My First Day Working with the ESL class at Catholic Charities

            The drive from the University of Louisville campus to Catholic Charities involved going down Brook St, a left turn onto Mohammad Ali, a right on 2^nd and a left on Main where I drove all the way to 22^nd St. I was full of anticipation, curious about the people I would meet, and excited to create theater with them. I tried to imagine what it would be like to arrive to a new city and wondered what city, what form of Louisville, these people actually arrive to: the brightly lit, clean, and thriving Main Street drag with the museums and theaters, the trendy and vibrant Bardstown Road area, the expansive neighborhoods surrounded by parks in the Highlands and St. Matthews, or the run-down and spare area I found myself slowly driving through as I headed to 22^nd and Market. Perhaps in the winter this area seems especially stark, yet I saw only a few stores, compared to the plethora on Bardstown and Frankfort. The store next to Catholic Charities advertises chicken, fish, groceries, lotto, and phones. I wonder how much fresh produce is inside.

            The spire of St. Andrew’s is like a beacon in a sea of brick, rust, and pavement. I reserve my judgment, open to the possibility that economic development is not the only way to measure the wealth of a neighborhood. I run through the freezing air to the main office of Catholic Charities and find myself smiling at all the new faces. I’m told to walk to the corner through the parking lot to the school. I walk briskly wondering if refugees from Africa and Cuba came prepared for daytime temperatures in the teens. I find Amy and we walk up the stairs after checking in with Chris. I feel warm and comfortable amidst the bustle of all the different people, all the different languages. I overhear a Catholic Charities employee explain to a group of women that before they do anything else they’ll walk downstairs to get each of them a pair of gloves. The women are visibly relieved.

            The classroom is full of long tables on rollers and chairs. The other students from my class arrive with lemonade and tea. We set out the snacks and wait for the class to begin. Originally we were supposed to meet from 12 to 1 but I ask and employee who tells me that the students arrive at 12:30. I am grateful for that half hour. I was able to sit and ground myself and remind myself of all the mistakes involving privilege and racist/classist assumptions that I strive to avoid making. I notice a man who has come to class early. He smiles and says hello to me but, to me, his face registers anxiety. He paces back and forth along the lockers on the short wall of the room. He repeatedly picks up and puts down his notebook. He leaves and reenters the room. I begin to wonder just how much stress and anxiety refugees feel as they come to Louisville. I may be projecting, but it seemed as if the man’s face and physicality expressed a state of constant coping with despair. Later in class, he would smile, even laugh, but then return to this state, rubbing his eyes, looking around sadly, and lowering his head. Of course, again, this could all be projection on my part. A week later I asked him about his pacing and he confessed that he had quit smoking cigarettes.

            Once most of the students were in the room we offered them snacks and drinks. I started to serve drinks to people and had the ideas of juggling some oranges to lighten the mood. Another man juggled with me. Finally the class began. We introduced ourselves and then did a cultural mapping exercise wherein people are asked to assemble into different groups based on basic questions like, “How may languages do you speak?” or, “Do you like sweet, sour, salty, or fried food the most?” Once assembled, the groups are assigned with the task of finding three things they all have in common. A fondness of travel, a dislike of cold weather, and a love of music all seem to be popular answers. As I facilitated this exercise and found myself acting out a lot of the words I was using, like ‘grumpy’ or ‘perky’, which one of the students asked me to explain to him later so that he would remember them. Overall, I found the five senses exercise the most interesting and affective. When asked to relate a sight or smell that reminded them of home, the student’s answers were so moving and transporting! Mountains, the smell of dust, the river through Baghdad, dancing, food and spices from Pakistan, and perfume were some of the sensual cues they shared. One man from Somalia spoke of the gun violence that he is reminded of when he sees similar images on television in the U.S. This was a sobering reminder of the tenuous existence many of the refugees led prior to coming to Louisville, an existence that may still be tenuous as they navigate a new country, culture, and language.

The United Nations of Louisville

Reading the Highlander’s “The United Nations of Louisville” written by Michael L. Jones, it informs us about the world refugee population, Louisville Resettlement Communities, Free Public Library Community Outreach, and resources offered in Catholic Charities and Kentucky Methodist Communities.  The article says, “Refugees are people who have fled their homeland because of fear of persecution of imprisonment.  Since 1970, the world refugee population has increased more than 500 percent to about 22 million, most of them women and children.  Only about 2 percent make it to one of the nine Western nations willing to accept them.  According to the United Nations, a fifth of the refugee population is being hosted in developing countries.”  Louisville receives at least 1,500 refugees every year. 

