Interview Summaries

By Linda Frye Burnham

All interviews were by Keith Hennessy. They took place between February 8 and 13, 2001, in San Antonio, Texas. All have been edited for length by CAN. The full, unedited transcripts are available on request.

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

Arriola came aboard as an apprentice in a program paid for by the city, she says. She volunteered to work with volunteers and membership, then was hired, and eventually became part of the company. The thing Jump-Start does best, according to her, is "individual work, individual people’s stories, things that need to be said, 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." She is part of the Community Connections team that does grassroots marketing for Jump-Start programs. She says their method is "not really targeting, going after people like Jehovah Witnesses," but talking to friends and their acquaintances. "People already know about us, but they need a little nudge, they are a little shy about going to a theater or a play. 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."

Her favorite event is Performance Party: "That runs a gamut of every performance or talent that we have. All this love and appreciation for us, a feeling that you are useful and everything is coming down good." The big challenge is money. She reiterates what everyone else has said about Jump-Start being open and nurturing, and that you have to be careful what you say you want to do, because you will be called upon to try it. "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."

To read the entire (edited) interview with Jessica Arriola, click here

Interview with Steve Bailey and Sterling Houston, executive director and artistic director, company members

Bailey describes the early genesis of Jump-Start, when he began to organize artist friends into a company "that could do original work, that was more experimental or more kind of pushing some boundaries." The multicultural and education aspects began to evolve from the beginning because of the influence of Houston and the Esperanza Center artists. Houston talks extensively about his own theater career and his experimental work.

Houston says, "Originally, people worked with Jump-Start because they wanted to be a part of the work that Steve was doing, which allowed a lot of freedom for the actors." They talk about how presenting choices are made and Bailey says, "Company members aren’t allowed to be turned down, but we make it work. Even if we find we have to postpone it a year." They detail the process by which, in their fifth year, they switched from being a white company to a multicultural project rooted in different communities. It involved an argument with the company over Bailey’s suggested "racially specific agenda" of seeking only people of color as new members. Says Houston: "It changed the whole company. Nobody is typically Mexican, or typically black. That is a myth. My work never fit with any black company at all. It fit more with Jump-Start, because it was so wide open. It fit what I wanted to do." Houston notes that this policy led to "more funding."

This phase coincided with the period "when we were making that transition where everyone couldn’t do everything," and not every piece was seen as an ensemble work. They discuss company leadership, past and future. Houston says he only plans for six moths at a time, because of his ill health. He gives Bailey his input, who passes it along, so he doesn’t have to go to meetings. Houston says Jump-Start is not a democracy. "Everybody is not equal in that sense. I have seen messy — when they are trying to force that. I don’t want everybody to be equal in my organization. It does not work that way. They have a say and they are taken seriously. If you are repeatedly being told no, then you need to look at that." Bailey analyzes his own style as "the difference between tyranny and leadership." He describes the organizational model as "concentric circles" with the company in the middle. There is an exchange with the interviewer about organizational structure, hierarchy, voice and democracy.

Bailey describes the company’s eventual involvement in a "highly politicized activist community, activism translating particularly around AIDS," citing the influence of the Esperanza Center, an activist center about "the integration of oppressions," with "racism, classism, sexism, ageism, ableism — all the isms all together," and the arts at the core. Houston talks about the different perceptions of Jump-Start, based on the communities whose artists they show: "the one they’ve seen most recently — people like to really identify you."

They identify the company’s education work as their most satisfying community partnership. They traces the program’s development: "It was a desert in terms of arts in the schools. The city had a program, but it was very hit-it-and-quit-it," says Houston. "Oh, we are fabulous artists, play the guitar, ’bye. Our commitment was long-term, we stayed with the kids for years. A lot of kids we have seen third grade to graduation." Relating how the community work impacts the company, Houston says, "It certainly broadens what people think about what we do and who we are. People that might have been judgmental about our work and our politics are less so when they see the work we have done with education. It mitigates somewhat people who are reactionary when we do an overtly queer piece or clearly anti-government, or something that is really taking a radical stance in their view. That we are in the schools, that we are doing this really grassroots, nuts and bolts, academic work with the curriculum, with the students, with the teachers and producing over a period of years. It’s like, well, maybe all the things I heard about queers aren’t true." Bailey sees the work as an exchange, "because we are learning as much as we are teaching."

