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October 16, 2005
Dr. Mia Angelou & More
What a weekend of inspiration.
I've been to alot of Improv Festivals, both with & without Men in Shirts. This weekend I was able to attend a different kind of festival, a colligiate festival dedicated to Cultural Literacy. There were solo & group performances of poetry, scenes from classic plays, monolouges, and even a little improv in format I've never seen anywhere.
Thursday night was most spectacular. I must admit that I am unfortunately illiterate when it comes to great poetry, speakers, and playwrites. So when I was told Mia Angelou would be speaking, I had no idea what I was in store for. She is a woman who OOZES inspiration. She spoke about her tragic past, and always had a positive spin on the future.
Paraphrased, her most notable comment in my mind follows: Read and you will learn that others have felt sad, felt angry, felt lonely, felt scared, and you will learn that they others have come out of it with "a little passion, a little compassion, a little humor, and a whole lot of style."
That is all I've ever tried to do. Come out of life with "a little passion, a little compassion, a little humor, and whole lot of style." She is a fabulous human who spoke of "Rainbows in the clouds", and the effect that a single human can have on another by just being humanistic, and helpful. Simple things are rainbows and they are so easy to forget about in our cloudy world.
There were so many great perfomances, but another that I must discuss came from California State University: Long Beach. "Interact" performs across the country, at prisons, sexual assualt awareness meetings, colleges, high schools, and festivals. They use improvisation, and character archtypes to create a reinactment of a fictional but plausable sexual assault.
They do not depict violence on stage, but instead portray scenes both before & after a sexual assault. When the scenes are completed, the proffessor asks the audience what they would do to diffuse the situation they just saw take place. Then he asks them to do it, on stage in front of everyone. The actors must hold onto thier wants, trust me they never deviate, and the proffesor keeps a constant dialouge with the audience. It was astounding. It was profound. It was the kind of work, that truely helps people in need. Thank goodness they exist.
Posted by Clifton at October 16, 2005 10:47 AM
Comments
It's spelled: Maya and playwright.
Posted by: Amy at October 18, 2005 9:33 PM