Do I understand what it feels like being a Refugee?  No I wonder what it feels like and what have I experienced in my life that may possibly shed a clue.  I remember moving from Florida to Morganfield, KY and becoming a student at Earle C. Clements Job Corps Center.  I didn’t know anyone.  I knew English, but I didn’t know the resources available, how to take care of myself, or how to survive my new environment.  I wondered if I should have stayed in Florida where everything is familiar.  For three years, it helped me learn work ethics, saving money, receiving training on travelling ministry teams, developing leadership, and earning my Associate of Science Degree at Henderson Community College.  Even when I left, I fell down repeatedly striving for more than living on a survival mode.   Three years is a luxury that refugees do not have and at most six months of assistance.  The article explains this below:   

“There are about six national bodies that disperse refugees to its member organizations in America.  Catholic Charities is part of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.  Kentucky Refugees Ministries is part of Church World Services, a Methodist group.  Faith-based organizations play a vital role in refugee resettlement because they have the ability to mobilize resources.  But because they receive government funding, these groups are barred from conducting blatantly religious activities.  Refugees have a 30- 90 day resettlement period in which they receive food stamps, rent assistance and bus passes.  They are required to attend English classes and job development courses during that period.” (Jones, 2-3)

Catholic Charities Refugee Resettlements are in Portland, Beechmont, Newburg, Clifton, Butchertown, Shively, and Old Louisville.  Because of their arrivals, the communities are surging energy, life, and commercial developments with new churches, restaurants, stores, and businesses.  We have diverse authentic foreign cuisines at Funmi’s Café, Havana Rumba, Vietnam Kitchen, and Annie’s Café.   Valumarket Grocery Stores offers groceries that culturally map the communities:  Indian, Cuban, Mexican, African, Vietnamese, and much more.   I wonder what more can be done?  How can we create a smoother transition for our new international neighbors?

Theatre as a Catalyst

Hello, I’m Alaina Watson.  I’m a Theatre Arts Major at the University of Louisville.   In the UofL Theatre Program, I’m a playwright, actress, and sound/light technician.  Outside of UofL, I’ve directed dance and drama ministries, and I enjoy working as a Homeless Awareness Speaker.  My favorite is ministering to children in orphanages.  I have always volunteered for charities like the Wayside Christian Mission, Red Cross, Relay for Life, March of Dimes, and Literacy Volunteers of America.  I love becoming a catalyst for positive impacts or a metamorphosis.  Metamorphosis means to have a radical and complete change.   

I’m originally from Tampa, Florida and my heritage is African, Native, and Cuban Americans.  Even despite my multi-culture background, my family chose to speak English only.  Now, I’m in Spanish III Class at UofL and considering double majoring.  I’m fulfilling my heritage gap; it is most important to me for oral history survival.  Now I’m starting something completely new with the UofL Community Based Arts and Catholic Charities.   I see myself as an activist desiring to understand the Refugee & Immigration Journey.   Possibly together, we can lay the groundwork for proactive legislation.  I’m looking forward to creating live productions about the family heritage in the Portland Community.  I’m grateful for this opportunity. 

Theater as Social Medicine and Opportunity for Social Change

Hello! I am a student in the University of Louisville’s Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program in the Humanities. My primary research involves exploring how art, theater, and literature can affect social change and, more specifically, interrupt civic and consumer oriented apathy. To start with, I believe theater is society’s medicine. If we look at a person’s hierarchy of needs, with food, water, and shelter at the basic level, community at the middle rung, and individual creative, intellectual, and/or material freedom and pursuit at the higher level, theater has the potential to help people satisfy these needs. We see this in the range of theater expressions found around the world. Social justice oriented theater demands political agency around access to basic resources of survival, including the demand for human rights. Community theater brings people together around common practices and themes. Professional theater primarily offers individuals an avenue for creative and intellectual expression, a privilege in that professional theater practitioners are free to create theater with less of an economic or political burden. These three categories of theater are not distinct as many theater artists, companies, and works exhibit an overlap of all three. At the heart of all of these manifestations of theater is the craft itself, a craft that offers people of all abilities and vision to find their niche be it performance, writing, music, management, technical artistry, leadership, or criticism.

