning with a presentation I made to a packed auditorium at the university, entitled, “Como debe Cambiar la Educación: Juego, Performance e Improvisación para el Desarrollo Humano y el Cambio Social.” After that about 80 of the over 100 attendees crossed the campus courtyard to the workshop room. For 3 hours that day and 4 the next, Carrie and I led the group in performing conversations and improv activities, with both words and body. Near the end of the second day, we divided the group (by now very warmed up and into creating together) into smaller groups to design projects to “grow the city and its youth” and then performatorily share them with the large group. They had great ideas, like Cultural Caravan, Urban Complement, Winds of Change, Shoot Me with Your Ball.

A Performing Group

Tere and Miguel

CASA has a strong and solid presence in the poor community of Juárez. Headed by Maria Teresa Almada (“Tere”) CASA’s staff and practice is passionately progressive—unwavering in their conviction that people CAN develop in the worst of conditions. And they have what appeared to us to be a productive, non-hierarchical working relationship with the university. Throughout our conversations with staff, university faculty and students, and young people we never heard anyone blame either the young people who are killing and being killed (hired by the drug cartels to do their bidding) or their parents. They are, instead, focused on the community as a whole taking responsibility for what is going on and working together to provide prosocial things for young people to do.

On Saturday we led another workshop, this time at CASA. The group of about 60 included many teens—some from a CASA high school project and some who don’t go to school but who volunteer with CASA—and women from the community who are involved in CASA programs. Carrie and I saw some new things of value from leading the group in improv games, especially those involving mirroring and creatively imitating each other. One of the most moving was the transformation of both teens and adults when they started playing together, and seeing the teens’ joy when adults imitated them!  In the environment we all built, Vygotsky’s views on play and creative imitation—and their advancement in social therapeutic practice—were living, breathing forms of life.

CASA Workshop Players

At the CASA Workshop