Ever-Evolving News About a New Labour of Love

My dear friends, family, acquaintances & colleagues,  

I shared this with a few of you earlier this week, but it has evolved quite a bit since then. If you read through what you've already read, you will get to something new.  To the rest of you, I wanted to share now the recent machinations of my head and heart.  

Through my work with teens as a director and arts educator, I've gained insight that I can only describe as life-changing. Their willingness to explore, their combination of naivete and intelligence, vulnerability and bravery... it has awed me on many occasions. They are tomorrow's political consciousness and moral conscience. But they are also TODAY'S. I've worked with kids whose parents could send them to expensive drama camps, and kids from the projects who had never seen the inside of a theatre.  I have seen the huge gaps in opportunity and access to the arts and have yearned to lead an initiative that is about giving teenagers in this city a theatrical home in which they can explore their fears and identities, find their voices, and feel safe.  So I went about the last week conceiving of that, making access my central mission.  I would create a space for ALL teenagers. Black and white. Privileged and poor. Gay and straight.  No fences.

But something didn't feel right.  What was it?  It was that as a black female artist who knows financial struggle, "access" is a given to me, not a mandate.  At least not the entirety of one.  I don't need to make a special effort to remember to reach out to non-white kids, or kids in the margins. I will always do that.  Thankfully, access and outreach is the mandate of many youth-focused arts initiatives who may not come by that focus as naturally as I do.  So that left me sitting at my kitchen table, a teapot between and me and two flickering candles... digging deeper.  And then the shovel hit something.  

Some who have had near-death experiences say that your life flashes before you before you die.  I can't say that my experience was quite so dramatic but images began to pass by me from left to right, like a rapid-fire slideshow and ALL from my activist life.   V-Day . MMRP . MENding . Stolen Sisters . Any One Of Us . Moments with Olivia Chow . The Whores . White Ribbon . New Orleans . One Billion Rising . The speeches I gave at the OBR rally and party last year . Our meeting with MP Carolyn Bennett . Conversations with Eve . Followed immediately by flashes of the Congo... Steubenville... India... HERE.  

And as clear as bell, an expanded mission. 

✓ To build a theatrical sanctuary in which to promote participation and mutual respect between all young people of all races and creeds. 
✓  To promote a philosophy of egalitarianism and empathy between young men and young women. 

✓ To teach that all qualities are human qualities, while recognizing and embracing the innate differences between us.  

✓ To confront both misogyny and misandry and explore the paths that lead to gender violence.
✓  To explore the ongoing reality of racism and cultural or faith-based discrimination.

✓ To challenge the entrenched sexism that teaches boys that girls are less, and teaches girls to agree. 

✓ To establish a space in which boys are allowed to be sad, girls are allowed to be angry, those still finding their identities are safe, and all are allowed to be unsure. 

So, without a dime to my name but an ocean of vision, I decided to create this space, this outlet, this company, from the ground up.  Am I terrified?  Yes. Am I insane?  Yes. Excited? Yes. I can't help but feel that six years of theatrical work with young people and eight years of anti-violence activism have led me to my new experiment.  I called it Teenage Wasteland, inspired by that poetic and provocative phrase in The Who's song Baba O'Riley.  I loved the idea of turning it on its ear.  Youth are the antithesis of a wasteland - they are our most fertile resource yet shunning their voices is an arrogant choice that adults make far too often. Then a lovely acquaintance of mine (theatre critic Lynn Slotkin) mentioned that a young girl whom I auditioned recently, a scared 13-year-old whose audition changed me, had to be a part of this. Her name happens to be Grace.  I have carried her with me and been inspired by her everyday since the moment she captured my heart.  The new name whispered loudly - yes yes yes.

The first production by TEENAGE GRACELAND, to take place this Spring, tackles the issue of violence head-on.  Bang Bang You're Dead by William Mastrosimone is the powerful story of the perpetrator of a mass shooting who is confronted in prison by the spirits of his victims -- his parents and five classmates.  Columbine, Dawson College, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, l'Ecole Polytechnique... it is chilling that I can rattle five school massacres off so easily.  This topic was even part of my first work as a playwright.  It is too relevant, too resonant in our society.  Those who are killed have no voice after their murders.  In Bang Bang You're Dead, they do.  

Thus begins what I'm sure will be one of the craziest, scariest, most beautiful journeys of my life.  A community theatre collective for teens... where they can question and laugh and search and sing and delve and grow and be afraid and hug and rage and love and learn. A place to foster the emergence of more gracious and graceful young men and women.  A place with knowledge of the fact that great artists are not only those with technical skills, but those who are open to receiving the grace of the Universe and of their fellow human beings, and who operate from a place of grace within themselves.

THAT feels right.

Love, love, and more love,

Tanisha