...and many happy returns.

I can count the days left on my fingers as this very long journey begins to wind down. Currently, we are in Afghanistan, working with an organization called Aschiana that runs soup kitchens and day centers for street working children all over Afghanistan, as well as a vocational training facility for older youth.

We are in Mazar-i-Sharif, a city to the north that is famous for a very large and very blue mosque claiming to be the final resting place of Mohamed’s son-in-law Ali. The mosque is painted with ornate decoration while fake plastic palm trees in various florescent colors line the marble courtyard and surrounding park. At night the whole mosque, including plastic palm trees is lit up like the Vegas strip.

The scene is enhanced by the always striking image of women beneath white burqas huddled in the few places of shade. Mazar is famous for the white burqa, while Kabul for the sky blue. I must say, despite myself, that the burqa can be visually stunning against the subdued hues of brown cobbled streets and unpainted houses.

The streets in Mazar are paved in sections of bumpy roads and then smooth concrete. The streets are lined by walls and long passageways that lead to more walls and doors. Colors are sparse, and after being India, they look tastefully simple. We are in a tall building, so we can peak into the courtyards surrounding us. Otherwise, life here is lived behind closed doors for the most part.

We performed a cut down version of the show we were doing for children in INDIA, as our group has gone from nine to three. We are performing in schools, orphanages, the Aschiana centers, and on Saturday the kindergarten! The children seem to really respond here, although you can tell they do not really know how to watch a show. Audience participation like clapping, etc is just not part of their socialization. Neither are some of the most basic things we take for granted like forming a line. The basic education classes attempt to instill these ideas while also focusing on literacy. Because the children work on the street for the most part and do not go to school, they can only spare an hour for education class. The extra enticement of a hot meal everyday gets about 120 children in the classroom for even a limited amount of time, a great accomplishment in my eyes.

Teaching workshops has been particularly noteworthy here because, right away, you can see the value in theatre games for teaching and improving coordination and listening skills. If given the time, space and consistency of a long term program, games with rules like “when I say 1:touch the wall, 2: touch the floor, 3: get in a circle 4: dance with a friend”, can decidedly help the everyday development of these children. In addition, we taught some of the vocational kids the games before hand so they could be the trainers when working with the children. It was so rewarding to see one woman take the class over and teach a game I had forgotten I had shown them.

We hope that they will take this into their lives in some way and more importantly that we can come back here after some time away. What a gift it would be to come back and see our trainings incorporated into their curriculum. Even to come back just to give them a smile would be such a blessing.

Life here feels very every day, a concept that is so hard to convey through emails and blogs. It’s hard for many to believe that a place that we hear about so frequently in the news can be a place of such normalcy. Of course, I am in the north, and look out of my bedroom window in the mornings to a rose garden. This place is of infinite wonder and contradiction to me, a place I would like to return to and a place I will never fully understand. Nor they me.

Ultimately, we hope that our work and our presence here has given people an alternative view to that they see on the news or in their streets. That there are Americans coming with roses in hand, instead of guns. I imagine that is what cultural exchange is all about; connections and questions, uncertainties and optimism, beginnings and hopefully many happy returns.

Greetings from Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan.

We are alive and well and holed up for a week with an organization called Ashiana (meaning "nest" in Dari) which specializes in basic education for working street children and vocational training for ages 14 - 20. We just had the grand tour today and met the staff; and are getting geared up to introduce the students to new and creative ways of thinking.

Though we feel secure and are sensibly conducting ourselves, there is no question that the general mood here is that the country has gotten less stable over the last 3 years. The perception is that Pakistan is stirring up the trouble and, despite the rhetoric, the US is doing nothing to stop them. The details of course are more complicated we’re just trying to keep our heads low and concentrating on working with the kids to make them more happy and confident.

The end is drawing near, but there is still work to be done. Another note or two before this is all said and done.

The last India chapter...

The India part of this adventure is quickly drawing to a close and the Afghanistan part is about to begin.

I thought by now I would be ready to head home, but I’ve gotten my second wind and am excited for the adventures that await us.

All in all, things have been going very well. I know I have learned a lot and enjoyed doing the shows and the challenge of the workshops. Everyone has worked at 110% of their capacity and we’ve contiunted to engage audiences and workshop participants wherever we’ve gone. The feedback that we got was always positive and we too have taken a great deal from each of our programs.