He doesn’t see the education work as audience development: "We are doing something different with them." He sees no need to get the students to come to see work at Jump-Start, or to make different audiences (queer, black) cross over to each other’s work. They do have a crossover audience, but it is "usually straight white women that will come see anything that we do. There are others that are resistant. We can’t break — that is society." There is an exchange about this with the interviewer, a gay man who also runs a performance space. Says Bailey: "What is interesting is that the largest development in terms of our performance persona in the last five years is that we are considered a Chicano or Mexican-American space." Says Houston: "To quote the director of the Guadalupe ‘Jump-Start is eating our lunch.’ All the artists left them and came to us, without any effort on our part. They know that they would be received here and not have to deal with the turmoil." They discuss how they handle questions from potential audience members about content, language or nudity.

Responding to questions about what they do best, Bailey says he has "quit using the term ‘director’" and now calls himself a "facilitator" when helping an artist develop a piece. Houston enjoys the Performance Party, a free show on the first Saturday of each year showing as many as 38 five- or ten-minute pieces to audiences that number up to 800. "I have had some of my highest moments at performance parties. My jaw just has dropped. This gorgeous juxtaposition seeing a little boy with Down Syndrome dancing to the salsa group. I lost it. He was so happy, and we were, too. It’s the moments like that that only happen at performance party, because it has such an open door."

To read the entire (edited) interview with Bailey and Houston, click here

Interview with Steve Bailey, executive director, company member

Bailey says Jump-Start has 20 company members and six salaried staff, all part-time. He details the pay structure for administrative work, art work and education work, and says they strive for pay equity for all. "It is kind of based on the model of the Arkansas Women’s Project, where they pay everybody across the board the same and then they do seniority through time off." He also talks about meetings and retreats. [See interview for copious details.]

As an artist, Bailey sees himself as an "image maker," not a writer; the visual images come first. As an example of this and of his collaborative process, he talks about "Illusions," the current piece he is making with Sandy Dunn, with the theme "the hypocrisy of democracy and the illusion of freedom in the United States." Their three areas of research are magic tricks, little-known U.S. historical documents and a list of images they want in the piece. They are collaborating with Dianne Monroe on the little-known documents. It will take years. He says it was sparked by recent U.S. voting irregularities, but will not specifically refer to them or to Bush or Gore. He talks about how some works are made with an audience in mind, some surprise him in who they affect.

He says he is concerned in his own work with beauty, aesthetics. He talks a bit about politics and aesthetics, and his own place in that spectrum, how he has changed and why he gave up art work completely for a while to do direct political action, but came back. He says he stays at Jump-Start because of the people in the company and their commitment. "These are not jobs for these people." He says his is not a solo journey: "I am a group person." What makes Jump-Start unique is that "we have found a way to function that allows for individuality as well as group process. I think a lot of groups find one thing or the other, they don’t find both." He struggled with "the administrator versus artist" conflict, but decided "the administration is as much a part of the art as the art itself." It is a myth, he says, "that you can be a full-time artist without the means or the underpinnings for that. It is inextricably linked to the art you do." What he does best is "as a kind of facilitator. A kind of mixer of things." He says he wants Jump-Start to be known, he doesn’t want Steve Bailey to be known.

Bailey feels they have moved past the time when they feared they were better known outside San Antonio. "The city government loves us." He relates a rough period during which Jump-Start aligned with the Esperanza Center when they were defunded by the city. "Jump-Start was its closest ally in playing this thing about politics and art, and queerness and art. It was a liberationist politic we kind of call it." They were attacked by conservative, white, gay men within their own community, aligned with the radical right, says Bailey. He describes Esperanza’s suit, the trial and the strategies in court, the persecution and harassment of the two arts organizations, the "siege mentality" over three years, and the attendant dissolution of the San Antonio Gay and Lesbian Assembly. At the time of the interview, the outcome was unknown. [Ultimately, Esperanza won its case and funding was restored.]

To read the entire (edited) interview with Steve Bailey, click here

Interview with Paul Bonin-Rodriguez, company member

Bonin-Rodriguez tracks his own advent into Jump-Start in the early ’90s

From ballet and producing television documentaries, he started doing solo performance art, stories "about us in Texas. They were queer." About Jump-Start he says, "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."

