Interview with Libby Maynard, Ink People Center for the Arts

By Mark McKenna

Mark McKenna: What is your affiliation with Dell’Arte?

Libby Maynard: I am personally a long-time audience member, from the very beginning. In ’95, I worked with them doing some development work. I run an organization called the Ink People Center for the Arts. We have collaborated for many years on projects.

MM: Could you just say a little bit more about the Ink People?

LM: The Ink People is a community arts and cultural center. We’ve been around for about 23 years. Our facilities main programs include galleries, galleries in work spaces, shared space for photography, print making, drawing and painting, fiber arts including weaving, and a multipurpose room for performance. We have a computer center with free Internet access for community, also a computer lab with advanced digital, audio-visual editing. We are also incubating other arts and cultural organizations as well. We have everything from metal smiths to a theater company to all kinds of odd projects.

MM: You have been an audience member from way back?

LM: I first saw them performing on the plaza in Arcata doing the first "Scar Tissue." I think I was in graduate school at that time. I always feel like we all grew up together. They certainly helped form my ideas about activism and doing what is right.

MM: Could you talk some more about that, some specific ways in which your ideas were influenced?

LM: One of the first plays I saw was about a real possibility of the Army Corp of Engineers damming this incredible river system that has been the mainstay, the center of life for local Native American tribes in this area. It was being pushed by private interests for the development of recreational facilities and that kind of stuff. They basically outed it in this play. Made it public where everything had been hush-hush, behind closed doors. They stopped it.

MM: What do you see as Dell’Arte’s role in the community as opposed to what it may have been when you first came to notice them?

LM: I think that they mellowed, we all mellow with age. We get older and wiser. They still have young people doing outrageous, in your face kind of things, but they have really found a wonderful balance between very truthful and not alienating the people who need to listen, and even people that they are pointing the stick at. They have settled into the building and really made it the crown jewel of Blue Lake. They have been a positive influence on the culture as the timber industry has become less influential in the area. The timber industry likes to tell their workers that the environmentalists are putting them out of business, but they have really done it themselves. Dell’Arte looked at some of these issues and really helped to educate people about it, and in a way that hasn’t alienated people, which has been very awesome.

MM: Tell me about when you collaborated with them.

LM: We have been doing it for about 14 years. We just had the 14th annual Mask-ibition. It is an exhibition of handmade masks. We have a performance category and an art category. They have often been jurors and gotten jurors for us. Then for the show they and their students have helped by wearing the masks and modeling them. . We get entries from all over the place. It is pretty much the only show of its kind. We usually get about 75-100 entries a year. We get a lot of schools that bring their kids through. All during the month of October the

MM: What do you see say 20 years from now? What are your dreams for how Dell’Arte can relate to the community?

LM: One thing I didn’t mention about them in the community is the incredible inroads they’ve made in the schools. That school was pretty sad. Blue Lake was a pretty sad community for a long time. Dell’Arte bringing their program into the schools has raised the level of achievement among the kids, helped straighten out a lot of problems that they had. Blue Lake has always had a big drug problem because of the timber industry. Those workers have to work double and triple shifts have to have something to keep them going. Especially when it is work that is so hard on the body, they want things to kill the pain. There has always been a lot of that, and it was in the schools. It has gotten a lot better, better self-esteem and a bigger world view of what is possible. I do attribute a lot of that to the influence of Dell’Arte’s program in the schools and in other schools around the county. I see a lot more of that in 20 years. We do stuff in schools, Dell’Arte does, Artsline does out of Humboldt State – so, I see probably in 20 years we will be better coordinated and able to provide a more cohesive and across-the-board program, filling up the schools with art, really integrating it into the curriculum.

MM: Do you see anywhere that Dell’Arte has made any mistakes along the way?

LM: We all make mistakes. They’ve done a really good job on integrating those lessons into who they are now. Maybe they’ll wish they had not fought so hard against Carlo [Mazzone-Clementi]. They’ll regret that they struggled so much with him instead of just relaxing into it and be the receptive children that he wanted them to be. It is not a role when you are an adult that you want to play, but unfortunately that was his style. I ended up hearing him complain about it. Now that he is gone I think they will realize what he took with him and what they didn’t quite capture, perhaps. Otherwise they have done a good job. Whenever they stumble they pick themselves up and look around and figure out why.

MM: Is there anything else you would like to add?

LM: I really think that Dell’Arte had a part in educating people here on all levels, not just the ones who will pay for a ticket to go. They took the art into the streets where everybody could see it just walking by. They could be ambushed by it and swept off their feet.

Mark McKenna is artistic director and an ensemble member of Touchstone Theatre, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He is a graduate of the Lecoq International School of Theatre in Paris. He has taught theater classes at Lehigh University and the University of Pennsylvania, and the MFA Theatre Program at Towson State University. McKenna is active in the growth of the Network of Ensemble Theatres. He is a board member of Alliance for Building Communities, a regional community-development corporation.

PERFORMING COMMUNITIES
Carpetbag | Cornerstone | Dell'Arte | Jump-Start
LAPD | Pregones | Roadside | WagonBurner
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