Hello Friends,
Its January 2009.
And if your real and electronic mailboxes are anything like mine, you got a lot of year-end donation requests in the past few weeks.
Because, like so many in this economic climate, arts organizations are struggling.
Struggling to stay afloat.
Struggling to continue their meaningful work.
Struggling to make experiences that delight, connect and energize us in a moment that feels rich in both anxiety and hope.
We didn't send you one of these letters.
It's not because we don't need support.
We do.
But
We've been doing some thinking.
We don't have a building.
We don't run a season.
Our ongoing staff consists of one Managing Director at a Half-Time position.
What 18 months ago seemed frighteningly lean now seems...necessarily lean. For the
moment.
We had a tremendous meeting with generous Sojourn friends/supporters in late August to
discuss how to build Sojourn up as an institutional entity that could support a staff and
ongoing work in the city we call home. But what has become clearer over this past fall is
that...we have always been a project-based company. And we now need to embrace that
as a strength, not just a turn of phrase.
We are a group of artists and organizers who choose to make work that can fairly be
described as non-traditional in terms of: how we make it; where we present it; how many
can see it; and why we take on the subject matter that we do. Portland, Oregon is a
wonderful place for us to come together and do this work that is at the heart of our
collective artistic lives. But, we don't need to be a regional theater ( a bricks & mortar
institution) to do that. In fact, an attempt to sustain ourselves as a traditional institution
puts at risk many of the non-traditional core impulses that motivate us.
So we come together for projects.
This is what we did in the past year-
Throwing Bones – Portland
Jan 08 development work; Mar-Apr 08 engagement events, full production
Sojourn Associate Artist Maureen Towey's Throwing Bones had packed houses, great
reviews and meaningful partnerships both old and new. The show was staged at the
Concordia University's School of Nursing (Concordia is an old partner of ours, dating
back to our arrival in Portland in 2000). Engagement events included a workshop with
Portland youth in the African immigrant community; work with local musical icon Obo
Addy; and a pubic dialogue downtown at the Armory (thank you, Portland Center Stage)
with traditional, naturopathic and Western medical healers and doctors.
(http://www.oregonlive.com/performance/index.ssf/2008/03/theater_preview_throwing_b
ones.html)
BUILT Chicago
Mar-May 08 development/workshop and production
Five Sojourn artists (Courtney Davis, Liam Kaas-Lentz, Shannon Scrofano, Hannah
Treuhaft, and Maureen Towey) joined me in Chicago, where we spent the Spring
together in residence at Northwestern University (made possible thanks to the support of
The Boeing Company). Together, we created a draft version of the piece with 30
undergraduate and graduate students in a process that engaged a variety of community
partners: historians, architects, advocates for the homeless, social service agencies, faith
communities, seniors, public housing residents and activists, legislators, planners, and
more. Our production events in Evanston and in downtown Chicago were unique fullhouse
events that had those who work around planning issues delighted at the nature of
the civic conversations, and local theater artists from companies such as Redmoon,
Lookingglass, Steppenwolf & The Goodman enthralled with the groundbreaking work
Sojourn is creating.
BUILT - Hartford, CT
Jun 08 development/workshop performance
Four of us (Kimberly, Rebecca, Courtney & myself) spent time with Hartford's Hartbeat
Ensemble investigating the relationship of planning and community development's to
policy-making by creating a participatory piece that we performed for & with the
Hartford City Council in the beautiful hundred year old Rotunda at City Hall. Then, later
the same day, we re-made the piece and performed it for & with the CT State legislature
at the State Capitol. A nice piece about the work played on NPR.
(http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wshu/local-wshu-718058.mp3)
BUILT - Portland
Jul-Sept 08 rehearsal, engagement events, full production
The whole company (plus fantastic guest artists including Mike Barber & Joel Sugerman)
worked at the South Waterfront (a new planned glass tower downtown development) as
Sojourn became the culminating artist-in-residence in Linda K Johnson's AIR program.
With Maureen Towey organizing community engagment work, we hosted dialogues,
conducted open workshops, and built one of our most ambitious and technologically
challenging pieces at a large high-end condo showroom/warehouse. BUILT was
presented as a mainstage event at PICA's 2008 TBA Festival. We had full houses, great
press, and connected with funders and curators from around the United States.
(http://tba.portlandmercury.com/TBA/archives/2008/09/10/sojourn-s-built)
The Race - Washington DC
Sept-Nov 08 development, rehearsal and full production
The day after BUILT closed in Portland, four of us (Shannon, Liam, Courtney & myself)
traveled to Washington where we began a Fall residency at Georgetown University,
where we had been working off and on for the last year in preparation for creating this
large election-themed piece with students and DC artists. Officially a Georgetown
University event, not a Sojourn one, the show was billed in the DC area as a Sojourn coproduction.
