Exhilarated after a bracing swim in the Irish Sea at Forty Foot. I took the DART train down the coast for my Tuesday afternoon site visit. The data plan I bought hasn't been working, and I was traveling solo, so several times I asked local people for directions, input on etiquette at the bathing spot, etc. As a result I had quite a few lovely interactions, including a 10 minute conversation while treading freezing water with a man who agreed to do an interview with me!

I bring experience creating documentary theatre projects from the ground up. I have performed in a play that Joe was creating from original source material, Making Gay History, and experienced a developmental documentary theatre process from an actor's perspective. I also took Joe's class about creating documentary theatre and collaborated with a Brooklyn-based arts organization to create a verbatim play that aligned with the organization's goals.

I bring years of experience facilitating groups of people who may not be comfortable or knowledgeable about theatre practices. I am good at using humor and kindness to set people at ease, and I have an arsenal of warm ups, improvisation games, and movement exercises to connect people to their voices and bodies, as well as the other people in the room. (I also filed Declan's beautiful combination of stretching while acknowledging one's fellow artists away for later.)

I also bring a great deal of movement experience. I was a very serious dancer through high school (primarily in ballet and contemporary styles of dance), and have taken modern dance classes every now and again, most recently during NYU's January term in 2021 via Zoom. My body, my center of gravity, and my dance capabilities have changed a lot since I was at the peak of my dance career, which has sometimes made me feel discouraged; I never feel like I am older more than when I take a dance class. However, as we were devising our piece in Declan's workshop today, I found that my first instincts were movement-based. I immediately began to think choreographically and had a strong desire to create flowing patterns of movement with our piece. My reckoning with my changing dance capabilities gives me empathy for applied theatre participants who perhaps feel a bit out of their element, and my practices in yoga, mindfulness, and somatics have given me the ability to make physical expression more accessible to participants.

 I have a curiosity and eagerness about creating documentary theatre out of historical materials, like the Dorothy Macardle materials Declan used to create his play about her Civil War Gaol Journals. 

I also want to gain the ease, warmth, and ability live in ambiguity that I felt Jenny MacDonald possessed when we dove into discussions about her facilitation. Every aspect of Jenny's facilitation worked so well for me, but I also understood the tensions some members of my cohort experienced with the storytelling exercise stirring up upsetting memories that they did not want to explore in that setting. (I have experienced that too in other workshops that I felt were less warm and inviting, or when I was experiencing great personal upheaval.) I had such respect for the way Jenny either addressed those concerns, or chose to let them hang in the air and marinate a bit. When I receive anything but glowing feedback, I feel my heart rate increase and my first instinct is to get defensive. I loved that Jenny said, "As a facilitator, you learn to forgive yourself again and again." 

I was also inspired by her outlook that people are capable, brave, and resilient. Perhaps this a millennial/Gen Z thing, or an American thing, or an NYU thing, but I often feel in my NYU classes that we can be so concerned for the psychological safety of our students/participants that we can tip over into condescension, rather than creating learning opportunities that allow them to rise to the challenges we put forth. I have noticed this worrying impulse in myself and other educators to cushion educational experiences so much that failure is not possible. I am not just talking about big stakes failure, like getting a failing grade -- rather, as someone who works in the improv world, I am concerned with helping people fail in bold yet low stakes ways so that they can build resilience. I want to learn how to better encourage that sort of ethos as a facilitator.