He details his artistic process, including critical response, and "this process of everybody growing up and growing out together." He talks about the birth of WIP, or Wednesdays in Performance/Works in Progress, a monthly show that is a collaborative project between Dance Umbrella and Jump-Start, teaching the community the Critical Response method [a formal method initiated by Liz Lerman and Alternate ROOTS that puts the artist in charge of a group critical response session to a work in progress –Ed.]. "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," he says. "WIP is to push people to really make stuff and really go up there."

As he toured, he says he tried to tell everyone he was from Jump-Start "so that people knew there was something happening down here." Bonin-Rodriguez and the interviewer have a dialogue about the lack of exposure to art outside San Antonio, and the lack of training classes at Jump-Start. Bonin-Rodriguez discusses his workshop methods. He sees his own work as rooted in the community in the sense that his pieces are a "reflection of listening to the community" and about "here and now, staged in the town where he grew up." He also describes the work as "a dialogue," including giving "shame-on-you" speeches before the city council about "trying to shut up someone who is trying to speak with you honestly," and creating a movement-based piece with community members.

To read the entire (edited) interview with Paul Bonin-Rodriguez, click here

Interview with Michelle Brinkley, board member, education partner, Shakespeare program with youth-at-risk

Brinkley describes the one-week Shakespeare festival Jump-Start does with children at-risk at the school where she works (initiated by Jump-Start). She doubted it would work with these "pretty troubled kids," but "it has really been a great experience." The biggest challenge is money to pay for the program. Jump-Start offers internships to some of the kids. She met Jump-Start during a project that brought 15 MacArthur Foundation Fellows to San Antonio. She says they are currently analyzing the audience and its expansion. She would like to see Jump-Start do more in the schools, with support from the district, and she is "planting seeds." She feels the Shakespeare project has a profound affect on her "scratch and sniff" kids, who are "so hard and so mean. It heals. It is the truth. I have these kids that their right brains are wide open." They are bringing "La Frontera" to her school and she says, "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."

To read the entire (edited) interview with Michelle Brinkley, click here

Interview with Kim Corbin, company member

Corbin was a founding company member. She says the biggest evolutionary step for them was getting the current theater space. Her favorite kind of show is "It’s About Going," in their old space, partly outside, including nonperformers, cars, a deaf-and-blind woman. She likes watching people grow through one-person shows. Their biggest worry is money. "We all miss being able to work together. So many of us have other jobs."

The most important community work, she says is "working with the schools in our neighborhood. That is basic." She enjoys the diversity of the company and "the divergent types of audiences that come in because of what is on stage," such as "Big Bad and Beautiful," performed by three big Latinas, which draws a large audience of related women of all ages. She marvels at the audience for "Comfort," which the interviewer describes as "elderly, white Texans who don’t live in the big city, coming to Jump-Start to see a work of theater ["Comfort"]." Her nutshell impression of Jump-Start is their longevity: "We are a strange gathering of people. It feels like family, we all love each other and, of course, hate each other. It is fun to be around together."

To read the entire (edited) interview with Kim Corbin, click here

Interview with Felice Garcia, technical director, company member

Garcia compares working at Jump-Start with another organization, "very political, very stressful" with a "male power struggle," and says Jump-Start is "a different world, more open here." She says she can express herself. She says she "grew up in ensemble theater" and describes touring a show with her university theater company for three years. She describes the openness at Jump-Start as the freedom for any individual to create out of any idea, and "it is not particularly to make a political statement, although it can be." They are not "frightened of homophobia" or "to express nudity onstage" or of being defunded or censored, because they "have a very tight patronage." The glue that keeps Jump-Start together is its openness. "Money. That is always the thing you don’t have enough of, but everything else is in abundance." She feels she can make her own decisions about things with input from others, especially the founders, but "it all basically comes back down to Steve."

Garcia feels growth is "a big change and a big challenge, too. We are growing out of our own skin. We are growing out of our building. We are trying to keep up with the growth of our audience." The artists are trying to keep from becoming full-time staff so they can keep on making their art. She says what they do best is communication. She most enjoys creating lighting designs and acting in Houston’s plays. Her first experience of Jump-Start was watching them win many awards for making strides against homophobia or working with minorities. She says people come from all over, "eccentric people," people from other countries. Jump-Start plays the role of mediator, educating about difference. "That is the way I would like Jump-Start to be known. We are not frightened of eccentricity."