It was an exciting time to be in DC, and rich material for a project. We
hosted public interviews with DC media and political notables, created a series of public
campaign rallies for a fictitious Presidential candidate, and made a show that was, again,
our most technologically ambitious. It utilized web-based video conferencing to include
a real-time national chorus as part of the show's cast every night. The production gained
swift notoriety in the DC theater world when the Washington Post ran a great
article/review. The show, a three-act mixture of spectacle and participation, played to
full houses, opening before election night and closing the weekend after.
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/
content/article/2008/11/02/AR2008110202359.html?hpid=sec-artsliving)
Other things we did in 2008-
• Our 2007 Production GOOD won the 2008 Portland Drammy for Outstanding
Production of the Year. The award was immediately and appropriately turned over with
great appreciation to Megan Wentworth (who single-handedly made possible our
partnership with her family's Wentworth Subaru dealership, where the site-specific
performance took place).
• Hannah Treuhaft continued her stellar education work on behalf of the company,
teaching for the third and fourth school years at West Linn High School. Hannah also
came to the DC area as part of The Race, leading student and teacher workshops in the
Fairfax County Virginia School District. The feedback was phenomenal, and Sojourn will
be back in that school system as a result. This teaching opportunity came to Sojourn
because a Fairfax County teacher took our Sojourn Summer Institute in Portland two
summers ago, and then went back and spent a year building the Virginia partnerships
necessary to have us in his District. Speaking of the Sojourn Summer Institute....
• In 2008, twenty-eight adult educators, artists, and community workers from around the
US participated in Sojourn's 9th Annual Summer Institute, working all day with me in a
training capacity and spending their evenings working with the whole company on
BUILT.
Also, over the course of the last year, I was asked to present and speak about Sojourn's
work at the following National gatherings: Theater Communications Group Annual
Conference in Denver; SouthEastern Theater Conference Annual Convening in
Chatanooga, TN; Association of Theater and Higher Education Annual Conference in
Denver; Grantmakers in America Annual Conference in Atlanta, as well as at a host of
Universities.
People know our work.
In the national arts, education, civic engagement and funding worlds, what you have
helped us achieve in Portland and around the country has been noticed. Has had impact.
And we may be lean, but we are more ambitious now then when we toured Oregon with
Witness Our Schools. Then when we converted a warehouse into a pathway for 7 Great
Loves. Then when we mashed Brecht and Subaru and did GOOD.
We don't need your support to keep our doors open, as others do.
We don't have doors.
But we will need your support again- soon.
As we embark on or next Portland-based project.
It's called -
On The Table,
and its our largest, most ambitious project to date.
We're going to spend the next 18 months building it, bit by bit.
It will occur simultaneously in multiple Oregon communities.
It will be centered in Portland.
It will use technology and travel and story.
And you will hear much, much more about it- soon.
Our work is specific, and demanding, and top-notch.
We do not have a subscription base- we have community.
We do not have a building- we have place.
We do not write a play- we create events.
We are an ensemble-based company.
We are, in fact, a family- a family that is almost ten years old now.
That family is growing.
• In 2008, we welcomed Associate Artists Shannon Scrofano and James Hart as full
Sojourn Ensemble Members, bringing our current core ensemble to nine artists.
• We've had lots of weddings. Hannah Treuhaft got married (and Sojourn performed a
choral toast at her ceremony). New Ensemble Member Liam Kaas-Lentz married past
Sojourn Associate Artist Sy Parrish. Founding Ensemble Member Dawn Young got
married. And Founding Ensemble Members Ryan Keilty & Jennifer Van Nice married
each other...anyone who remembers the sleeping-couple dance, seen looking down
through the floor in 7 Great Loves...that was them.
• More and more with each passing year, Sojourn's company members are out there
making an impact—in the work we each pursue independently, as well as the projects we
create together. Founding Ensemble Member Jono Eiland moved to Los Angeles, but has
already been back to work on Sojourn projects such as BUILT. Kimberly Howard
continues her fantastic work as Managing Director of the Interstate Firehouse Cultural
Center in North Portland. Rebecca Martinez continues to run Artists Repertory Theatre's
Education department, act all over town, and create her own excellent work. Courtney
Davis is starting her own interior design business (Kelly and Olive) in Chicago. Virginia
Nguyen continues to travel the world as a member of Nike's Global Diversity &
Inclusion Team. Maureen Towey has been in NYC making things happen, but is now off
for a month to Idaho where she's direct the Winter Mainstage at Boise Contemporary
Theater. Alisha Tonsic bought a condo in North Portland...and keeps the world together.
And I continue to teach at Northwestern and work on projects in a variety of places.
As you begin this New Year, we all wish you health and peace and opportunities to be
with those you care about. Thank you for caring enough about us to read this, and watch
for news soon about On The Table, and how to support the project.
As always, our website is a wealth of background on the company, and has information on how to support us right now if you like.
Yours with warmth,
Michael Rohd, artistic director
And the whole company...
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