(Host) Filmmaker and Marlboro College professor Jay Craven recently saw a hip-hop theater performance that got him thinking about how our own experience can inspire art-and how art can inspire our experience.
(Craven) Dartmouth’s Hopkins Center and Putney’s Sandglass Theater recently teamed up to present "Ameriville" a potent evening of hip-hop theater by the Bronx-based Universes ensemble. The piece gives voice to Hurricane Katrina’s victims, who continue to live with its physical, emotional, cultural, political, and economic after-affects. And it asks what our nation’s response to Katrina tells us about ourselves. "If something happens to one of us," says Universes co-founder, Stephen Sapp, "it happens to all of us." Then he cites a line from the show. "Don’t make no difference what side of the fence you’re standing on. We all in the same boat, baby, and we gotta get our paddle on."
The arts help us find and extend meaning — and connect us more deeply to our shared experience. I’m reminded of Abby Paige’s recent tour of "Piecework: When We Were French," where she breathes life into ten Vermont characters with French-Canadian roots. And of David Budbill’s enduring play, "Judevine," that also gives voice to our community and culture.
But what about tackling our most difficult subjects? It is one thing to empathize with the plight of people who suffered Katrina’s direct hit. But what about natural and man-made disasters closer to home? Howard Frank Mosher’s novel, "A Stranger in the Kingdom" treated Vermont’s most notorious racial incident, the thorny Irasburg Affair. Mosher re-worked the time, place, and characters, but his story articulates themes that continue to inform our discussion about race and the fear of outsiders.
Bess O’Brien’s Voices Project and her film, "Shout It Out," developed from workshops with hundreds of Vermont teens-included a character drawn from research about the tragic suicide of an Essex boy, Ryan Halligan. The story is not easy, but the film has helped thousands of teens advance discussions about bullying. Recent news from South Hadley, Massachusetts, about xenophobic and misogynistic bullying that led to the suicide of a young Irish girl makes me wish that students there had been able to use theater, film, music, poetry, or hip-hop to bring those issues into the light of day.
Gifted Vermont singer and songwriter Anais Mitchell recently released an album of music from her innovative rock opera, Hadestown. She, too, explores hard questions-about poverty, injustice, resistance, and an indomitable human spirit. But rather than citing actual events, Mitchell draws from the Orpheus myth and articulates powerful metaphors that invite us to make our own connections.
"Why do we build the wall?" she asks in one song. "We build the wall to keep us free," she replies. "How does the wall keep us free? The wall keeps out the enemy," she answers.
Then she continues. "Who do we call the enemy, my children, my children? Who do we call the enemy? The enemy is poverty and the wall keeps out the enemy. And we build the wall to keep us free. That’s why we build the wall. We build the wall to keep us free."