To read the entire (edited) interview with Felice Garcia, click here

Interview with Sarah Guerra, apprentice

Guerra has worked at Jump-Start for one year. She had ten years of involvement with theater at Guadalupe Arts Center where she co-founded a youth group. Lisa Suarez was one of their assistant directors. Guerra helped light some shows at Jump-Start and eventually became an apprentice. She liked best working on Young Tongues with younger people. She says she feels the older members are open to the younger members’ ideas. "They learn from us just as much as we are learning from them. They are really cool just to hang out with." She prefers theater work to "outreach," but feels the community programs "strengthen the foundation." She compares other San Antonio theaters: "like in the San Pedro playhouse they do ‘My Fair Lady,’" but at Jump-Start "a lot of these are just original pieces. They are people from San Antonio and these are their ideas."

To read the entire (edited) interview with Sarah Guerra, click here

Interviews with Healing Arts Program at Calderón Boys & Girls Club: student, teachers, artist, audience members, social director, volunteers

Student Isabelle Gonzalez says she likes to come to the program because "it’s fun" and the Jump-Start artists teach them "magic tricks."

Jump-Start program teacher Jose Manuel Galvan, a theater artist for 30 years, says the most important things in this work (healing through theater for abused children) is having enough time, the right space and respect for the work. "Jump-Start has a lot of responsibility with them to keep that track." He says you have to "let the participants know that it is a safe space, but it is a freedom space. As soon as they understand the kind of the game they are playing, they behave. To me, it could be a clown-principle thing. If they are busy having fun you are not going to be worried to put some kind of military discipline there."

Linda Escobedo, cultural-art instructor at Calderón for 2 1/2 years, says she is learning "gold nuggets" from the Jump-Start staff for her summer program "because I am getting the kids to use their imaginations." She describes a visual-art project, a drama project and an upcoming dance project with Jump-Start. She says many of the children are from foster care and "the barrio," and the program gives them a chance "to have a so-called ‘normal’ life with the other children. They know how to interact with kids. It is a good opportunity. We are their mothers, their counselors, their friends."

Dianne Monroe, Jump-Start company member and program teacher, identifies this program as "a major collaboration with a large number of social-service agencies. The major impetus was to use the arts to provide healing for children who have been sexually abused." These children are "part of a group with other children who frequent the center." The center is on the west side of San Antonio, "a poor, Mexican-American side of town." Jump-Start is interested in long-term collaborations and long-term effects of arts programs on such populations for years after short-term therapy ceases, linked with ground-breaking theories of a therapist in San Antonio. She says the biggest problem is the drop-in nature of the venue, as it allows new children in every week. She says their goal is to learn to use their arts-in-education skills to address "serious wounds and trauma," since all the populations they work with suffer the same dangers and disadvantages. Monroe says the work has affected her personally because it has provided her with training to respond to signs of sexual abuse in her students, which she has had to face previously with no training.

Joe Rendon and Matthew Edwards are two youths interviewed after viewing Sterling Houston’s "La Frontera," performed at Calderón. They both say this is the first play they have seen like this one (about diverse people trying to live together) and they liked it because it showed that "sometimes it might start off that bad and you might not like people, but as soon as you get to know them, you find the truth of them, what they really are like."

Ramiro Nava, social director at Calderón, interviewed after "La Frontera," said, "It brings things to life — day-to-day life. It relates to [the program’s youth], because the language that [the actors] were using and the way they were acting really relates to their family, [the children’s] upbringing, really driving home the point." The challenge in delivering this message, he says, is "that we have to break the tradition. The bad tradition. We’ve all grown up with these stereotypes that have been put into place with us since birth. The difficult thing is trying to break that. Distrusting what mama used to say or what daddy used to say and really coming to life. Catching them at a younger age helps out." He adds: "I think the play really focused and really grabbed their attention because it was like a family-type atmosphere. What they are used to. What they see in a day-to-day basis. I think the play is going to be successful in that way, as far as what you grow up with, it is easy to change."

Camille Bright, CARE coordinator at Calderón, who works with sexually abused children, says, "They are learning a lot about their identity and the communities that they live in." She hopes the Jump-Start program will be incorporated as something the club offers, and that it includes training for club staff. The biggest challenge is that "it is kind of hard to develop programs when one week you have two kids and the next week you have 20 kids."