I think that in the future Hyderabad and it's surroundings areas might be the best place to concentrate future projects. It is easier to reach Muslim youth populations there and the theatre group we worked with, Koshish, was not only enthusiastic but also had a handful of women working with them. Both this connection and the connection with Banglanatak in Kolkata are ones to keep and grow.

While UNICEF and Gandhi Darshan/Smriti may be possible parnters in the future as well. We are working with one UNICEF group in Darshan now which is a tribal group of 30 children that live in a refugee camp just south of here. They are a great group and excellent students willing to try everything.

Well, that's the news for the moment—next stop Kabul.

-Michael

coming full circle, back to Dehli

In Hyderabad, we arrived on the scene-- an actual street with motor bikes scooting past and the clamor of people all around. Then halfway through the show the sky turned dark and storm came to cut the heat and get all 200 audience members running for anything with an overhang. After the storm, our stage had turned into a giant puddle and we could not continue. I was not ready to leave, but we forge ahead.

We are now back in Delhi at the same place where we began.. the Gandhi Smiriti-- the place where Gandhi was shot- this time working with 30 children who have been brought here by UNICEF. They are from a region of India called Bastar; a region notorious for tribal violence and all of the children have been taken from the their homes, either because of violence or the threat of violence, and placed in boarding houses or refugee camps. We were hoping to go there, but UNICEF decided the trip would be too dangerous and that such a trip was a fantastic chance for these children to see
Delhi.

We are working with them for a week, doing theatre games, teaching circus arts, making masks. It is so amazing to return to Delhi after all of this time away. I remember thinking what a huge crazy, congested place. Now is seems so tame and orderly!

On Friday, we head to Afghanistan for three weeks of workshops and performing in Kabul and Masar-i-Sharif.

More from there…

From the dust of Bihar to heart of Hyderabad...

The Bihar workshops ended very well-- the theatre group we were working with was to give a small informal presentation to us to show their incorporation of workshop ideas (non-verbal communication, acrobatics, puppetry, etc) into their theatrical style. Before we knew it, the informal presentation turned into a crowd of 700 with street vendors selling peanuts and bikes parked in back like an official parking lot!

Our workshops are much more ephemeral – we do not know how our work is transferred, so the performance was a fantastic experience for us as we were able to see the direct application of our training on other theatre artists who work for social change.

The whole experience in Bihar left me wondering about the difference we are making here in such a short time. Is it possible to make an impact without knowing the language or spending time just getting to know a situation, a group, a set of circumstances? We are traveling here so much and doing so many things-- one never knows if a lot of little things add up in the end.

One particularly positive example: we were working outside and teaching an acrobatic move that requires four or more people to turn over at the same time so each person has their feet on the others back. We were working with the adults and before long there were around 200 kids and general onlookers. Not but 20 minutes later, all of the children were off in another field trying the move without us there at all, at least fifty kids working together to make it work. What a scene!!!

We are now in a new place, full of quirks and character. Hyderabad is a city of chadors and smog congested street corners and urban manifestations of rural life everywhere. The outside of Islamic buildings are so carefully constructed, with curvy organic shapes, arches and ornamentation you wouldn’t believe.

The Muslim women wear black burquas here, with only their eyes showing. The best part of this city is the juxtaposition everywhere; women wearing stylish sunglasses over their burquas, other women standing adjacent in a midriff sari of bright orange. The large British architecture of covered sidewalks stands in tandem with large Muslim influenced monuments and finally the huge lake that the city hugs with a statue of Buddha right in the middle.

We are working with COVA, a organization of many volunteer organizations that works for social progress in the city. They have an "in-house" theatre company that works to spread the message across about affordable housing. It’s really fantastic.

A few more workshops and performances- and then we’re back to Delhi before heading to Afghanistan. Every day another adventure in the making...

One month to go!

-meghan

On to Bihar

We left Calcutta and are now in Bihar, known as one of the poorest and most lawless places in India.... and we are having a great time! We are in West Champaran in a town called Betiah. Every day we travel to a tiny and exquisitely beautiful village outside Betiah; poor but it is impeccably neat with tidy mud homes, thatched roofs and animals roaming everywhere. It's stunningly peaceful contrasted to the wet, nasty, crowded poverty of Kolkata.

Betiah is wild and noisy with tiny horses pulling carts, people, bicycles, cows, goats, dogs -- it's truly a zoo. The cows really do roam freely, wandering casually across traffic at their leisure.

