I love my responsibility as chair of Global Outreach for the All Star’s Project’s UX because of the opportunities I get to bring people together who wouldn’t ordinarily meet. Like the immigrant young people from Rome who run their own community, the inner-city young people and adults in New York City who participate in growthful learning opportunities at the All Stars, the student body of the East Side Institute, and any other interested New Yorkers.

In my work as a developmentalist, I am an advocate of, doer of, and studier of play. I grapple with both implementing and understanding what Lev Vygotsky said: “In play a child always behaves beyond his average age, above his daily behavior; in play it is as though he were a head taller than himself” —and its practical applications and implications for people of all ages.

Having begun a three-session East Side Institute Revolutionary Conversation last night (where we touched on play quite a bit) and preparing today for a keynote address on play, performance and pretense that I’ll give in a few weeks at the Association for Experiential Education international conference, I’ve been playing with play today. Here’s some thoughts to ponder and comment on—and aid me in my thinking/speaking!

Vygotsky tells us that it’s the interplay of imagination—which frees us, and rules—which constrain us, that makes play potentially developmental. The action created in the “imaginative sphere” frees the players from situational constraints and, at the same time, imposes constraints of its own. In this way, “play creates a zone of proximal development of the child… Action in the imaginative sphere, in an imaginary situation, the creation of voluntary intentions, and the formation of real-life plans and volitional motives – all appear in play and make it the highest level of preschool development.”

This freedom from environmental constraints (“reality”) in free play has similarities with theatrical play, or performance, especially the unscripted, improvisational kind. In both free and theatrical play, the players are more directly the producers of their activity, in charge of generating and coordinating the perceptual, cognitive and emotional elements of the play. When I look at children’s free play with this performance lens, I see the value of play in a new light.

For most psychologists and educators the value of play is that it facilitates the learning of social-cultural roles. Through acting out roles (play-acting), children “try out” the roles they will soon take on in “real life.”

I get this, but I think it skips over the paradox of pretend play—when children are pretending, they are least like what they are pretending to be! When they play school they are least like teachers and students because teachers and students in school are not playing at being teachers and students, but rather acting out their societally determined roles. Children playing school, or Mommy and Daddy, or Harry Potter and Dumbledore, are not acting out predetermined roles. They are creating new performances of themselves—at once the playwrights, directors and performers. They are creating culture. This is how I make sense of Vygotsky’s understanding that in play the child acts as though a head taller —that the developmental potential of play is as performed activity and not as behavioral acting. Not only for chidren but for us all.

October 2, 2011

I’m thrilled to announce the next Performing the World (PTW) conference/festival, “Can Performance Change Save the World?” to take place in New York City October 4-7, 2012. Proposals are due March 1, 2012.

The theme of the last PTW, held in 2010 and attended by over 500 people from dozens of countries, was, “Can Performance Change the World?” The depth of the challenges facing humanity two short years later have led the conveners of Performing the World to recast the question for the 2012 conference as, “Can Performance Save the World?”

Performing the World (PTW) was born in a conversation between East Side Institute co-founder, the late Fred Newman, and me at the end of the summer of 2000. We had already “discovered” performance, and its essential role in human development and learning was key to the therapeutic, educational and community-organizing work of the East Side Institute and its broader community. At the same time, Newman and I were also having conversations with Ken and Mary Gergen, leading social-constructionist psychologists who themselves were turning toward performance, particularly by experimenting with new performatory modes of presenting research and scholarship. During the 1990s at annual meetings of the American Psychological Association, we and the Gergens did some joint performatory symposia and Newman’s original “psychology plays” were performed—all to great enthusiasm. We were encouraged, and wanted to do something bigger and of our own structure.

My international travels had introduced me to many different performatory practices initiated at both the grassroots and from within the universities. I met dozens of people and heard of hundreds more who were using performance to help people and communities grow and create positive social change. 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.

The first Performing the World conference was held in October 2001, just a few weeks after 9/11. Hundreds from all over the world showed up at the beautiful ocean side village of Montauk, 120 miles from New York City, as if this kind of gathering was what they and their communities needed at such a moment.