Two women from Delta Phi Omega Sorority, doing community service at Calderón, saw the play and a workshop on prejudice. Lupita Garcia says the biggest challenge for Jump-Start is "trying to reach different children from different cultures. She says the company used "really good icebreakers." Brenda La Garza notes: "Personally talking about all those situations, especially with racism and prejudice, it lets the students know exactly that everyone is in the same situation. Everyone feels the same way and have gone through it before."

To read the entire (edited) interviews from the Healing Arts Program, click here

Interview with Sterling Houston, artistic director, company member

Houston talks about his "racial and sexual orientation" (black and gay) and his relationship to those identities and his penchant for writing about "history or myth." He discusses his play "La Frontera," about "the intersection of African-American and Mexican-American culture and our histories," set locally. He talks about the process, the funding and the audience. He says he is probably one of the first writers to set a play in a specific place in San Antonio. "They know what you are talking about when you talk about Alamo Heights or the West Side." A piece is a company piece because a company member wrote it, even if it has no company members in the cast. He talks about a time when he wrote pieces specifically for the company, but that only made them nostalgic for "how it was when Steve was creating work and allowing us to create our own parts." But "the Beatles are not going to get back together again."

Houston gives extensive details on the development of the Jump-Start education program’s mural project, part of the major restoration of a historically significant black neighborhood of Houston. He gives a capsule history of the era when the neighborhood flourished and tells how he was involved in its rescue. He says there has never been any representation of African-American history in San Antonio, and it is a city with "a huge resistance" to public art.

He talks about SATCO, the San Antonio Theater Coalition, which he organized through Jump-Start as an information clearinghouse to help the theaters in the city with scheduling conflicts. Six years later, it has grown to a grassroots organization of individuals and producers at all levels — university, community and professional — with Web sites, an e-mail service and an audition line. An annual gala and awards ceremony benefits a scholarship fund

To read the entire (edited) interview with Sterling Houston, click here

Interview with Alva Ibarra, board member, education partner, principal of Kelly Elementary School, and Steve Bailey, executive director, company member

Ibarra talks extensively about her love for the arts and their place in education. She discusses the Jump-Start program at Kelly, which she brought in after she had experienced Jump-Start while teaching at another school. She describes Kelly as small and short on funds. Among the things she appreciates about the program: It is ongoing, not intermittent; the artists meet regularly with the teachers; increased parental involvement; possibilities of arts-integrated curriculum; the opportunity for the faculty to do "staff development" activities for the Jump-Start artists. She describes three barriers that had to be overcome to put the Jump-Start program in place: teachers’ fears about use of their time; program funding; space.

Ibarra talks about a particular Jump-Start project: student self-portraits, about "self and community," which helped the Hispanic students, particularly, look at their heritage and self-image. She says the school is not bilingual, even though most of the children are Hispanic. This project brought in a great number of parents. Ibarra is also a Jump-Start board member, and is interested in the program from that angle, too: "One of the communities they are involving themselves in, one is an actual institutionalized education community." She sees Jump-Start as "part of our family now here at Kelly. The kids see them and they know them. They are part of our staff." She wants to see long-term residencies and hopes to build an amphitheater in the schoolyard for student theatrical productions, "all kinds of plays, like Shakespeare. Why can’t they start down here? I know that a lot of that stuff happens at the middle school and high school, but why not at the elementary? We’re always saying that we are going to address the whole child, but you aren’t doing that if you aren’t teaching the arts. The arts is not just something extra."

To read the entire (edited) interview with Alva Ibarra and Bailey, click here

Interviews with Angelika Jansen-Brown and Greta De Leon, board members

Jansen-Brown says she is on the board because "I believe in innovative theater. Some of the performances are not wonderful, but they are trying against all odds to really create a dialogue with controversial topics." Her critique: "They need maybe a little bit more exposure to the outside world to see what has been done and what they can add to it. The problem in this is money restriction. To get more money so people can travel and learn." She says the international festivals in San Antonio offer some of that exposure. Regarding Jump-Start’s effects on the community, she says it "raises a lot of questions and dialogues that people really have and dare to bring it forth. Political, sociological, personal questions, and they approach it less veiled than southern comfort, so to speak, because the southern mentality is one that tries to be nice to everybody and they dare to pose questions that are not as polite."

