Interview with Jessica Arriola, membership and volunteer coordinator, company member

By Keith Hennessy

Keith Hennessy: Tell me how you ended up at Jump-Start.

Jessica Arriola: I was an audience member and they had a little survey asking if you wanted to help out by being on the Community Connection Team and get a little feedback about advertising. What we found out was that word-of-mouth was the highest form of referral. What that Community Connection Team does is gets flyers and goes out advertising each individual show. I was volunteering there and volunteering here and they asked me to be an apprentice. We have an apprentice program funded by the city. You get paid hours here and you get to learn your interest, plus other things that I adore here. They aren’t judgmental. If I want to try tech work or something they are like, "Okay, try it." So, I just started working here in the office with volunteers and with membership and doing various things with different performances. I just got hired on and asked eventually to be part of the company. That was really exciting and great. It has to be either unanimous or majority, everyone has to like you. That was good. I didn’t step on any toes.

KH: What do you think Jump-Start does best? What makes Jump-Start unique?

JA: It caters to the individual people, not just redoing "Romeo and Juliet" thousands of times. Individual work, individual people’s stories, things that need to be said — not an everyday thing. Personal stories that are really interesting and really kind of hit home because the streets they refer to or the places they refer to are just right down the street. It kind of ties you together, everybody. I guess that is it. Everybody is different, but they are all one because we are all focused on the same thing.

KH: Talk with me a little bit, because you seem to be a part of what I would call grassroots marketing. How you target specific communities for specific work? Who do you reach and how do you do it? Kitty’s piece is coming up, "Catherine’s Joint," what will the Community Connection do? How will you figure out how to spread the word for that show?

JA: I go to some of the meetings and we discuss different things. It is just friends, family members and co-workers. For example, my sister works in the hospital and I was having lunch there. Someone said ,"Well, have you been here?" and I said, "Yeah." Rosario’s, down the street. A good Mexican restaurant. I work right there at Jump-Start. They kind of know already. People already know about us, but they need a little nudge. Come on down and don’t worry about it. The next day I went down and there was a reservation with her name on it. It is just not really targeting, going after people like Jehovah Witnesses. It comes up and people already know about it except they are a little shy about going to a theater or a play. Any, I would say, intellectual places like bookstores people are already interested. They say, "Oh, you work there? It goes from there.

KH: Do you have any stories that sort of capture how this place works or how it is different? Do you have favorite performances?

JA: The Performance Party. That runs a gamut of every performance or talent that we have. This year we had so many. It ran so late. People were calling up and wanting to do this. All this love and appreciation for us. It is a long night and a long day too. You are working hard. I get the volunteers, too. These volunteers are staying here until two o’clock in the morning. It is a good atmosphere with everybody helping out. I’m not getting paid for that night either. It is hectic, with people running around, but good hectic busy-ness, a feeling that you are useful and everything is coming down good. There are some mishaps and people miss cues and stuff but it is just a wonderful feeling. Everybody is coming together and seeing each others work. Supporting this. And afterwards, the people are like, "We really appreciate ya’ll. We wouldn’t have a venue to speak our mind, or point of view, or heritage." It is really weird, but they don’t. Where else would they go that would say, "We don’t judge you, we don’t do anything, just if ya’ll want to and you have something to say, you have a forum." I guess, through the whole year, you forget about that, and then through Performance Party people come together and really appreciate that. I didn’t know how much we mean to them.

KH: What do you think are some of the challenges that Jump-Start is facing?

JA: Of course, always financial. Having a worth. They are like, "No, that is just art." Anywhere, it is like, "Oh, that is just art." Like in school. You can miss your art class, you need your math and science. We do, too, but I wish it was on an equal level in everyone’s eyes. Like in funding or just in general. I know we are growing and we are getting in schools. We are getting lots of phone calls asking us to come in. I guess just a level of respect or as the same as any other subject or service.

KH: Yeah. I think a lot of people don’t mention that, and yet it is really is part of the whole scene. It affects everything.

JA: And it isn’t apparent either. They don’t know that they are doing it.

KH: Yeah. Do you think you could say who makes work here? Who comes here as an audience? Is there any way of describing?

JA: No. We have a wide variety of people. Like elderly people who come in, and financially, we have the well-off and the not-so-well-off. Actually it is just a wide variety of people.

KH: Is there anything that Jump-Start is not doing that you would like to see them doing five years from now or ten years from now?

JA: Hmm. Let’s see, not that I am aware of. I am in support with what they are doing with the schools. It could be integrated more and not just an after-school kind of thing. Babysitting. And just be more foundation and more in the schools. I would like that. I am kind of more with kids, so that is where I see. I don’t know much about performances or touring. I know that would be great, going places to be touring. People calling us and wanting shows. Not just wanting them, but being able to pay. I think that too. Going places and being nationally known.

KH: You are someone who is one of the newer members of the company. What is it like in terms of how you feel included? What is it like coming into an organization where people have been here for 15 years? How does it work organizationally, and also socially. How do new members get included? Is it rough to start?

JA: No. Everyone was pretty much open. Just meeting everybody. It was strange because — 15 years, everybody knows each other. They went to college together and everybody knows each other. I just met them differently. It was not that hard at all, because everyone here is very open and nonjudgmental and nurturing to your craft. Like in our retreats, when we go out to Junction, Texas, one of the things we do is go around and say what we have done and what we want to do. We name them off. You’ve got to be careful, because if you say it they will come back around and say, "Remember, you said you wanted to try and do the tech work, come on and do it now." It may be overwhelming. Sterling always says — when I get worried about what if I mess up, what if I make a mistake — he says, "It is not a hospital. Nobody is going to die. You’ll be embarrassed for a little bit and then you will walk off stage." It gives you that little bit of leniency to make your mistakes, learn from it and move on. All of them are like that. They are very much nurturing to your craft or what you want to do.

KH: A lot of people are going to be looking at this research who have never been to San Antonio or don’t know Jump-Start. What kind of impression would you want them to have about what is possible? Especially if they were going to look at this and try and use it as a model to create something for themselves. What holds this together?

JA: A bunch of hard workers. That is what we have. We have the same vision. It may sound like we are a happy family, but we do bicker. But we all know we are here for the same reason. I think that is the foundation. That is the strong core. They are very dedicated to what their vision is. You look at all the board and company members and they are very different. When you go to a retreat or a meeting or something, I was just amazed the first time I went. I told them, "Ya’ll stayed focused and did what you needed to do. You got all this done. There was some compromising, but not really clashing." A very much give and take. Everyone has that same mentality. That is what Jump-Start is. It isn’t the building, it is the Jump-Start mentality. I can say that now. It has only been two years. Maybe in 15 years I will tell you something different.

Keith Hennessy is a Canadian-born, interdisciplinary artist choreographer and community arts organizer living in community in San Francisco. Hennessy's solo work has been produced throughout the U.S., in Canada, New Zealand and Australia, including several gay and lesbian performance festivals. Since 1998, he has performed with Cahin-Caha, cirque bâtard, a French/American, mongrel circus based in France. Hennessy was a member of the performance collective Core and was a founding member and principle collaborator in Contraband, a San Francisco-based performance company. Hennessy co-directs 848 Community Space. He is a member of Alternate ROOTS, a service organization for community-based artists, and serves radical cultural agendas as a consultant, director, teacher, curator and agitator.

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