With and For: What I learned about community making theater in 5 small towns named Milton

Katie was invited by the Milton Interfaith Clergy Association to give the reflection during their Thanks-for-Giving Service in Milton, MA, on Nov 22, 2015. Annually at this service, locals are recognized for their service to the community and then share in a meal of soup and bread. Here is what she said: 

 

Introduction

My name is Katie Pearl. I am a theater artist and, somewhat recently, have also begun to identify, through my work, as an activist. I believe in the absolute necessity of creative exchange and personal encounter to maintain a humane world; my activism is motivated by the lack I see in our society of both and the deep and sudden gratitude I feel when I participate in, or witness an act, of personal, meaningful encounter.

Together with my collaborator Lisa D’Amour, I have a theater company that makes performances usually in New York and other big cities.  Our performances are unusual – they often happen in surprising locations, like on a bridge, or in an empty office, or in an old church; they can include poetic, surprising language, dance, live music, or direct interaction with the performers. They might last 1 hour, or 8 hours, or 24 hours. We make these choices not be experimental or avant garde, but to better get at, collectively, the strange, beautiful, difficult process of being human.

Our art-making usually starts with us asking questions, and I am standing here today because four years ago, we asked this one: What if we left the our urban bubble to explore making plays in smaller towns?  Which brought up a couple more: who are the people who live in those towns anyway, in this big country of ours, and how can we meet them? And then even more important questions started tumbling in: How do we all understand what it means to be an American?   Does an American community actually exist?

For the past 3 years, Lisa and I, along with our collaborator Ashley Sparks, have been visiting your Milton and 4 other Miltons, trying to answer those questions. We’ve been talking to people about your lives and world-views, and making a play about what we find.  I wanted to share with you today a little about this project, and what it has taught me about community, and about gratitude. About the difference between inviting and welcoming. About the things that bring us together as an American community, and the things that keep us apart.

 

Why Milton?

But before I get too far into things, I thought I’d start by answering the question that people always have about the project. It is: How did you choose Milton?

Great question!

We knew we wanted to go out into the country, to towns we’d never have reason to go to and meet people we’d never have reason to meet, in order to see what we could learn about them, about ourselves, and about what it means to be an American, living in our country, today. What we didn’t know was where we should go. We decided to choose 5 towns that shared a name, to give ourselves a kind of artificial construct. And then we did what people do today: we googled. We googled “most commonly named cities” and Milton was in the top 20.  We chose “Milton” because, well basically because it was a person’s name, there was John Milton, the poet; and also I had an uncle Milton. And as it turns out, there are around 25 towns named Milton in the US. We looked at them on a map. We wanted a geographic spread through the country; we wanted to visit towns of different sizes; we looked for different economic profiles, different industries, different ethnic demographics and cultural influences. We settled on these 5:

[open map]

In OR, Wi, LA, NC, and here in Milton MA.

To us, these Miltons form an earth-bound constellation. Just like the constellations in the sky were once used to locate and guide people through unknown terrain, we are using our new “Milton constellation” to orient us within the vast concept of being American.

[put map away]

So we had our Miltons chosen.  The next step was to visit them.

 

Who what we met/what we saw

It’s a funny experience getting interested in town with which you have no relationship. It starts out as a dot on a map, and then it becomes a website, perhaps, with some online photos and lists of organizations and information about where to pay your water bill. And then you get off a plane or a train and into a rental car, and suddenly you’re driving on roads that were just lines on a page, or a screen, but now have actual trees and houses on them with toys in the yard, and then you’re walking into the library whose website you visited, and then you’re looking at the person who made that website, and then you’re having a conversation with that person, and then that person introduces you to someone you should definitely talk to, and then that person has a place you really should see, and suddenly… you find yourself picking grapes in Milton-Freewater Oregon with a Mexican immigrant crew and jumping up and down on the gigantic blade of a windmill with Milton-Freewater’s Man of the Year; or you find yourself dropping by Senior Bowl at the bowling alley in Milton, WI before visiting the Milton House (famous as a stop on the underground railroad) where you are shown the original toothpick belonging to that town’s founder;  or you realize you just spent 24 hours on top of the Blue Hills Weather Observatory here in Milton, MA filming the sky; or you find yourself peeking at baby ducks being raised under a heat lamp in the back of a biker bar in Milton LA;  or, in Milton NC you sit listening to sermons preached by the region’s first black female Baptist preacher– named Angel Lea. And then a few days later you are being stopped on the road by Reverend Lea’s husband Donald, a farmer, who jumps out of his truck to hand over a watermelon he just picked.

During our visits to the Miltons we’ve been taken through family orchards, been told stories of gruesome town murders and grueling divorces. We’ve been toured to the pecan-sheller in the garage, the pet cemetery next door, the solar panels in the backyard, the family photo albums on the shelf, and we’ve gone on tours to places that are no longer there—to football fields that are now strip malls and homes that are now highways.  We’ve been introduced to and have engaged with similar struggles in each town, especially having to do with the death of certain industries, with our countries legacy of systemic racism, and with the changing ethnic make up of populations due to immigration and local migration.