We are working with women from the village who come to this small school for training in sewing. They are so modest and shy that they would hardly do the most simple of exercises. Thankfully they are beginning to open up, and they all came back after the break so we didn't completly scare them away.

We are working with a mask company that does a series of plays for UNICEF and their training is very simple. Our job is basically to teach them everything -- just "blow their minds" our UNICEF representative said. And so far they are loving it.

From here it’s off to Hyberdad, more to come!

New from India

Things are going great here working with the Patachitra painters. They are truly fantastic artists and we have really improved their performance abilities a lot already! They’re singing, dancing, enhancing their expressivity, and developing characters... and then to boot, yesterday they went on stilts and it was completely transformative! Even the old man and his wife, the most shy of the women, were up there and just beaming!! We are no
w on the way to their village and can you imagine how their neighbors will react to seeing them on the stilts and performing with a new pizzazz!

Love to all

A note from Kolkata

We’re here in Kolkata, and again we are working harder than ever! It's crazy but fun. We have put together our India-Afghan-US collaborative show, which we are all very excited about. It’s grown now to a cast of ten!!

Amitava here at Banglanatok is so attentive to all details and making sure we are accommodated in every way. The one thing he cannot control is the political situation. The exact area of Bengal, where we were planning to go, is now under police control as riots have already killed many people. It's a major deal here in India thouhgh it’s likely had no press in the US. It indicates a real shift in the political climate from a left wing to right wing position.

The farmers are having their land seized by industrial companies and the police are taking the sides of the industry even though the government has ALWAYS been pro-farmer. Not long ago, the police actually fired into the crowd of peasants and killed 17 people. Needless to say, everyone here is pretty much in shock and our work in that particular area has temporarily been put on hold.

We'll keep you posted,

Joanna

a good day indeed

We did a show for children today of stilts, water spitting, kazoos and funny pants, our signature brand of theatrical mayhem. The idea was to get the ball rolling and the response seemed very enthusiastic.

I am looking at this work with eyes open; for once from the place of a practitioner and leader and everyday brings new discoveries and a renewed excitement. I’m beginning to believe that you haven’t really lived until you've gotten dunked in water and rolled around in the mud. I could get used to this — I really could!

Holi, the Indian celebration of color, is right around the corner and we don’t know what to expect, but boy are we excited. From what we’ve been told, everyone runs around for an entire day, smearing each other with colored chalk – orange, green, pink and blue. Can you imagine a whole festival holiday devoted to color? All I say is hoorah for dirty living! how lucky, lucky, lucky I am to be here....


We are staying at a guesthouse across the street from Gandhi’s cremation site and the grounds are calm and wonderful. We will present a show with the students on the morning of March 9th and then off to Kolkata.

-meghan

Alive and Well in Delhi

Well it took us three days to get here, but we are alive and well here in India. We’ve settled into our rooms at Gandi Darshan and were put right to work at the center, in exchange for the food and lodging they are providing us. Already it’s a lot harder work than we anticipated. We have about 35 really good young adult students here at the Gandhi Center, and they are very enthusiastic and seem to enjoy the work.

We'll be here another week, and then we plan to head to Kolkata to begin our work with Banglanatak.

The team is tight and getting along well. It’s so exciting to have so much energy in one place like this.

More to come…

...and a Happy New Year!

We're back! Coming back to New York has been like getting on a fast-moving train. We were immediately caught up in company activities not to mention the frenzy of the holiday season!

As we enter into the New Year things are looking quite promising for us here at Bond Street. Our planning trip to India was more enlightening then we anticipated. We met with several individuals and NGOs that are going to be fantastic resources and collaborators when we return in February. Everyone is very excited about our work and we expect a very positive response.

(PICTURE: children in a village outside Kolkata watched us work in an open theatre studio)

A partnership is also in the works with UNICEF to initiate a South Asian Social Theatre Institute (SASTI) at the Gandhi Center in Delhi. It will be a tremendous benefit to the field of social theatre and a great opportunity for us to share our knowledge and experience to make this program a reality.

(Picture : Ghandi Center performance pavillion, New Delhi)

We hope to design a full range of programming, and identify practitioners who will continue programs at the Center once we’ve returned to the US.

