That’s the question that over 500 people from 38 countries played and performed with, and created conversations, dances, music and  skits about—and simultaneously shared the inspiring and creative work they are doing in their communities, schools, hospitals, universities, NGOs and neighborhood streets. The event was Performing the World 2010, held in NYC and sponsored by the East Side Institute and the All Stars Prohject, September 30-October 3.

Performing the World  was born in a conversation between Fred Newman and me a decade ago. The role of performance in human development and learning was already a vital part of the therapeutic, educational and community organizing work we and our colleagues were doing.The East Side Institute and the All Stars Project have worked for decades 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.

My international travels had taught me that there were many variations on development through performance being played with in countries rich and poor, in areas rural and urban, in cultures traditional and modern. We decided to reach out to those doing this work/play—from community organizers to business people, from artists to social workers, from therapists to teachers—who were using performance to help people and communities grow and create positive social change. The first Performing the World conference was held in 2001, just a few weeks after 9/11. Hundreds showed up from all over the world, as if this kind of gathering was what they and their communities needed at such a moment. It has been, tragically, a very extended moment.

The world certainly needs new performances! There is too much that is old—war, poverty, HIV/AIDS, national and ethnic conflict, sexual abuse and oppression, greed and its violent destruction of people and nature, and countless other ways of stifling human potential and destroying environments. And just as old are the dominant ways of trying to solve these problems. Performing the World is an environment-and-activity that engages these problems by involving people in creating new performances of being human. We posed the question, “Can Performance Change the World?” in support of this ongoing “search for method,” in which the way forward cannot be known—but must be performed into existence.

Here are a few Performing the World 2010 scenes (more to come)

The Group from Brazil...Vygotskian Educational Activists

What is Health? panelists Jim Mangia, Elouise Joseph, Jessie Fields, Susan Massad, and Patch Adams

Some of what participants wrote down...to be performed

A Performance of some of the phrases on the stickies

All Stars founder Lenora Fulani and Director of Youth Programs Pam Lewis

Clowning

Coming soon! Videos of conference sessions

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