Interview with Paul Bonin-Rodriguez, company member

By Keith Hennessy

Keith Hennessy: How long have you been involved with Jump-Start?

Paul Bonin-Rodriguez: I think I’ve been involved since, when was the time of "Out of a Time of Plague"?

KH: 1990. Then I saw you dancing.

PBR: Yeah I was dancing. I was still very balletic at the time, very formal. So, it was really a kind of great process. It was kind of my own process of queer self-discovery, because I had come from a real formal classical background and company. Gay identity was an accepted thing, but ballet is so much about artifice and falsity. The piece was built on images and Steve would say, "Try this," and improvisations. My note would always be, "Just be yourself. Don’t make it look like a move." It was an interesting thing.

KH: At what point did you start writing your own stuff?

PBR: It would have been about the same summer. July of ’91. During that same time I was a producer for a television documentary series, so I was getting real accustomed to hearing people’s stories and editing them down. That was one thing. I had started seeing the work of queer performers like Tim Miller and I had come to Alternate ROOTS. I had written a story and Tim suggested I go and stage and try it. I think you saw my first performance ever that night at ROOTS. So, I did that and then connected a bit with Highways [Performance Space, Los Angeles] and here. That would have been August of ’91. Then in February of ’92, I staged the first show and Jump-Start gave me the opportunity to do a split. I think that was "Talk of the Town." Steve Bailey helped. He walked in as I was rehearsing and talked about how I should inhabit it more and not just stand there and tell it. He kind of walked out and I had to go back in on my own and figure it out. I had written a bunch of letters for everyone I know to come, and they all came. We seat 50 and there were 98 on each night. People were really good to me, the community was. The space was about going and knowing you were going to see somebody taking a risk. The stories were kind of about us in Texas. They were queer. I started touring at that time.

It was at the same time as more and more people were starting to come into the company and make work. I think I came in around the same time as Kitty. It has always been this community of artists. We were talking about ensemble theater the other day. I think that the ensemble is not about the production ensemble. It is not about the product. You are not going to see the ensemble on stage. It is the ensemble of process. Everybody is helping make it, giving feed back and being present. Sometimes just affirming, sometimes definitely challenging or questioning the work.

KH: From what I have seen they are also doing the lights, the tech, the advertising, the costume sewing. For different pieces there seems to be a pool of resources to pull in if you need them. How much do you use feedback from the company when you are making work? You tend to have fairly autonomous works. Do you do works in progress with your works or get feedback from the company while you are building it?

PBR: I try to. "Catherine’s Joint" was supposed to have a rehearsal today and next Monday have its first critical response. I have a script for today, but now, because of the way schedules are going, it is not going to start until next week. So, then I am like, "Where is my critical response?" I think in "Memory’s Caretaker," I did. A more recent solo show, I did go through critical responses, which was nice. I used to do that thing where I would run up to the deadline writing it. I think, as time has gone by, I have become more open to process so I develop things earlier. Generally, the first thing I will do is a more personal thing than a critical response, it is a "will you listen to this." I’ll go up there and try it.

KH: For how many people?

PBR: Four or five.

KH: That is still great. It is more than one, and it seems to me that of who Jump-Start is there are going to be at least a few different opinions.

PBR: There are. And I think what is interesting is that we are all very informed by the Critical Response method that we have been using for so long, so everybody is commenting first and then the questions begin. I think that is good. It feels very natural. I became more active in the community. By ’94 or ’95, we moved into the new space. There has just been this process of growth and everyone has been along on the same journey. I began doing works beyond myself and beyond solo works. I did plays and for awhile I had my own little dance company and raised money for that. I was able to use the space to create improvisational work and do things. Kind of in this process of everybody growing up and growing out together. When I was with Dance Umbrella we were using critical response and we wanted a way to push people to start making work in the community. That was when WIP was born. It has been a collaborative project between Dance Umbrella and Jump-Start for about five or six years. Wednesdays in Performance/Works in Progress, that is what it is. It is a monthly show. It is really there by the grace of Shimi and the Dance Umbrella. Shimi has really been the liaison for the last couple of years, has really kept it going. But it teaches the community Critical Response. Getting people involved in the notion that we are creating something here. Way out here, everyone thinks that a show is a travelling Broadway thing. This package thing where there is a lot of artifice on stage. What about that scared nervous person who is going to try something and be teetering, but something really cool is happening. WIP is to push people to really make stuff and really go up there.