There have been five PTWs since then. The last two—in 2008 and 2010—were held in New York City, bringing the conference to one of the most vibrant and diverse cultural centers of the world and partnering with the All Stars Project as co-sponsor. PTW has been greatly enriched by having the All Stars’ performing arts and development center on 42 Street near Times Square as the conference’s home base and by the inclusion of hundreds of young people and adults who participate in its programs. Additionally, both the Institute and the All Stars reach out to friends across New York City’s many communities to provide housing for PTW participants and broaden the “performance space.” I am inspired by the growth of the global performance movement and the role that PTW is playing in it, as not only a conference/performance festival but also a unique community event bringing people together to perform a new world.

April 20, 2011

One evening while studying in England, a young Ugandan man named Peter Nsubuga watched a BBC documentary in the home he was staying. The program was “Children of Africa.” Peter was no stranger to the scenes he watched, having grown up in the very conditions shown on the screen. He felt deeply moved by the film, so much so that he returned home “to give my heart”—he says—to help children and youth from his home village. Peter talked to local community leaders and officials about his desire to inspire, support, and promote youth engagement and the role of young people as leaders of positive social change. In 2007, he got just enough support to found Hope for Youth-Uganda and supply food, clothing and education to a small number of children.

In 2008, Peter learned of the training opportunity in the social therapeutic approach to learning, development and community building provided by the East Side Institute. He applied, I interviewed him (on Skype), and he arrived in NYC in October to begin the program’s first residency. During 2008-2009 (and three visits to NYC for the program’s residency periods), Peter advanced his vision to include therapeutic and cultural developmental activities. He thought that social therapy would greatly help build community and give emotional support to families, most of which have been fragmented by the death of one or both parents from AIDS. He also was eager to bring the All Stars Project performance-based development approach to the young people to help them grow.

So, over the next two years, Peter began educational and therapeutic groups for women and for the grandparents and other guardians of children orphaned by AIDS as well as  “You Matter” support groups for girls. Hope for Youth-Uganda also built a school, installed a new water tank to insure safe drinking water; planted an orange grove, and acquired donated school supplies.

Last month, on the afternoon of March 26, Hope for Youth-Uganda held its first All Stars Talent Show. Peter told me that the show began in a large field, with children, many orphaned by AIDS, “telling stories—which were so emotional that many could not hold their tears back. Later we marched around the surrounding communities with the teens singing songs and ended in the sports field where they moved around to form a star.”

It thrills me that Peter and his organization are creating conditions for Ugandan youth to create their own cultural development. He joins the growing ranks of educational innovators—those who know the importance and value of in-school education in underdeveloped and developing societies but who, at the same time, recognize the transformative power of informal learning environments that engage and empower. Watch videos of Sugata Mitra and Charles Leadbeater to learn more.

At the end of the week I travel to New Orleans for the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), a huge gathering (probably 14,000!) of mostly PhDs and graduate students involved in studying teaching and learning. Over five days, there will be many hundreds of presentations and, sadly, only a fraction of them will report on the learning lives of school-aged children outisde of school. This is in spite of the fact that school hours take up only about 25% of kids’ lives. Speaking as a researcher, that’s some oversight! Also, the American obsession with researching schooling (not to mention schooling, period) is, I think, terribly misguided because outside of school learning environments are exactly those that foster the very skills and abilities that educational reformers say are essential for a productive life: creativity, critical thinking, building positive relationships, confidence, risk-taking, etc. There’s plenty of research showing this, but it’s fragmented and marginalized and, consequently, not within the common knowledge base of most scholars and teacher educators.

In New Orleans I’ll be presenting at some of the sessions and attending others that address non-school settings. I hope to learn some things and,  more important, find among the thousands attending those who want to be educated and educate their colleagues to look outside of school for some answers to America’s “educational crisis.” Beyond the AERA conference, I have hopes of organizing a much smaller gathering, sometime this year or next, of educational researchers and practitioners to discuss efforts to bring developmental learning to the learning lives of those whom the current schools are failing.

A young friend of mine, Francelli Chapman, keeps a very active blog that I’m learning a lot from. An example: This great quote from Maya Angelou’s book, Letter to My Daughter—“Never whine. Whining lets a brute know that a victim is in the neighborhood.”