We will put together a team of 8 including a few of our Afghan partner and some new Indian artist as well. The initial phase of SASTI will involve direct collaboration with theatre artists and stakeholders, both in studio settings, at the Center, and in the field in conjunction with community programs. We hope the future of SASTI we include an expanded network of participants from other countries throughout South Asia including our some of our Afghan collaborators.

Our team will also work throughout Delhi to present performances and workshops with some of the following groups that have especially requested our assistance:

*Salaam Baalak Trust – to work with poor children living in the railroad station and to train and direct the young actors at their Center.
*Pravah – to help them develop their Theatre for Development program, and accompany their actors on some of their community work in Delhi and outside.
*Jagran NGO (Alanar) – to give workshops to their actors and perhaps join them on some of their work in the villages around Delhi.
*Jamia Millia Islamia University – to give guest lectures, presentations and workshops for their students in their new Development Communications program (part of the Mass Communications Department).
*God Graces School – to work with their teachers and students.

(PICTURE: Salaam Balak Trust youth theatre group performs play about abuse )

In addition to the work in Dehli, we will also be working in Kolkata and West Bengal with Banglanatak, a well-established social theatre organization. They have asked that we spend some time training the local theatre groups that they work with in the villages. Most of these groups follow very traditional performance techniques and we will have a great opportunity to learn from each other.

We are brimming with excitement here about the year to come. Keep checking the blog, throughout our trip, to hear the latest news from India. As always, we hope our family and friends, throughout the world, are enjoying a very happy new year!

from Kabul

email from Michael 11 November 2006:

Things went really well with Exile Theatre in Kabul. We met with Shafiq, Zia, and Jamil and they were very interested in our description of the India project so far. We also met with the Indian Embassy here in hopes of easing Exile Theatre's future visa application. We visited our friends at Kabul University (they really need more faculty) , and had a very good chat with the Aga Kahn Foundation.

We got a lot of great advice and we may have laid some important groundwork for the months to come.

Less than a week to go!! Now it's back to INDIA!

back to Afghanistan...briefly

From an email from Joanna 8 November 2006:

We have been meeting amazing people and organizations and seeing such great programs. Spent six days with Banglanatak in Calcutta and they are really fantastic! We are coming back with a lot of DVDs of their work! We had a great meeting of a a director and his students in his country side studio. It was this cool little space with 360 degree view to the farm fields beyond. No electric but a nifty space to work during the days. We hope to use this space when we return.

We were unable to secure visas for the Exile Theatre team, who need an official letter of invitation to join us in India. So far it has proved too hard to successfully traverse all of the official nuances that involve official papers, willing hosting organizations, and speed. So, we have decided to make a quick trip to Kabul to meet with Exile, and to solidify our plans and intentions with Kabul University. We have to tell the University that we will most certainly repay their kindness over the last four years and come back to work with their actors, but in the meantime we hope one of their actors will want to join us on this India project. We will also meet with Gul Makeshah of the Kabul National Theatre while we are there, and the FCCS (the French cultural organization).

All the groups we've met with are totally into our coming. Pravah wants us to help them setup their Theatre In Development Program, the salaam baalak trust is doing this amazing work with the street kids by the RR station, and we will be visiting the Islamic universities (Jamia Millia and Aligargh) in the next two weeks. Maybe one of their students will join our team too!

We must continue to write for support for going to Afghanistan. A few letters showed dismay and a belief that we were giving up on Afghanistan. I had to write them right away and say - No! We are going to come back! We're just doing something in India TOO!

We're excited about doing tandem programs in both neighboring countries, and hope that we can take what we learn in India and bring it to Afghanistan. How perfect would that be !?!

Holy Cow! BST in INDIA

From an email from Michael 7 November 2006
Greetings my many friends from Delhi, India. I have some time in the internet cafe so I have composed some thoughtson our trip thus far. I realize some of you may be surprised to hear from us in Delhi, India, but I suspect you have come to suspect this kind of thing of us by now.

My expectations of India were totally informed by my 4th grade social studies class, so all this time I am expecting Maharajahs riding elephants, thousands of beggars roaming the streets, and slinky Bollywood starlets going in and out of technicolor temples to gods with 16 arms and legs. But as our plane lands and we taxi into Delhi I find:New York City, with no blonds. No elephants, no starlets, no beggars-- a few, but not so bad. What a let down. But it is Delhi, and we were hanging in the biz sections, buying a cellphone and meeting Embassy and NGO types.