De Leon has worked in Mexico and France, and sees Jump-Start as unique because they have their own space and "they know how to work, they are not messy, disordered." She was production manager on a play adapted from Sandra Cisneros stories at Jump-Start "and I fell in love with it." Regarding her board work, she says, "Until they asked me to be on the board, I always said no to be on the board of organizations because it is really like a second job that you don’t get paid for, and that you really need to invest a lot of time in it. With Jump-Start, I never had a second thought." She is impressed with their capital campaign, education program documentation project, gallery (she describes the exhibit on Zapata accompanying the Cisneros play) and the "avant-garde" quality of the performance work they bring in from Mexico. She would like to see more high-tech productions and "that they were able to pay a repertory company. Everybody is underpaid and overworked." She says Jump-Start is unique in its company vision, "very democratic."

To read the entire (edited) interview with Jansen-Brown and De Leon, click here

Interview with Jump-Start staff: Lisa Suarez, Felice Garcia, Sterling Houston, Dianne Monroe, Annele Spector, Steve Bailey and Max Parrilla

Jump-Start’s staff agrees that it’s a great place to work because, as Felice Garcia says, "Anybody can come and do what they want here, as long as it’s original, and as long as it’s their own." Sterling Houston says it’s because it’s "not boring" because of its inclusiveness of underheard voices, "and that brings in a lot of very interesting artists and viewpoints that I personally would never have thought of as community." He finds Jump-Start allows him diversity in his own work, and allows risk-taking and failure: "We are not frightened by that." Dianne Monroe says, "It is a place where all the different voices and issues … get stuck together with some kind of magic glue, as it were. To me, the luxury of being able to say and do what I want to do, but in an atmosphere where other people are doing what they want to do. It is to be cherished."

Intern Annele Spector describes the openness with which her suggestion of a youth festival was accepted, simply because she voiced the wish and was willing to do the work. In the process of this interview, Spector wished she could perform and Houston involved her in a production on the spot. Bailey says he is currently "jazzed" about their experiments in arts education, and translating their techniques into other institutions, especially into programs with "different populations, like children who have been sexually abused."

In discussion of power dynamics and decision making, they agree that they work by "organic consensus," and they don’t move forward until everyone is on the same page. Bailey goes into detail about the unique transformation of Jump-Start from "a disciplined, experimental-based, white company, current with aesthetics" run by two men to an organization that is "multiethnic and multidimensional." They discuss their roles and the organization’s ability to place people in positions where they do what they do best. Dianne Monroe analyzes the "organic" nature of the dynamic thus: "It has appeared to me that there is this a kind of system of sweat equity with power, which is that if you want to get something done and you are willing to drive it and do it, then it can get done. And that’s a way the people have entree to getting what they feel is important, or what they feel passionate about." Max Parrilla talks about the "sharing" model of Jump-Start, which is not portable; other organizations find they are uncomfortable with it.

To read the entire (edited) interview with Jump-Start staff, click here

Interview with Nita Langner, board president

Langner has been following Jump-Start ever since they did their first show 16 years before, in someone’s living room. "I like it because you can always depend on Jump-Start doing things that are a little bit edgy, doing things that are different from what you see at other theaters. They don’t mind pushing a button." It’s a working board of 24, of all ages and backgrounds, who "do everything from scrub the bathrooms to be hostesses at the productions." She feels their only effect on the community is through their work in the schools. She says it is the oldest company in San Antonio, outside of the little theater group. They want to "kick it up a notch" with more room, classrooms, expanded education program.

She says their "reason for being is to produce work that would not normally be shown" and "to produce new and fresh works rather than plays that have been established." At first it was "too edgy for some people," but the public has kind of grown into theater of that kind now, so they are not considered so edgy anymore." She sees it as "a place for interested actors and writers to produce their works that otherwise they would have a hard time getting done, and just to stay there and learn all they can."

To read the entire (edited) interview with Nita Langner, click here

Interviews with Mazzon, Jose Chapa, community artists

Interviewed at a cast party for Shimi’s "Southern Discomfort," Mazzon says he has a Latino-English television station "that would include a lot of Jump-Start which is multicultural." He says modern audiences prefer "nonsequential, raw shows" to "long, boring plays" and he believes "performance art and new-wave nightclub acts have kind of filled in that gap. And I do believe it is a rehearsal for a more exciting extravaganza theater in the future." He says Jump-Start goes "a step further" than New York or L.A. "because it is political, it’s timely, it’s multicultural," and "Jump-Start and similar local cultural centers … could finally make this the third-coast equal to New York and L.A., because our content is so far beyond pornography, gangsters and monsters."