KH: How long has the WIP been going on?

PBR: Seems like we started six years ago or seven now.

KH: And that goes on 12 months a year?

PBR: Never in April, because that is fiesta and everything closes in fiesta. There is a May WIP that is very involved because May is dance month. So there are different kind of WIPs. I think we do about ten annually.

KH: That is great. That is plenty.

PBR: But it is a part of the season at this point. And a part of programming.

KH: Talk to me a little bit about your view of how the organization works. Obviously, if you want to make a show, I know enough about Jump-Start that you just make the show you want to make, and any company can source a show. In terms of the organization, or how you share the resources, how do you see it functioning? You are one of the people who are not on staff, so I am interested in hearing how you relate to the staff people, or the decision making process for the company.

PBR: You know what, I’ll be honest. I think this is a challenging area. As we grow more and more and more there can easily be this kind of staff and company differentiation. People having access to different areas of knowledge. Like, I didn’t know you were coming until you were here. I’m thinking, did I miss last month’s meeting? We have these elements. We have the newsletter, which goes out monthly and tells you what is going on in the office. The big events that are happening. I think there is a day-to-day thing. You have the opportunities to be in the know, and I think this is probably just the good laws of living – if you want to know more, go and ask, call in or go to staff meeting. A lot of it revolves around the summer show. Saying, "This is what I want to do," and then commit. Some of these things are thought out a year or two years in advance. There is the summer retreat and then there are the grants that go out by January that are for 18 months in advance. That is another area where you have to go and commit to your future projects. You go and commit to this is what I’ll be making and things like that. It seems to me that there are also things like funding resources and how can we get funds for things. "Catherine’s Joint" is going up and that is funded.

KH: Did you and Kitty raise funds separately?

PBR: They were granting funds. This has been on the boards for almost two-and-a-half years. It just kept getting pushed back so we were able to raise money. Lucky us. Some of it will be raised in the benefit that opens it.

KH: Will a show like that tour or will it just have its run at Jump-Start and be done?

PBR: That is an interesting thing. I’ll be clear that I am unsure of this dynamic. None of my touring has been handled outside of the Jump-Start office. It has all been an independent thing. Not that I didn’t want somebody else to handle it, I could have wished for it. But that I was a solo artist already, I guess I was just my own production. A lot of it would be up to Kitty. I don’t know that the company would want to do it the way that they are promoting "Frontera." Sterling’s works go through the office. Those are just some of the what is things. I’m sure if I challenged it someone would explain it to me. It does sometimes make me wonder. I am very self conscious about saying this. There are certain dynamics. Sterling being in the office and of the office, things of his that want to get shown are going to be handled through the office. His are bigger productions. So there is this dynamic of handling the solo artist.

KH: One of the things I know about our little space is that if they would run all those tours through it would just show a higher level of involvement and higher activity. The returns would probably come back. That is what I see.

PBR: Well, and I’ve tried to be, wherever I go in the nation. I’ve done a lot of touring at this point because there was so much hunger for that kind of work in the ’90s, I think.

KH: You have a really particular voice, too. I didn’t know anyone in those particular circuits who was coming from south Texas, or the South, in general.

PBR: Who wasn’t a stand-up comic. Yeah. What I tried to do everywhere I would go was to say that I was of Jump-Start. I tried to be real clear on that so that people knew the name and so that people knew there was something happening down here. In hopes that we would get that kind of attention. It does feel very much like you are shouting from far away.

KH: As someone who gets to tour, I see San Antonio as really kind of isolated and slightly off the map of other artists’ consciousness. And yet you come here and Jump-Start is a vibrant company creating new work. When I was watching the pieces, I was thinking that these people could stand to see a little bit more, to be pushed a little bit harder. Watching Dianne and Shimi’s pieces. I don’t know what your perspective on that is as someone who gets to tour and see what is out there a bit more. You get to look back and see where San Antonio is.