  To me, theater is storytelling or, more simply, bodies watching bodies tell stories. Within each community there are different ways of telling stories and different stories being told. This is important to keep in mind as we embark on our devised theater project. We need to be careful to allow the stories and ways of storytelling that already exist on the community we are collaborating with to stay central to our process. Many community and political organizers who come from outside the population they are helping, such as the folks who access refugee resources at Catholic Charities, understand the importance of checking their privilege and carefully limiting how their stories, or biases, beliefs, perspectives, etc., influence the organizing process. The same holds true in devised community theater. The objective is actually the opposite, where I, as an outsider and ally, humbly accept and explore the stories and ways of telling them already existing in the community I am in collaboration with.

By surrendering my perspectives and stories and allowing others to imbue me with their experiences, especially people from marginalized populations, I engage in a process of decolonization wherein I attempt to wash away habits taught to me by mainstream society which can be racist, sexist, homophobic, classist, etc. The social conditioning I have undergone, and presently undergo, under the scope of Western white-supremacist, patriarchal, heteronormative, corporate, consumer civilization, can only be interrupted by decolonizing myself through acts of humility and creative collaboration with a group larger than myself. I am excited to see the ways in which together we can find freedom from Western oppression. Hopefully there is some fun to be had amongst the important hours of curious listening, and the collective accountability process!

Hello and Welcome to the Louisville Intercultural Engaged Theatre Project Blog!

Hello, and welcome!

This is a blog for a course and project at The University of Louisville in which the students are learning about community based theatre through creating a play with and for a community of recent immigrants who have sought refuge and settled in Louisville, KY. We will be meeting with this group of people, with whom we connected through Catholic Charities, over the next several weeks, to hear their stories and to ask for their help creating a theatre production based on those stories.

Here is an article in Louisville’s Highlander newspaper, to which we looked for initial outside research about the community with which we’ll be working. We’re outsiders to this group, and are beginning with a blank slate in terms of knowledge and goals for the resulting play. I, personally, am very grateful for the willingness of these people to share their stories with us, to help us learn about their lives, and to help us make theatre that connects directly with people in our city.

The class began with students reading about and discussing the processes used by companies in the United States doing “community based” work, which people define in different ways.  In Beginner’s Guide to Community Based Arts, “community based art” is defined as “any form or work of art that emerges from a community and consciously seeks to increase the societal, economic and political power of that community” (xvi). Robert Leonard and Ann Kilkelly’s book, Performing Communities: Grassroots Ensemble Theaters Deeply Rooted in Eight U.S. Communities, includes chapters on several companies, each of whom has a different idea of how to define the field in which they work. Lately, I am particularly interested in a definition very much like the one put forth in Performing Communities by Cornerstone Theater Company, with whom I had the privilege of studying and making theatre in 2010: “their success is based on baking art that satisfies all partners involved” (73). While I am certainly open to the possibility that this work might increase the power of the community with which we are engaging, and I would love for that to happen, my interest is more in using the theatrical process as a means of communication and one-on-one connection with my new fellow Louisvillians who came here from around the world. In other words, if there's a problem this group would like to explore through this process, we'll be happy to talk about how this project can help with that. Beyond that, my hope is that we can build a new community through this collaboration, learn something about each other, and enjoy ourselves in the process. 

As we work through this process, another of our goals is to allow the outcome of the process...the play or performance...to take shape based on the conversations we are having. Ultimately, it should be a representation of all of the different voices and stories we hear, and of the way in which we went about collecting them. Especially with such a rich community of people who have very different cultures of origin, it seems important to find a way to allow the multiple ways of seeing the world we're bound to encounter equal weight in the story we tell.

This blog is intended to be another way to listen and have discussions. As we work on the project, students and I will be posting our thoughts here, and hope that everyone will feel free to comment. By the end of this semester, we will have created a draft of a play, and an important part of devising that play is the feedback we get from people in the world around us. We hope that you’ll keep up with the work we’re doing, will become a part of the community we’re building through commenting here, and will help us create an exciting new piece of theatre.