Interview with Michele Brinkley, board member and education partner, liaison to Shakespeare program with youth-at-risk

By Keith Hennessy

Keith Hennessy: You are one of the arts-in-education partners? Maybe you could talk about what Jump-Start does.

Michele Brinkley: For three years, Jump-Start has come to our school with grant money through Arts San Antonio to put on a one-week Shakespeare festival. I work with kids-at-risk, and what they have done is come in and have kids perform, dance, do warm-ups, everything. It has really been a great experience.

KH: What do you think are some of the challenges of bringing this kind of work into a school setting or a youth-at-risk setting?

MB: Money. Money, that is the biggest challenge. My first thought was, this isn’t going to work with these kids. When Steve called and said they would like to come and do this Shakespeare thing, I thought this is not going to work with these kids. I work with some pretty troubled kids. Now the kids ask every year, when is Jump-Start coming, when is Jump-Start coming? It is really cool. Money. Money.

KH: Have the youth from the program ever had the opportunity to come here and see one of the shows?

MB: They’ve had opportunity, but they have not taken advantage of it as far as I know. Now through that Shakespeare program they have offered internships to kids, and kids have gone for it and they don’t always do the follow-through. They don’t really take advantage of it. But kids from other schools do. What they do is the company comes in the summer and do Shakespeare in the Park. They have high-school kids as interns to work doing all the little production stuff. They pay them a little bit. It has been wonderful.

KH: What draws you to the work that Jump-Start is doing? Why would you be on the board? What is worth supporting in this work?

MB: It started pretty much about three or four years ago when we were all involved in bringing about 15 of the MacArthur fellows to San Antonio. The Latino MacArthur fellows. Do you know Sandra Cisneros? She lives in San Antonio and she is a MacArthur fellow genius grant awardee. We brought fifteen of the fellows from all over the country. I got to work closely with Jump-Start. Now I was working with Sandra’s group primarily and at the end of it I made the announcement "If any of you wonderful people want to come to my school and talk with the kids, please." And that is where, you know...Steve. We’ve been involved ever since. What keeps me involved is that they have given so many artists in San Antonio...and I don’t know if this is the rest of the world, or the United States...artists in San Antonio give of their time. You know it is a sense of duty. They have done so much for kids. I want to pay back when I can.

KH: What do you see as the effects, whether tangible or intangible, of Jump-Start in the larger community in San Antonio? Who do they speak to?

MB: I think we are in the transition right now with our Millennium Initiative. It is really looking at our membership and audience. We are right there, right this minute, trying to decide who we have been reaching, who we haven’t been reaching, and how are we going to reach. That is exactly where we are at right now. Right now we are pretty much, I think, attracting a certain population. I would say it is partly geographical to the people that live in the downtown community, people that are involved in the arts community. That is another good thing about San Antonio. I don’t see the conflict, you know people from the different arts organizations support all the other arts organizations. That I think is really cool. As far as reaching out beyond that, we are there, right now.

KH: For you personally what is the vision? Where would you like to see Jump-Start in five years or ten years?

MB: More in the schools. I would like to see myself more as a part of that. There is a little vision of seeing Jump-Start more in my school, but I would like to see them more in my school district. Getting the support of the district too. Support them going to more kids. I am getting there. That is hard. You’ve got them thinking: "Hmmm. What am I going to support, football or the arts? Football or the arts?" I’m planting seeds in my school district and there are other people planing seeds in their school district. I really would like to see the educational program grow. Steve says this is one of the areas that is going to blow right open. I think there is going to be a lot of money going into that area as well.

KH: Talk to me a little bit about some of the work that Jump-Start does. I know that, beyond the Shakespeare in the Schools project, a lot of their focus is on original work. How do you respond to that? Who do you think they are speaking to?

MB: A huge audience. You know, just like Dianne’s piece tonight. It was unbelievable. She’s done other pieces like that. I like to pick her brain and find out where do you find these little stories of history that we never hear? I’ve been to Comfort, Texas. I didn’t know about the Freethinkers. I knew about the German immigration, but people always told me they came to Texas cause it looked like Germany. I’ve brought some friends here...as I was watching this I was thinking that I have some friends that can be pretty hardcore religious. They couldn’t hear the message.

KH: If you were going to talk about a favorite project that Jump-Start has done, what has it been for you?

MB: For me it is the Shakespeare Project. I wish you could see it. I wish you could see the kids I work with one day, and the next day see them doing the Shakespeare stuff. It is unbelievable. And what it has done to their hearts, it is great. I call them scratch and sniff kids. They are so hard, and so mean. You just gotta find what is good underneath them. It is projects like this that brings it out. It heals. It is the truth. I have these kids that their right brains are wide open. You know? And that is exactly what happens. Now they are bringing a "La Frontera" to my school, as well. The kids know about it, they are really into it. I am really interested to hear what they have to say, what is going to happen with the workshop. So far though it has been the Shakespeare. They are familiar with the pieces

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.

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Carpetbag | Cornerstone | Dell'Arte | Jump-Start
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