But Calcutta-- or Kolkatta as it is now spelled-- that is more like India! Still no elephants, but they got some cows. They are quick to say that they are Bengalies (like New Yorkers saying we are New Yorkers-- its not to be confused with American!). So this is going to be home for the project.

There is one NGO, Banglanatak, promoting street theatre for social good. It is, get this, run almost entirely by university trained engineers. The leader gave up a profitable software career in Silicone Valley to return to native Kolkatta to set up an organization that gets contracts from NGO's that want to reach the masses, say with an AIDS awareness campaign. They go into the town or district, identify the issues and the environment, and hire the local theatre company to do short theatre pieces on the topic. If there is no local company they form one.The idea is that the positive message comes from artists that live in the community. And if they can also mix in local theatrical traditions all the better.

It's hard to believe, but in one district in one province of West Bengal alone, Amitava claims there are 640 street theatre companies . Just street theatre. And they've been forming more. The idea is that the local organizations can continue to use the local groups and their techniques to get more information to the masses. And it becomes a job. Mind you, this is what we are told, but I am pretty interested in getting more of the story when we return next year.

There are some NGO's we could partner with in Delhi as well, working with street children around the train station. In addition to basic literacy programs and health attention they teach the kids theatre techniques to build self esteem and also perform social issues. Their theatre director is a former street kid himself.

These are some of the findings so far. Still have a bit more time to go. Will be back in NY on the 19th. God, this is exhausting work, and we haven't even touched our toes yet.

Hope all is well with you all in your worlds.
Much love, Michael and Joanna

Performing Artist for Balkan Peace: Mostar 2006:

Mostar, BOSNIA and HERZEGOVINA: August 2006: As many of you know we have recently returned from the second meeting of Performing Artist for Balkan Peace. Once again we came together with artists from across the Balkans and Eastern Europe to share our artistry, vision, frustrations, and hopes. The experience was, in a word, inspirational.

Our original idea was to create a sustainable and expandable network of performing artists devoted to cross-border collaboration, social progress and peace. In 2005, we met in Bulgaria and worked closely together, sharing techniques, discussing the issues facing the Balkans, improvising on these themes, and collaborating in crafting the final production of Honey and Blood. Through the process of co-creation we had all given birth to the same child and we had now returned to see it grow. It was with the greatest pleasure and camaraderie that we began our second collaboration.

We had seven days to reconstruct Honey and Blood as the opening performance of Mostar Youth Theatre’s Festival of Authorial Poetics, an annual festival that attracts students and professionals from around the world for an intensive series of workshops and performances. Our plan was that this environment would offer the best opportunity to introduce the PABP to an international community. Through that first week, we were amazed at our creative ease as a group as we re-discovered our way of working together. Honey and Blood opened the Festival with a positive response from an eager crowd and many stayed afterwards to discuss our collaboration in more detail. We encouraged the artists to join the PABP over the next week for the second phase of our project: creating a site-specific work which would transform destroyed sites around the city into performance spaces, celebrate the city of Mostar, and reflect on local issues and those facing the region.

The City of Mostar is a dramatic and inspiring backdrop for site-specific work, a place of visual contradictions. ten years after the war, the scars of war are still highly visible to locals and strangers alike. Exoskeletons of bombed buildings riddled with bullet holes and broken glass still stand in central locations throughout the town next door to renovated modern buildings. We used the destruction to draw our creative impulses. With the help of Mostar Youth Theatre, we picked three sites and the directors decided to work in pairs to heighten the collaborative experience for them. We decided to connect the three performances with a pageant or parade from one site to another which would gather passers-by and involve the town even more directly.

We had five days to complete this work, a hurried but fruitful process. The three groups worked separately during the day and re-convened in the evenings to share daily discoveries. Each group immediately found their distinct style of working, influenced by the unique choice of actors and theatrical backgrounds, but mostly inspired by the space that they had chosen. We all used resources found on location and little else. The groups realized that this site-specific work was very useful in that it mimicked the conditions we find in our outreach work in refugee camps, prisons, orphanages – that is, few resources.

We decided that annual meetings are desirable even if the entire membership is not present, and that this will provide the opportunity to introduce new groups into the mix. We also plan to include a community outreach component as a commitment to our shared mission of social progress. Our plan for 2007 is to meet in the newly renovated Theatre Dodona in Pristina, Kosovo, a heroic theatre during the war, and also to work with a youth center in the still-volatile town of Mitrovica.