Quality in community art

[Linda Frye Burnham]

What's your opinion on quality in comunity art? In June 2002, we published two new stories on the topic by Linda Frye Burnham (http://www.communityarts.net/readingroom/archive/35scrapmettle.php)
and Jan Cohen-Cruz (http://www.communityarts.net/readingroom/archive/35criticism.php). Let's hear from you: How do you measure excellence in this work?

[anita@freestreet.org]

I'm so glad you are asking this quesiton. It seems that community art gets lumped into one category and often times its the category of "why would I want to see it if its not my kid".

There are groups that work in communities using a process that is valuable to the participants while creating a product that appeals to an outside audience.

At Free Street, we use quailty as a north star. By "quality" we mean being energized in the moment. The training process is all about this inspired quaility.

As a result of the training process, the performances the MadJoy Theatrics ensemble create are alive, emotionaly connected, sophisticated, contemporary works of theater. The ensemble members are city teens, many of whom have much chaos in their lives, but we are not creating autobiographical theater. Autobiographical theater limits identity to past experiences. In MadJoy, teens are are using their genuine emotions to create imaginative writing/characters. They are artists exploring, wildly exploring, in their "Big Minds" and their "Deep Wells". By exploring, they learn more about who we want to be. By exploring in a structred process created by director Ron Bieganski, the ensemble is creating "real" theater - theater that layers movement, dialogue, music, and video projections into non-objective, non-linear structures - theater that has toured to over 30 European theater festivals including representing the United States in Norway at the International Youth and Children's Theater Festival (as the only group of youth perfromers).

Often times people's expectations limit the potential of community theater.
Quality community arts make an impact on participants and audience.
Quality community arts is where new ideas and new audiences are generated.

(Free Street also does long term creative writing and theater residencies in public schools and alternative schools for pregnant teens, interactive workshops with artists, med students and patients in hospitals, hires teens to create children shows, and hires teens to produce professional artists.)

Explore more.... http://www.freestreet.org
gogogo@freestreet.org

[Steven Durland]

Sounds great, anita.

Your mention of how expectations can limit potential reminded me of a neighborhood youth theater production I attended at Plaza de la Raza in L.A. many years ago. I was talking with the Exec. Dir. after the show (whose name suddenly escapes me, darn). She told me that one thing she thought was extremely important was the professionalism of the theater toward the audience. She said that even though the audience was largely composed of friends and family, and there were plenty of seats, they had to call for reservations in advance, no flash cameras were allowed, etc. Same rules as you'd expect in any "real" theatrical production. She said that this professional approach produced a much higher level of appreciation and expectation for the audience and a higher level of pride and accomplishment for the young actors. She noted that some families had never attended an event that required reservations before, so that to do so for an event that involved family and/or friends in your own neighborhood was significant for them.

[anita@freestreet.org]

yes, we also pay attention to education our audience. we have some show for 300 plus high school students who sometimes need to be reminded not to wreak it for the people around them, we have lots of first time theater goers in our audience - from teens to grandparents, we reach out to social service groups, and we have some of the funkiest artists/art appreciaters in our audience. And when we are reviewed we are held to the same standards as professional theater and frequently are choosen as one of the best performances in chicago.

we teach our audiences to be active participants. we always have descussions after the shows. in the spring, our performances are developmental. if our audience would like, we pass out notebooks and pens for them to take notes. afterward we have a structured,open critical descussion which address which images struck them, the artists ask the audience questions, and then the audience can ask the artists questions.

i'd love to talk more about the theatrical integrity of the performance. is it possible to see the theatrical quality that exists in some programs along side the positive social aspects? And also, to see the difference between programs that have positive social aspects but do not also have the goal of creating self-standing quality theater?

At Free Street, we have other programs that create shows that rely on the good the show is doing more that how good the show is, but the shows in MadJoy do good AND are good. my frustration is that i feel that the theatrical integrity of our work is overshadowed by the assumption that it is "only" a community group.

Perhaps the measure of artistic quality is knowing what your set out to accomplish and seeing how close you came to succeeding.