PBR: That is an interesting thing about the Critical Response process. It is so much about where the artist is at now, that sometimes I don’t think it pushes enough. It does make me think twice about my judgment in telling someone, "You know, you should try this." I know that I am not going to do it in that sense. I did say to Dianne, "One Flea Spare" by Naomi Wallace has a similar situation, and I wanted to tell her that she should read it. I thought we would follow it up with a discussion about people who are cannibalizing each other when locked in this room, and sort of the drama. You think that. It is off the map in terms of a lot of dance training. People having the opportunity to take classes in movement without having to empty all that they have saved up for food for the week. All the studios that are trying to get by are having to charge this amount to survive and so it becomes something that a certain class can afford. Perhaps people who are trying to be working artists can’t. That is a real problem. Part of the thing of starting Dance Umbrella, and part of the thing of, after working for six years, I really burned out working this.

KH: I haven’t talked about training with anyone. It seems like the training that Jump-Start provides is more like, once you’ve decided to make a show you will get backed all the way. It doesn’t seem like anyone is teaching adult education in performance, play-writing, movement theater.

PBR: You know what is embarrassing is that I was teaching in Austin this weekend. There is a certain amount of technique you know, but I really think it has to come first from what the artist wants to make and then engaging that and challenging that. So, I was coming from that place. They had all come with notes and pads ready to get that sort of thing. I came home wondering if they were going to come back next week, and also wondering, is that okay? Maybe the good thing is that we don’t provide the key, the telling you this is how you should make work. It would be great to have more that they see. You know that our presenting is not very funded, so it becomes very secondary. I think the office staff is very occupied making its living in education programs. That is a wonderful thing. It really will impact our future. That is an investment. Those little kids know to say Jump-Start.

KH: I haven’t realized until now because there is so much great stuff going on at Jump-Start I am only now noticing that there aren’t [training classes]. Maybe I should come and teach a workshop or something.

PBR: Yeah, maybe you should come and teach my workshop in Austin next week. I’m going to have to do some catching up. I was just trying to engage people where they were creatively. I wrote that, this is what I want to do in this workshop. That is fair to say you are the artist. They all came in and said, "We’ve seen all your shows and we are so glad..." like I was going to give them all the secrets. What I wrote was stuff that occurred to me naturally. Not that it didn’t take some struggle, it wasn’t easy to write. I knew I wanted to kind of punch this and try that, to kind of keep the momentum going once I started. I had techniques that I just figured out.

KH: Do you see what you do as theater rooted in the community?

PBR: Yeah, very much.

KH: And what does that mean to you?

PBR: I think it is a reflection of listening to the community. Even like an early show like "Bible Belt and Other Accessories" or "Talk of the Town" was so much about the coming-out process, but here and now. It was staged in the town where I grew up, but the characters and the dynamics and rediscovering Chicano identity, that was kind of here and now. That was kind of a funny, cute riff on what I was facing now. "Memory’s Caretaker" is about growing up an assimilated Latino, or part Latino. A person whose upbringing was deliberately about being very American and my reconnection here in this city with my grandmother during the last ten years of her life and being with her at her death, that whole story. These are all rooted in the community as I can speak of it, or from it, or to it, creating in the community.

I’ve always thought this was about a dialogue. I’ve always thought this was about communication. That is what gets me when we’ve had to go to City Council and the right-wingers are all there en masse, and I think the last time I did one of those speeches, I did a shame-on-you speech. This is about communication and you are essentially trying to shut up someone who is trying to speak with you honestly, which should be a gift. I see it rooted in the community in that way.

Now I did do a long project called "Balamo," in which I took community members and made movement-based theater work. I tried it that way and some of them are making their own work now, which is totally cool. It was a nice project to do. It challenged me. I was able to take a lot of that and apply it to my fellowships. There were really great things for my to do that way. I think community-based is sometimes a community voice just as well. There are so many things to that. It isn’t just about going in and writing about this particular issue to the community. It could be about your personal experience of it. Most everything that I have written, most, is about personal experience. The hardest thing about being a return artist is that sense of being grounded when you get back. So much is rooted in this community and then we send people out. My work is separate, and so then I come back and it is that trying to fit in. I’ve made a real conscious effort to try and be very involved. I dragged my sick ass to see those works this weekend! And I try and be involved in critical responses whenever I am free, because I feel like we are all kind of growing and going forward as we do.

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
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