 

Conversations

And we’ve asked questions.  We talked to people. And as we went, we settled on four big questions to structure our conversations, to help us get going, and to get at what we really wanted to know. I have asked them of some of you in this room. Do you want to hear what they are?

How did you get to Milton?

If you could change one thing about the world what would it be?

Do you have advice for future generations?

Why do you think we’re here on this earth?

Right! Those are big questions. And most people had a similar response to hearing them: whoa, or burst out laughing, or put their head in their hands. One person nodded with supportive interest and then stopped in a kind of shock.  “Wait, you want me to answer those questions?”

Yes! Yes we did. We do. We wanted to hear your answers and share ours. We wanted to have a conversation. An exchange. To grow a little bit from hearing your views, your perspectives, your experiences. We wanted to connect.

 

“For and With”

I titled this talk “FOR AND WITH: making theater in 5 small towns named Milton”

because have been musing on those two words “for” and “with” for a while now.  As a theater artist, you generally make a play ‘for’ an audience.  Our Milton Project has us also making an experience ‘with’ one… first, and most obviously, in our creative process: as we travel, we accumulate experiences and information which become the material from which we build our play.

Our play happens with the audience in a loose circle, like in a community gathering. But in the beginning, the lights stay on, so we can all see each other.  Our three actors sit amongst the audience. The play begins with a simple telling of hospitality, of welcome:  Sometimes you are offered a glass of chocolate milk, one of our actors says.

That glass of chocolate milk, you may not be surprised to find out, was offered to me and my collaborator by Maritta Cronin.  The Cronins were among the first people we talked to in Milton, and we met with them before we’d even become comfortable with our own questions, the questions we wanted to be asking.  As time went on, we were invited in to more homes, and offered more things to eat and drink:  Sometimes you are given a bag of kumquats, straight from the tree. That was the Duhon’s, in Milon LA.  Sometimes you are served wine made from grapes grown one mile away. Milton-Freewater, OR, a farming region now filled with vineyards.  Sometimes you go in a Church door. Sometimes you go in the side door near the carport. Sometimes you go in through the door of a gymnasium where Kareem Abdul Jabar played when the gym belonged to Milton College and the Milwaukee Bucks used it for their training camp.

Our audiences enter the play this way because that’s how we entered their towns.  Being invited into peoples’ homes for food; going through doorways of buildings where people gather together, as a community.

 

Reciprocity

We are gathered here, today, as a community.  And I have come through the door of this church today in honor of what this project has taught me about community, which is that its health and vibrancy is in direct relationship to the amount of need members of that community have for each other. That surprised me. Aren’t we taught it’s best not to need anything from others? Aren’t we taught there’s pride in providing and shame in asking?  And yet— engaging in this project has taught me that we can’t have one without the other. Those with need provide others with the opportunity to give. Both the giver and the receiver have to extend outside themselves and in doing so, they make a connection. And those moments of connection, of joining, are what give strength and identity to a community.  You all know that. It is a reciprocal blessing. It’s incredibly important.

We talk a lot about reciprocity in this big Milton project.  Because in order for our play to be meaningful and relevant member to your community, we have to locate reciprocal need: How does our play need Milton? How does Milton need our play?

And, as outsiders, we can’t figure that out alone. We need local collaborators. So I have been meeting with some folks from your Milton for a couple years now to answer that question. What we’ve come up with here is to join together, as individuals and community organizations to sponsor and facilitate a project we are calling “MILTON– OUR COMMUNITY REFLECTED:” It will be a year-long series of events that launches next fall. It will combine creative events and civic dialogue to bring the people of Milton, MA together in meaningful conversation about race, difference, and civic responsibility towards cultivating a diverse community. The presence of our play in the mix of events will deepen and add perspective to those conversations;  the fact those conversations are happening will become vital context for our play when it is performed.  And when it is performed, why will you find yourself wanting to come?  The answer lies in that difference, I think, between those two words: with and for. Making a play with a town, instead of simply for it, means the project has extended itself to give and to receive. Means it can matter. Means it has become part of your community.

 
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Inviting vs Welcoming

We are finding your Milton, and all the Miltons, at a turning point moment in terms of civic identity. The most common phrase we’ve heard in our travels is “everything’s changing.”  “Everything’s changing!” And for some people that is a positive thing and for some people it isn’t.  But always, there are questions of difference, of the longing to connect or the desire to remain separate: across racial lines, across class divides, across religious difference.  The boundaries and borders between us are invisible but, as you know, very real and there are so many of us who make the effort, who have the desire, to step across those lines to meet and be with people who are other than ourselves (don’t you find the conversations get way more interesting when that happens?).  As we’ve worked on this project we’ve gotten a lot better at crossing those lines than we were at the beginning.  It took us a while to learn the powerful difference between inviting and welcoming.  I now think of it this way: to ‘invite’ means to require something to move towards you.  You get to stay still, it’s the other who must activate, who must accept, who must approach.  The act of “welcoming” is different.  To ‘welcome’ is to move towards, to open up, to expand, to reach out. To embrace. It is active.  It is you are moving forward, perhaps out of your comfort zone and into a community where you are the minority, where you are the unknown. Where maybe people disagree with you. Where maybe you disagree with them.

