Tired and Inspired

I bet you were expecting me to write about India, Greece, London, Paris, and Italy. Well, that will happen eventually. It has been the most whirlwind summer so far, but if things continue in this vein, then it may also be the most wonderful summer of my life so far.

Before I catch you up on my travels, I need to make sure I chronicle my time with Cornerstone Theater Company's Summer Institute. I've been here less than 48 hours and yet it feels like so much longer, and I mean that in a good way.

First, here is a link to the institute. In the photo on the homepage I'm sitting next to Jose, the other assistant director, and in front of him is the director Juliette Carrillo, who is very cool and nice (google her, she's done a lot of impressive stuff). When I met Juliette she said, "Oh, you're one of my ADs! I'm going to work you hard!" To which I replied, "Good! That's what I like to hear!"

The really incredible thing is that I like everyone here and feel a sense of ease with them that usually takes much longer than two days to reach. There truly is a sense of openness, kindness, and generosity amongst the people here-the values Cornerstone holds most dear. I also really like my three roommates: Courtney (entering her senior year at Georgetown), Kathy (PhD student at ASU), and Eda (MA student in Illinois from Turkey).

The living situation here is definitely interesting, but also fun and communal in a great way. It really does feel like camp. We live at Discovery Charter Prep School, and our bedrooms are inside the modular classrooms. We use the school bathrooms and they set up an outdoor "shower garden." I was less than thrilled with this shower situation, but decided to suck it up and deal. But I can say after my first shower yesterday that it was actually quite refreshing! You fill a 5 gallon bag with water (either warm from the tap or heat it with the sun), and then with the help of gravity you shower. There are a few kinks, but since with this method I only use about 3 gallons, it's quite nice to feel like I'm helping the environment a little.

Meals are communal and delicious. Breakfast and lunch are self-serve with many yummy and healthy options, and dinners are different each night. So far we had great grilled chicken and a taco bar. There are also always lots of veggies and salad. We all wash our own dishes and take turns doing KP "kitchen patrol."

The days are long, jam-packed, but amazing. Today I have some down time in the morning because all of us are required to audition for the show (even though we already have our production assignments), and it only takes about 5 minutes each. I felt a bit like a zombie my first day because of jet lag/lack of sleep, but it was mostly an orientation. Yesterday we had a great warm up in the morning with Laurie, the Curriculum Director/Associate Artistic Director at Cornerstone and my new friend crush. She is so awesome.

Then Michael, the artistic director of Cornerstone, led us all in "Cultural Mapping" exercises. They all begin with something kind of easy and work their way toward the more touchy subjects. For instance, each corner of the room is designated something and then you go to your corner and have to find three things in common with the other people there. These categories varied from youngest child/oldest/middle/only (I am the only child along with Sigrid the playwright), monolingual/bilingual/multilingual/feel you have yet to master a language, music/image/text/movement (this one was the hardest choice for me).

Then we had a line in the room we had to arrange ourselves on, starting with: sirloin steak/veggie burger (I was actually closer to veggie burger), then moving onto things more difficult: art/social justice, wealthy/not wealthy, most likely to get a arrested/least likely to get arrested. The main point of the exercise is that you talk with the people around you to figure out where you belong, and that who you are in relation to these categories depends on where you are and who you're with. Afterward we also discussed how it always felt weird when we would stop and look at the line, because we felt like we wanted to explain or hear the explanations of people not as near us. For instance, MC, a Cornerstone Ensemble member and actor who is in the play, was the furthest on the most likely to get arrested end because he's black, and he explained that in his mind he's not likely to because he doesn't do anything wrong, but by virtue of his race and where he lives he belongs towards that end of the line.

Then we talked about Pacoima and the community partners we've developed here with Paula, the institute director, and then we read through the latest draft of the play, "It's All Bueno" written by Sigrid Gilmer. It's a funny adaptation of Candide and I (thankfully!) really like it.

After lunch we had a scavenger hunt in Pacoima, which was really more just so we could see the different places mentioned in the script and get to know the community. We weren't supposed to find tactile objects so much as do things like take photos, write haikus, talk to people, hand out fliers for auditions, think about what/who is inspiring, intriguing, new to us, similar to our world, scary, missing, and unique. Now, I can be a little wary of what feels like manufactured fun with people I don't really know, but I had such a great time. I would say that I got lucky with my car-full of people, but then again I really like everyone here so I think no matter what I would have had a blast. I was in Laurie's car with Susan (an MA student at Towson in Baltimore) and Elizabeth, a Cornerstone staff production assistant. We wrote a haiku together at the first stop, the Hansen Dam, and then couldn't stop, so we wrote haikus everywhere we went and wound up with 14 in total. At one point Laurie insisted on stopping to get us all ice cream at a vendor truck (didn't I say she was awesome?), and we chatted with the owner and his kids, as well as a family stopping there, and hopefully they'll come audition. At Costco Elizabeth and I scurried off to try a sample and then lost Susan and Laurie for a little while, so we wrote:

After the samples
We lost Laurie and Susan
We found them again

After returning to the school campus and sharing our findings, it was interesting to hear what other group members had to say. In general it sounds like the community has been quite receptive to the idea of the play, and later today we'll see how many will come out and audition.

Following dinner we had meetings with our supervisors for our production assignments (Juliette is my supervisor). Then we discussed community engagement and broke into smaller groups to brainstorm. By this time it was 8:30pm and I was exhausted. We ended a little before 9:30pm and I wanted to write this all down, but was too wiped. Even though we have so little free time (I was up at 7:15am this morning to do yoga!), I am going to do my best to chronicle my Cornerstone Institute experience.