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Community Performance Inc.

March 31, 2008

I arrived in Colquitt Thursday night to do some more shooting on our upcoming Film "A Garden of Gratitude". This film is part documentary, part theater, part film, and it's core is more like a spiral unfolding-- at its heart are both how we create community performance projects with community AND the story of The Garden of Gratitude from last year's Swamp Gravy play, "Visiting Hours".

I left a chilly Newport News and arrived in 80 degree, full in-bloom southwest Georgia- Azaleas, Dogwood, Red Bud, Irises, Lilies, Cosmos abounding. Perfect for the shots we needed. We didn't get to all of the shots on our list, because the left-overs of winter- mainly the flu- hit some of our cast members. But it was just as well, because we hit heavily on the scenes we needed for the garden. We've got some great, full shots of the garden, which will cut harshly against the flood scene, after which the entire Garden is gone. And then, of course, the miracle that we call a community happens in the end, when folks from town come back with cuttings of plants, that were started from cuttings of the plants in Miss Gladys's garden years ago. She's about to sell the land and what's left of the house and garden. but people have fond memories of her garden, which took decades to become what it had become- a place where people picked flowers for their wedding, where people went in hard times to pick tomatoes and peas. Sustenance and beauty. They realize its importantce, and that using their own cuttings, they can bring it back- not the same garden, maybe, but something like it, maybe even somethign more- so it is now not just Miss Gladys's garden, but everyone's garden.

The Garden is very much like Community Performance. It brings in sustenance to the town in the form of tourists and grants, but it has also made the town more beautiful- look at the 10 murals in Colquitt, and the bustling town square which had fallen silent before the emergence of Swamp Gravy.

In Community Performance, we're reconstituting the garden. We're taking the resources we've got-- stories, talent, skills, abilities, that have grown from the culture, and then bringing them all back together in a place that may have fallen silent. And we're all replanting them. And what's great about it, is that we're planting our favorite cuttings. We're bringing in the things that we cherish the most. Like the traveler bringing a sprig of marjoram for Kindness, or Rosemary, for remembrance, we're striving to bring in those things that are the very best of who we are as a community to this living community garden. And of course, on the wings of the wind, some other seeds are carried in and take root. Some are new, beautiful, exotic. Some are the old noxious weeds we're always working to get rid of, but at it's best, when so many hands are in the garden, constantly working it, we allow space for the new and old to grow together, and we work to keep those old weeds from re-establishing themselves. And that work is constant.

Community Performance and gardening. Hard work. Rewarding work. At it's best, they are places of beauty and bounty. But that beauty and bounty can only happen if there are enough hands working at it. Weeds are so invasive. A beautiful garden one week does not mean the work is over. That is the hard part of community performance. When everything is at it's loveliest and fullest, if we lay down the rakes and shovels and hoes for just a moment and sit back and rest on those beautiful laurels, that's exactly the time when those weeds pop back in again. With gardening, and community performance, there's just no time in the season to do nothing. Not if it is to be maintained and grow. "Why does it always have to be a struggle". Those words are spoken by farmers as well as people working in community performance, usually during the weedy season, or times of mosquitoes or drought. During these times, it is hard to look out before us and remind ourselves of the beauty and bounty that lay just ahead of us. It will always be hard work. And it will always have it's rewards. What we put into it is what we will get out of it. Always.

We've got a few more scenes to film-- the scene in which everything is gone- we plan to go to an empty field for that. And then, the scene where the garden is reconstituted. We want to do a high shot for that- using the whole community coming in to this land, bringing flowers, plants, children, ideas, etc. etc. etc. Hopefully, filming will be done in a couple of more months. We're doing this in between our other projects.

I'm hoping this film will not only be entertaining, but will capture that sense of work and worth. And serve as a reminder to everyone, including the artists, that there is never a time when it isn't work, there are always going to be times of struggle, but as long as we continue to keep tilling the soil and pulling up those weeds, our garden will continue to grow.

   

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