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.

I “teach” online a lot and I love it. I’ve done a course on Social Therapeutics at Massey University (evidently in New Zealand English, though, a “course” is called a “paper”) and just launched one through the Zur Institute for 6 CEUs. But the bulk of my online teaching is through the East Side Institute—our introductory courses, online certificate program, and in-person/online combo called The International Class.

More of our faculty are offering online courses too, and I work with them on how to do it. I tell them (and hopefully help them) to see an online course as a completely new opportunity for social creativity.

I’ve learned from these newbies some of the things that “seduce” them into relating to the course as if it’s a face-to-face, real time learning environment that just happens to not be face-to-face or real time! Like silence (i.e., no posts) for a few days, or a response to a reading that is very far from what you expect, or a conversational thread that seems “off topic.” In a  regular course, such things are no big deal, but online they can loom large indeed, sometimes enough to worry the course leader into trying to control what will happen, too quickly correct a misunderstanding, ask a lot of questions, or fill in a silence with erudtion—all of which don’t make good use of the uniqueness of the online learning environment.

In my experience, the slowness (or timelessness) of online discussion makes it easier to respond to the whole group even as you are responding to a particular person. You (and everyone else) can read and re-read what people have written, and see the process by which the conversation is being created. Someone can always revisit a topic, something that’s harder to do in regular courses. You can also play with each other’s posts. I’ve had students take a line or two from different people’s posts and create a new post that then becomes part of the mix (and can create another “student” in the course).

Taking playful initiative seems easier online. So does sharing. I’ve found that students tend to be more giving of their life experiences in ways that create a safe place for playing with the most challenging theoretical material. On their own, some have videotaped conversations with friends or colleagues on the readings and posted them for us to see and comment on. Others describe readings and web material that excite them and recommend them to everyone. Others create scenes, take photos, draw pictures.

If you want help with the online environment or have a story to share, post a comment!

On April 15, my good friend and colleague Lenora Fulani delivered a brilliant statement about educational policy at the National Action Network’s Annual National Convention in New York City. Dr. Fulani, a developmental psycholoigst and political activist, co-founded the All Stars Project, Inc. and its Operation Conversation: Cops and Kids program. She made her remarks on an education panel that included NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein (and was followed by a talk by US Education Secretary Arne Duncan).

Dr. Fulani opened by callling for an end to the discussion about the achievement gap:

“We’ve been asked to speak today about closing the achievement gap. I want to talk to you today about closing the discussion of the achievement gap. I’ll be very blunt. There is nothing to discuss. Poor kids – including poor kids who are black or otherwise of color – do less well in school than white kids who are middle or upper class. There’s no mystery there. It’s been studied to death.”

She then spoke of some of the intellectuals whose discoveries in philosophy, psychology and education are used to develop effective and meangful approaches to the underdevelopment of poor and black children—and whose ideas are being debated worldwide. She closed with these words:

“We must demand that our leaders get themselves educated in the most innovative breakthroughs across the globe. That’s the achievement gap we need to close. And we need to close it now.”

You can listen to Dr. Fulani at YouTube — it’s worth it!

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 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

Here’s the link to a video of the scened from the Work/Play described below

January, 15, 2010

I was delighted to see The Work/Play – the current production of Youth OnStage! (the youth theatre of the All Stars Project) – featured in a column by Ellen Galinsky in today’s Huffington Post. I work with and am a huge fan of all the All Stars programs and have a special love for its youth and adult (Castillo) theatres. I’ve seen this production and attended the Culture Talk last Sunday that Ellen refers to. In addition to Ellen (president and co-founder of Families and Work Institute), Daniel Banks (founder and director of Hip Hop Theatre Initiative) and Dan Friedman (artistic director, Youth OnStage!) and the young cast of the play created a lovely conversation among equals.

Here is Ellen’s column:

A Tale of Two Worlds: B-School and High School

I’ve spent the past eight years immersed in the science of early learning, working with researchers from the world’s great universities. We have distilled this science into seven essential life skills you can teach your children (not typical academic achievement-oriented skills. Real life skills). The result of this journey is Mind in the Making, a book, awareness campaign, and teaching approach to early learning. The best thing about these skills is that you can apply them to your daily life, no matter how old you are. Each week, I’ll share with you real-life examples of these skills at play, and I encourage you to share your observations with me on Twitter (@ellengalinsky). Here is my first story:

World One:
Picture this: a group of young people from Youth Onstage have created and are performing a play called Work, Play & You–A Love/Hate Triangle at New York City’s Castillo Theater:

Here is one of the first scenes called “Security Check:”
Some of the young people in the cast play security guards; others play students waiting to be checked into their school building. They have obviously created this scene from their own experiences attending inner city schools. Because the scene is so powerful, I will share it with you from the play’s script:
Guard 1: Come on, come on. If you were any slower, you’d be going backwards.
Guard 2: Take that hat off. And get those rainbows out of your pockets.
Student: Hey, man I got the right to have rainbows in my pockets.
Guard 3: Don’t give us no attitude. Empty ‘em. Now!
(Student 1 empties his pockets and exits.)
(Second student comes through.)
Guard 2: Wait a minute. Is that glitter?
Student 2: (holding up the bag) Yes, it is–this backpack is sprinkled with happiness.
Guard 2: Go back outside and clean it off.
(Student 2 goes back out.)
(Third student comes through smiling.)
Guard 2: Discard that smile.
(Student has a hard time getting rid of her smile.)
Guard 2: Do you want it ripped off your face?
(She stops smiling and is waved in. Fourth student comes through.)
Guard 1: Wait, wait, do you see what I see in that bag?
(Guards 2 and 3 look.)
Guard 3: Yes, it’s definitely a glimmer of hope.
Guard 2: (opening bag, taking the hope out) We’ll keep that. If it’s still alive at the end of the semester, you can have it back.
Student 4: Please officer, I need that hope. It won’t hurt anyone.
Guard 2: Hope has no place in school. Get to class.
(Student 4 exits. Fifth student come in looking very sad.)
Guard 1: She looks depressed enough for school.
Guard 2: Yeah, she’s fine, let her through.
(Student 2 returns.)
Guard 1: Her bag’s clean now.
Guard 2: Yeah, but she’s a troublemaker. Scan her.
Guard 3: Okay, assume the position. Spread ‘em, spread em.
(Student 2 holds her arms out and spreads her legs. Guard 3 scans her. Looks in student’s hair.)
Guard 3: Wow! There’s dreams in her weave.
Guard 1: You’ve got some attitude problem, girl. Go home and wash those dreams out of your hair. Don’t come back until they’re gone.
Guard 2: I don’t know what’s wrong with kids these days.
(Sixth student enters.)
Guard 1: This bag has set off every alarm.
Guard 2: Open it up.
(Sixth student takes things out of bag.)
Guard 1: Self respect? You know that’s against the rules here.
Guard 2: Songs? Creativity is banned.
Guard 3: Imagination!
(The Security Guards are shocked.)
Student 6: I need my imagination.
Guard 1: Not here you don’t.
Guard 3: This one’s a real criminal.
All Three Guards: You’re expelled!

As this powerful play, directed by Dan Friedman, continues, there is scene after scene where a character named Work and a character named Play compete for “everyman.” As one of the actors says in the beginning of the play: “When you go to school, you’re forced to leave play at home or on the street or wherever. They just don’t want it in the classroom.”

World Two
I saw this play on Sunday January the 10th, and following the play served as one of the discussants for a conversation with the audience and the cast. Then I went home and turned to the most serious of serious sections of the Sunday New York Times, the business section.

And there I read a front page article by Lane Wallace, entitled, “Multicultural Critical Theory. At B-School? The point of this article is that business school students need to learn the essential skills of critical thinking and perspective taking. As the article says, students need “to learn how to approach problems from many perspectives and to combine various approaches to find innovative solutions.”

Lest you think that this is only a radical idea, it is being implemented at such august B-Schools as Harvard and Stanford and the C.E.O. of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, John J. Fernandes, estimates that while about 25 percent of association-accredited schools are changing their curriculum to develop more sustainable leaders now, he expects that figure to reach 75 percent in 10 years.

B-Schools are making these changes because they lead to better results–future business leaders who can possibly make better decisions.

So it was a day of two worlds–the world of high school education where students have to leave their best selves at the door and the world of business schools, where some of the leading institutions are revising their programs to help students obtain important life skills.

Is A Reconciliation Of These Two Worlds Possible?

That is the hope of the students from Youth Onstage and the play’s conclusion. I certainly hope they are right.

Having spent the past eight years studying how children learn and filming many of the best experiments in neuroscience, cognitive science, and child development research, it is clear to me that education must focus on what is learned (content AND life skills) and how it is taught (using techniques that include what researcher Kathy Hirsh-Pasek of Temple University and her colleagues are calling playful learning).

I also know that these essential life skills of critical thinking and perspective taking develop early and that there are hundreds of everyday ways that teachers and parents can nurture them. We shouldn’t have to wait until graduate school to try to reintroduce them to students. If we do, we are losing far too many students and potential leaders along the way.

I came across an interview with Ann Weimer Baumgardner – author of Pretend You’re Normal: But Only When Absolutely Necessary, and described as a molecular geneticist, creative thinker, author and humorist on the IdeaConnection.com website. I hadn’t heard of Baumgardner (have you?) but I liked what I read. Here’s an excerpt from the interview (by Vern Burkhardt):

Burkhardt: You say we shouldn’t be afraid to make new rules and break old paradigms with our children. Such as letting them sleep in clean clothes for the next day if they hate getting dressed in the morning. Or who says you have to bathe just before bed rather than in the morning? Does it surprise you that many people don’t use creativity to deal with these types of challenges and, instead, often do things that cause undue stress in their lives?

Baumgardner: No, it doesn’t surprise me. We’re all conditioned to go about the details of our life without thinking.

Just a few years ago my husband and I laughed when we realized we’d been making our bed for our mothers who live hundreds of miles away. Neither of us cares if it’s made or not. Those first thirteen years of our marriage are lost to us, but just think of all the unmade beds we have in our future.

That’s why I like kids so much because they ask that all important question, “Why?” When Emily was five, she asked if she could sleep in her closet instead of her bed. My mind went immediately to “No,” but I made myself ask “Why not?” I called the fire department and they thought it was safe, so I cut a foam mattress to fit, and she slept there for about six months. If she’s getting her rest, she’s safe, and it’s not impacting anyone else negatively – then, OK let’s do it!

Burkhardt: Your approach to making parenting fun has its roots in the way your parents found ways to have fun, and to say “yes” rather than “no.” Do you have evidence, or observe, that children are more well-adjusted and successful as adults when exposed to that type of parenting?

Baumgardner: My parents did say “yes” a lot, but it wasn’t the kind of yes where we were allowed to do whatever we wanted. There were definite rules. We had strict bedtimes, we were expected to be polite, to clean the house, and help with chores. There were consequences when we failed to complete our tasks. The “yes” was about how we chose to do the thing they were making us do. My dad would often say “Is this going to be work or is this going to be fun?” You begin to realize that having fun is an attitude not an activity.

Me: Having fun is both.

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!