I am a big believer in the ripple effects that both education and the arts can create. One of my core values is helping individuals realize the unique gifts they possess that arise from their particular talents, cultural backgrounds, and perspectives, and empowering them to express themselves authentically. I do this primarily through improvisation and physical theatre explorations that lead participants to discover their unique creative brilliance, that then helps them put further positive ripples into the world.

I feel rankled when I hear someone say something like, "I'm not a theatre person" or "I'm terrible at performing." To me, theatre is about much more than demonstrating excellent technique on a stage. For too long, the definition of what makes a "good" performer (especially in the world of musical theatre that I come from) has been too narrowly defined by commercial prioritization of particular traits that I believe is grounded in white supremacy. Instead of squeezing people into boxes, theatre ought opportunities for participants to grow their self confidence, learn how to connect more vulnerably and effectively with other humans, and explore what makes them unique. 

Celebrating and respecting people's cultural backgrounds is one of my major priorities as an artist and facilitator. Through theater, I strive to create an inclusive environment where everyone's voice is valued. I believe in the transformative power of theatre practices to foster connection, empathy, and understanding among individuals from diverse backgrounds. By cultivating a sense of community and collaboration, I aim to bridge spaces between people. 

We feel most human when we are immersed in physical, unmediated, unrecorded activity that helps us connect to ourselves and to other humans. In my experience, community engaged theatre is the umbrella category that has created the most experiences that fit that description and allowed me to be present in them. I feel called to share those kinds of experiences with others in accessible ways.

When I was growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, the theatre I experienced felt like it was all "pay to play." Although there were vibrant experimental/activist/politically engaged theatre scenes around the Bay, those were not the ones I encountered. My parents were both lovers of musical theatre but did not know much about that world. The theatre opportunities that my mom, an immigrant from Japan who was figuring out how to raise kids in America, found for me were suburban summer camps that put on productions of Bye Bye Birdie and Footloose. These were enriching and educational experiences from which I gained a lot of technical training, but at the end of the day, the goal was to put on a show that the parents would feel was worth their money -- not to build community.

I believe strongly that the experiences people have in community theatre spaces can create ripple effects that create waves of positive change far beyond the walls of a rehearsal room. We are all familiar with the data about the way social isolation was becoming an increasingly nefarious force that was fraying our social fabric even before the COVID-19 pandemic. As a teaching artist and facilitator of communal theatre experiences, I am deeply passionate about creating spaces that bring people together during this period of increased social isolation. As both a facilitator and participant, it has been applied theatre and community engaged theatre experiences that I relearned how to make eye contact, how to trust other people's physical presences, and how to ease a group of people from being strangers into being a community after the pandemic. 

Question 1: For years now I have heard about how different the experimental theatre scene is in the U.K. and Europe, largely thanks to government funding. I have heard about this discrepancy in the wistful sighs of my theatre professors and in major publications like The Atlantic. My impression is that theatre artists in the U.K. and Europe are able to take bigger risks because of their stronger social safety net. I want to know: does that type of funding extend into bolstering a vibrant community-oriented theatre culture as well?

Question 2: My practical understanding of applied & community engaged theatre has been entirely U.S.-based. I have read about community engaged theatre in other countries, but never experienced it (aside from an NYU study away program in Puerto Rico, a place whose theatre practitioners' concerns are very affected by U.S. policies). I began learning about applied theatre and community engaged theatre over the past few years, first as a summer intern at the Goodman Theater's free summer program for teens, and then in Joe Salvatore's classes at at NYU. Much of the U.S.-based community engaged theatre I have learned about seems to address gaps where needs are not being met, as Busby writes; many aim to fill roles that social services are not adequately addressing. Does the community engaged theatre scene in Dublin also largely focus on marginalized communities? And to what extent do those communities overlap with those in the U.S.? 

Question 3: Busby asserts in her Introduction that "funding arts projects based on notions of change, while providing access to the arts for those who might remain excluded from theatre, does lend an instrumental element to the work. This position is dangerous because it encourages a justification of art which can only lead to transformation stories and the erosion of the value of artistry and beauty" (p.8). Do Dublin-based practitioners face the same challenges that U.S. applied theatre artists do in terms of using quantitative data to justify pursuing community engaged arts?

Goal 1: To be able to articulate some of the primary values and concerns of Dublin-based community engaged theatre practitioners.

Goal 2: To learn new facilitation strategies that I can incorporate into my own practice of facilitating artistic experiences. If these strategies are highly specific to the context in Dublin, I want to figure out how I could adapt them to my context, or to learn about why they might not work outside of the community they have been developed to serve.

Goal 3: To have a positive experience creating a devised piece I am proud of. For the most part, I have had fairly negative devised theatre experiences, and I admit that this part of the course stirs up anxiety in me. My most positive devising experience happened in one of Joe's classes (on Zoom in the first few weeks of the pandemic, no less), so I am feeling optimistic about this process and working with colleagues he trusts. 

• I've been reading a travel guide to Ireland that has given me some broad strokes of the city's layout, history, and relationship to the rest of the country.

• I watched this video about The Book of Kells to learn about this famous historical artifact. I think it's amazing what art historians have been able to uncover, from the book's likely origins in Scotland, the fact that it was made by 18 year old monks who wrote little notes to each other on the vellum, and the fact that the monks' young age resulted in both incredible attention to small details as well as some silly mistakes. 

• Dublin, and Ireland at large, has gone through various periods of violence in the city, whether that be in the fight for independence in the early twentieth century or during the Troubles. I visited Ireland very briefly when I was studying abroad in England as an undergrad, and I remember going on a tour where the tour guide pointed out bullet holes still visible in the stone wall of a building.

• For a while, Ireland was offering major tax incentives to big tech companies (think Google, Meta, Salesforce, etc.). As a result, such companies were setting up major corporate hubs in Dublin, causing an influx of immigration and wave of gentrification in the city. Having grown up in Silicon Valley, this was an aspect of the city's recent history I connected strongly to.

• A few years ago, I listened to this episode of the podcast Song Exploder in which the singer-songwriter Hozier breaks down his song "Nina Cried Power." I was surprised to learn about how inspired Hozier and other Irish artists were by Civil Rights activists in the U.S.