2004 Production History
Transition
May 2004 (Ohio State University, Columbus, OH)
images script
Following up on the sucess of last year's work at the national Americans for the Arts conference in Portland, Sojourn was commissioned to create this piece for the Wexner Center and Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. The event was the Barnett Symposium, a national convening on arts and culture policy in the US. This year's topic was training for artists, and how it prepared those entering the field to participate in cultural and creative economies outside their discipline- in other words, what happens to artists after they graduate college, and how prepared are they? Sojourn interviewed over 100 recent grads from arts-focused majors within liberal arts college programs - dancers, theatre folks, visual artists, writers, digital and media artists.
The resulting documentary piece became the keynote performance at the Wexner Center for the conference, and sparked alot of discussion. Attached is the script of that piece- its the first text of ours we're making available online for perusal, and use. We simply ask for a request, and credit when its used. And, the piece still tours...
Return trip to Lima, Ohio images
Site of our Animating Democracy project, we were excited to be back in Lima. Our hosts were the arts council again, and the school district. We conducted an intensive residency that brought pieces of our show, Passing Glances, into schools and other community sites. We then spent the bulk of our time working during the day at an inner city magnet school (middle school), and our evenings with a core group of local educators and high school students.
Company members taught, shared our methodology, and together we created a new show based on the responses by these groups to the old material. We brought the middle schoolers and older students and adults together for 2 performances- a daytime show for the middle school, and evening show for the public (which filled to capacity a downtown community site/performance space). The community members we worked with all week, youth and adults, performed alongside us in a piece that brought the Sojourn aesthetic and community participation to a logical and exhilarating intersection.
Greed (Oregon)
Between September 2003 and February 2004, Sojourn artists spent almost 10 weeks in workshop with guest artist Jim Dennen. Working on developing improvisation structures based on Sojourn's methodology and Jim's seminal work in ensemble and group play, the company trained and generated form and content for their long term project Greed.
In mid Fall '03, the company had a weekend of public performances (at old collaborator Concordia University in Northeast Portland) aimed at sharing the structures within which we were playing. Both nights were houses of almost 100, and both nights included Jim's descriptions of process, as well as hour long sets of improvised work. Very funny, and often bizarre, the evenings gave our audience and partners a chance to see company members in new lights.
In mid-winter 2004, the company opened up some final rehearsals in Sellwood for partners to witness the story and themes on which we had chosen to focus the piece. Greed has become a project about power, equity, class, and media manipulation. Homeless youth, television executives, social workers, and lunchtime loiterers populate the landscape of this genre-bending story. Jim is in Los Angeles, and we are currently working on plans for the rehearsal phase of this show within the next year. Watch for it...
Witness Our Schools (2003-2005)
Witness Our Schools was a 2 & 1/2 year documentary theatre and community dialogue project exploring public education in Oregon. Over 500 interviews, a 65 minute highly physical show, a statewide tour, our town hall dialogue events, and a special performance at the Capitol for the State Legislature - all became a part of the state's challenging conversation around equitable, fundable policy.
|
|
|