 

Beliefs

In our play, we have what we call ‘the belief’ section. In it, we identify a litany of the beliefs and values we encountered in our conversations. Our conversations with people, as we traveled and talked, were purposely non-political.  And yet personal beliefs and deep value systems were always emerging. We heard lots of different views. Conflicting views. Some we were in line with. Some we found deeply upsetting. And so our play, which we purposely perform to groups of people who all live within one community, acknowledges that all those beliefs are also sitting here in the room with us.  It is about 2/3 of the way through the play, and the actors begin moving from audience member to audience member, gently assigning beliefs to them. It goes something like this:

You believe: people should take better care of the cemetery.

You believe it’s important to spread joy.

You believe you should lock your doors.

 

You believe illegal Mexican immigrants are sucking up our country’s resources.

You believe illegal Mexican immigrants are doing jobs that white people simply refuse to do anymore.

 

You believe if you can help somebody, you should help them.

You believe that the world is a scarier place now than it was 50 years ago.

You believe the world is more free than it was 50 years ago.

 

The beliefs accumulate, mundane to hot button and back again, until finally one actor says:  You believe that we live in a big country that was built for people to live side by side, and live out many points of view.

 

And another qualifies:   …But you don’t want to be in the room with all of them.

 

And then we find ourselves truly at the crux of it.

You believe that we live in a big country that was built for people to live side by side, and live out many points of view.

 

…But you don’t know how to be in the room with all of them

…But you are afraid to be in the room with all of them.

…But you don’t have time to be in the room with all of them.

…But you wonder what it would be like to be in the room with all of them.

 

Being in the room

There are lots of reasons not to be in the same room with people, including how busy we all are. And there are lots of reasons to want to.  I am grateful for things this project has given me, but most of all I am grateful for the opportunity, and the time, to actually be in the same room with people. Many different People who are yes, living out many points of view. It is a gift to connect with someone whose life is so radically different than yours that you suddenly have access to an entirely new way of being, understanding, smelling, tasting, perceiving. One gift of this creative project, I think, is that it gives you a reason to reach out. It opens up your world.

I choose to make art, to make performance, out of openings like these. And in making that art, I choose to keep it in close connection to the communities it is derived from. To give back. Here in Milton, MA I am learning that giving back, and reaching out, is a core value of so many who live here— I am grateful to be welcomed into this place where I can learn from you, and where my own art making can participate in the life of a town where service, interest, curiosity, and energy is regularly, repeatedly, spent on asking: how can we come together as a community in ways that make us all better, stronger, more vital?

 

Visibility

Our play ends with a song.  It is a song taken almost word for a word from a conversation I had with someone here in Milton, MA. That person was “Observer Bob”. who I met one cloudy morning at 5am on the roof of the Blue Hills Weather Observatory. He’s the man who shows up here every morning to look out onto the horizon and determine the visibility for the day and call it into the weather stations—a process that is way more subjective than you would think—because it’s determined by landmarks he can see or not see.

Visibility is low today, our actor sings, as screens over your head illuminate to show an overcast morning in Milton, MA, the sun struggling to come out from behind the clouds. We call this low visibility… when you can see as far as Houghton’s pond, that means visibility is better…

The clouds are moving fast. Everything is changing. “This is a very typical fog,” Observer Bob told me, and the actor sings: This is a very typical fog….

 

As you sit in the final moments of the play, hearing a voice from Milton MA describe the sky floating just over your head, you wonder if Observer Bob is talking about the sky or if he is actually talking about the state of our country. Maybe even the state of the world.  This is a very typical fog.  Visibility is low today.  But anytime now, the sun is going to appear. Get ready!  Observer Bob told me that morning. Get ready with your cameras or whatever.  Because the sun disc is going to come out, and then visibility will be better.   But: you have to be patient. You have to be ready…. and it will make itself visible…  oh it’s there, somewhere… see that strange glow?  Get ready….  And those are the last words of our play.

 

So how can we be ready for clarity? How can we be ready for the clouds to lift, for the way forward to be visible?  I think we do it by being the ones who are doing the clearing. Who are doing the welcoming, the reaching out, the questioning, the needing, and the giving.  These values, that I think all of us in this room share, define my mission as an artist.  I’m so curious to know all your answers, but if you asked me, I think I would answer our final “MILTON” question this way.  Why do I think I’m here on this earth? To use my life, and my theater, in all its forms, to investigate what it feels like, for each of us, to be human; and then to push farther, always farther, asking how, on this earth, we can make life richer for one another, collectively.