Francelli calls her blog, “The Life of an Actress ‘N’ Such” —and there’s lots and lots of “‘n such” from this performer, activist and community-builder. Francelli shares her discoveries from doing new things and being places she’s never been before, the pain of her community and efforts to alleviate it, her pondering of new ideas gleaned from what she’s reading and who she’s meeting and working with—any and all of which give a glimpse of a woman whose practice “takes place in” zones of proximal (or people’s) development—zones that she continuously participates in creating.

Vygotskians (and everyone), take a look!

As a practitioner of and theoretician on how play and performance are essential for development across the life span, I see people developing and transforming through their ensemble activities all the time—in the spaces and places where they’re invited and encouraged to actively create their performances of themselves. As much as I am able, I speak with people, young people in particular, to learn how they experience performance in their lives. I recently interviewed George Pedraza (stage name Lyric), a high school senior whom I met in 2009 at an All Stars Project youth performance he was in. Since then I’ve seen George many other times on stage and off. We’ve gotten to know each other some (which is delightful to me), as he’s become more involved in the All Stars’ youth programs overall. I share here an interview I did with him recently.

When did you begin performing on stage?

I began performing on stage when I was 14, although I’ve been singing since I was born. I’ve been performing shows for my mirror since I was like…three.

with Lyric at All Stars' UX Opening Day, Winter-Spring Semester 2011

What was it like for you?

My first performance on stage that I can remember was extremely nerve-racking. I sang the song “Hello” by Lionel Richie and I actually turned out to be a hit with the crowd. The audience was really supportive and I got through it! After that I wanted to do it over and over and over again.

Do you remember when you first made the connection between performing and learning? Performing and growing?

I don’t remember actually realizing that if I pretended like I knew what I was doing in a situation that I actually knew nothing about, nobody really knew that I didn’t know what I was doing besides me. That was always a fact in my mind. I’ve been pretending my whole life, and somehow it’s worked out. It was only when I joined the development community through the All Stars Project that I realized that this was actually a way of life for many people and that it actually has a name—“performance.” The All Stars taught me what I hadn’t realized I had been doing my entire life: learning through performing beyond myself.

It wasn’t very long ago that I realized that the reason many people stop growing is because they stop learning through playing, and that many people forget how to learn because they don’t know how to play. Dr. Fulani was once giving a talk where she explained that the reason so many young people like myself are stuck and are not growing is because they’ve never had the opportunity to perform in a different setting apart from their neighborhood, meaning nobody’s called them and told them that they need them somewhere else. In Manhattan, or wherever! If that were to occur, young people in the ghettos would have an opportunity to perform beyond themselves by being in settings and situations that are foreign to them. That’s growthful!

How did you get involved with the All Stars? Tell us about what you’ve done.

I got involved in the All Stars by auditioning for the All Stars Talent Show Network in late January of 2009. I went on to win first place at the show and was selected to perform in the 2009 benefit gala. After that, I participated in the first ever All Stars Choir, the All Stars Hip Hop Cabaret, the Development School for Youth, and Operation Conversation: Cops & Kids. I am now on the production team for the Talent Show Network and I do a lot of other volunteering. I’ve also traveled with Pam Lewis to Washington D.C. to meet Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and in 2010 I recieved the All Stars Young Leader for Change Award.

You attend a performance high school. What’s that like? How does it support your development? How does it not?

I attend Frank Sinatra School of the Arts (FSSA). It’s quite different from any other high school in this city for a number of reasons. Picture the movie “Fame.” That’s actually what it’s like at my school! The artistic development that FSSA teaches you is really top-notch, incomparable to any other public school in the city, and maybe even the country. But as far as human development, FSSA is still stuck like any other public school in New York. Play is rarely ever used, except maybe in the Musical Theater department, and you’re expected to learn what’s on the test, and graduate high school on time regardless of whether you’ve grown as a person or not.

What do you see as your current developmental challenges?

I would say that through training our development coaches for the Opening Day of UX [the All Stars’ “unique development institution, free of cost, forward thinking and open to people of all ages and backgrounds who want to grow and develop”], I’ve learned that my biggest developmental challenge is to learn how to have people develop through having them learn about themselves, rather than me telling people their flaws and teaching them to be better. Facilitating growth is very hard when you have no control over the situation!

