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Community Performance Inc.

September 26, 2008

In North Georgia, Franklin County's remount has now been cast, and they're set to start music rehearsal next week, while on the bottom side of the state, we're preparing to open Swamp Gravy's new show. Both of these shows, written months ago, and months before the big financial fallout, deal with the subject matter of the last great depression. Franklin County's play "The Last Hard Times" touches greatly on the issues of how a community and individuals in the community survive past such economic bleakness, shedding light on the tools used by the people who lived through the depression of the 30's-- and those tools are also, right now, being put back into use in the county. Things like partnering, sharing resources, pulling together locally because there wasn't help much help outside of the locality, and sharing fellowship. The Last Hard Times play happened because these very ideals were used in putting the project together. And they move forward with this project with full force, because the community leaders, church leaders, and individuals sense that this community-building project holds some answers for how to move forward in this very uncertain future. "It's been done before. It can be done again, we just need to remember how. Tha'ts what's so great about this project, because we find out from the very people who did it." I was told by a cast member during my trip there about a week ago. And she's right. There is such wisdom in each community. The wisdom of folks, just like me, who lived through extraordinary times and have so much to share, but so few of us think to even ask about. You can bet we'll be asking more and more, and that more of these stories will be feeding net year's play I write for them. More than any other reason, is that people really, desperately, want to know this information now. It's about survival now, as much as it is about storytelling.

Down further south in Colquitt, some other of the old ways are being brought back. The Stober family in our cast, as well as other cast members, have got chickens in their backyards now. (And sometimes on Main Street, which is quite funny.) Backyard gardens around town have made a resurgence. Even CMAC planted a community garden, and last week staked the peanuts and pulled the corn. A quote from that play goes something like this "I was poor before the thing on Wall Street Happened. It didn't make much difference here. We didn't have money before or after." But we had a farm. We didn't get new shoes, but we didn't starve, either. What's being talked about, the stories the old older generation is telling now are about self sufficiency. Bringing the garden back instead of paying astronomical prices for food that used to be grown in the region but was stopped.

Big keywords in these two projects are local food. Local economy. We're also giving more thought to the idea of time banking. We know we'll probably be incorporating time banking in our South Carolina project. BUt as these hard times are hitting especially hard in the rural South, I wouldn't be surprised if time banking became a part of all of our projects-- very akin to the barter system, which was also a tool used down here during the last great depression.

It always amazes me, the wisdom, insight, maybe even intuition of storytellers. How they can tell stories during an interview that lead me to write something about their lives from the past that become, in a few months time, a parable for right now. Sitting in a living room somewhere gathering a story about the last hard times, somehow, a year ago, led to these two plays. I don't know where it comes from or how it happens, but sometimes when the stars are lined up right, we just capture the essence of the moment, and it's always such a mystery. Stories from both of these plays are so clearly the past and the present at once. As I'm working on the current Swamp Gravy Play, and re-reading the remount of The Last Hard Times, I'm finding more and more in the stories, things that *I* didn't even realize were there as I wrote it, but are becoming so clear now, so that stories that told of "This is how we survived" are becoming "This is what we need to do now."

Those stories that tell us about past survival, and encourage us to take similar steps is just one of the ways Community Performance is used as a tool for strengthening community. It's a play. It's also a sharing of local wisdom. Both of these plays, to be sure, will be used as a "how to guide" as much as a piece of art. We're already starting to do some of those things in the stories. I'll try to format some pictures to illustrate the steps taken locally. Chicken coops in backyards, gardens, swap meets. I just need to figure out how to download images from my new camera, first. All for now.

   

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