Anything else you want to share about how you’ve come to embrace performance as a way of life?

Well, recently I had a volunteer experience that taught me something else about performing off the stage in live theater. I was at an event the All Stars Project has for every play they produce called “Pizza and a Play.” Participants in the All Stars’ youth programs get pizza and an opportunity to see a show at the Castillo Theatre. It was at this event that I made a realization. At most of these “Pizza and a Play” events, it is the first time some of the young people ever get the chance to see live theater. When watching the play, they realize that it is a completely different experience than watching a television show from their couches. It’s a completely different performance. In a theater, you can’t shout at a character and tell him not to go into the room and see what’s inside, or laugh at him and call him an idiot for doing so. It was interesting to see my fellow young audience members gasp and laugh at the show while realizing this.

I think performing as an audience member is harder than people think. The onstage performers rely on your performance, and other audience members also depend on your performance in order for them to enjoy the onstage performance. In many ways it’s similar to performing on stage. It requires concentration, enthusiasm, and energy.

I’ve learned to perform offstage everyday, but in particular, I’ve learned to perform offstage as a producer of the stage. I am a producer of the All Stars Talent Show Network. I perform in weekly production meetings about our upcoming events as we discuss how to have a successful show. I try to give my take on everything we discuss, from changing performer rules to creating the schedule of the day. I’m the youngest producer at the meetings, and I perform in a way that I’m taken seriously and that my opinion is as valuable and considered as everyone else’s. I take pride in my experience as a performer and although there are other onstage performers that are producers at the meetings, I am usually the one to kind of make sure that whatever rules and decisions are made about the talent show, they give the performers enough freedom and fun to have a good time. It’s a not a hard thing to do as the other producers are always aware and do an incredible job at producing the show!

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

One evening last month I had a terrific time creating conversation on language, speaking and thinking with five young performers—members of an all-youth cast that recently performed Macbeth on one of the stages at the All Stars Project in NYC. I was blown away by the show. It was unlike what I envision as the typical wooden and stilted high school production, and equally unlike the youth versions of Shakespeare that make his plays contemporary and “relevant” (of which a very successful example is the American film Hamlet 2000 with Ethan Hawke). The young people I saw made the play—especially and importantly, the language—their own. They didn’t seem to be speaking memorized lines, but rather to be saying things they actually wanted to say. They talked the talk.

Since I’m fascinated by language and language-learning and have spent much of my adult life studying them, I wanted to talk with the young people about their experience learning this new language and performance of speaking. I came in with a few ideas but no expectations about where we might take the conversation. Here’s some highlights that I’m still pondering.

I began by sharing with them pretty much what I just wrote above. I asked if any of them remembered learning to speak when they were babies. No one did (me either), although they had family stories of their “first word.” We all thought it was interesting that none of us remembered…

I asked them what it was like to learn this new language (Shakespeare’s) and how they did it.

“I looked at first, how do I say this, then what it means, then different performances of it.”

“You have to get the language in your mouth. We didn’t get bogged down in meaning.”

“We drilled section by section. It was athletic.”

“It was easier for me to memorize than contemporary work. Maybe the rhythm…”

“The language sounds so nice but some of it is saying some really mean stuff.”

Fascinating! So much like our earliest language activities as babies—sounds, repetition, rhythm, and meaning comes later…speaking without knowing how to speak! Perform as a Shakespearian speaker and you become one! How Vygotskian!

They spoke about how language opportunities were very different at school and at the youth theatre. Most of them said there wasn’t much opportunity for them to speak in school, and when they did it was just rote, that in class you can’t put yourself in what you say.  And for some, “If I say it out loud, I get it” but it’s a rare class where that happens. They went on to share stories of different classes and teachers and which ones they learned from. One of them said that teachers in teachers colleges should all have to study acting and improvisation. They all agreed.

I’ve had the fantasy off and on for years that teacher training should be done by the young people teachers are supposed to teach. My lovely conversation with these teen actors fueled my fantasy.

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.