Jose Chapa, co-host of the party, is of Mexican-American background of "different income levels," and appreciates Jump-Start because they are "are all-inclusive when it comes to their performances, they don’t discriminate." He identifies the work at Jump-Start as "performance art," and "genuine, people giving you what is inside of them." He says people who haven’t been exposed to performance art sometimes don’t "get it," but they should "give it a chance" because "this is going to perhaps spark an interest in your mind that you haven’t really been thinking about."

To read the entire (edited) interview with Mazzon and Jose Chapa, click here

Interview with Dianne Monroe, development coordinator, company member

Monroe describes her interests: writing, education, "using a radical social agenda in terms of education issues," development. "Can this institution, with its mission and its activities, grow financially without compromising those?" She likes writing about historical figures who were "outside and ahead of the mainstream." She appreciates Jump-Start’s "breadth of mission." Asked about the company as an ensemble, she described how an artist gets a play into the schedule and how it is funded. Being a company member means your work gets produced. It is more of an ensemble production company: "The person who is driving something can go negotiate with the director, can go negotiate with the actors. Each piece pulls different people either from inside the company or outside the company. To me that is not exactly an ensemble."

Monroe sees Jump-Start as a place with a wide range of views, where "not every one is all that radical" and herself as "on the far radical pole, just in terms of the political stuff. Sometimes there are works that we do that are very accessible, kind of feel-good works that aren’t that radical. But they speak to a need of one of the minority populations here and that is really valid and important." They have instituted an artistic retreat, and "how to have that group function more cohesive artistically is important, I think." She sees the leadership as "Steve, for better or worse" with Houston as the "gentle, silver-tongued ballast to Steve." She feels Jump-Start is taking on a life of its own, but is not sure how. She says they are trying to "build these structures where we get direct input from the various communities. Like the education programs, each program has its own steering committee and we have added education partners to our board."

As a political radical, Monroe chooses art because "there is a difference when you can touch somebody’s soul." She chooses Jump-Start because she is interested in creating and preserving alternative "safe spaces." "Can things not be so grassroots and shaky that they come and go, but can they evolve?" Her short definition of Jump-Start: "Jump-Start, I think, is reinventing the definition of art and its connections to the aspects of society that have been marginalized."

To read the entire (edited) interview with Dianne Monroe, click here

Interviews with Morgan, Erin and Miriam Moore, volunteers

Morgan and Erin Moore are 15 and 14, respectively. They came with their mother and served as volunteers at the premiere of S.T. Shimi’s "Southern Discomfort." They "ended up absolutely loving it" and found it "awesome." Morgan Moore says she is an atheist and she found Shimi’s treatment "so true." She would like to see Jump-Start do a performance-art piece about science fiction or aliens. Erin Moore thought the text about the afterlife being "nothingness" was "deep." She would like to see something "medieval, more gothic." Both had seen "Big, Bad and Beautiful." Morgan says of Jump-Start: "I think they have some of the best performances. They are the most interesting. I’ve been to other theaters and they just don’t have this."

Miriam Moore, the girls’ mother, appreciates being allowed to volunteer at Jump-Start because they get in free, and otherwise they wouldn’t be able to afford to go. She appreciated Shimi’s artistry. She would like to see "more really weird things done by teenagers. Like poetry, dancing, kind of combining different expressions in new ways. Sort of catalyzing storytelling."

To read the entire (edited) interview with the Moores, click here

Interview with Max Parrilla, financial manager, company member

Before he was financial manager, Parrilla was the first technical director Jump-Start had, but he "left" because "I needed the financial resources for my family." But, he says, "I will always be a part of Jump-Start" because "it is just the sense of family that we have here." He says Jump-Start started with a reputation as "a gay-centric arts organization" and queer work was "some of the best art we’ve done." Since then, he says, they’ve "branched out into more central, mainstream" art, "Latino issues, women issues, other things that bring people into the seats." He wants to get back to the queer work because "that really pushes the envelope. That really makes people think." He says the group has aged, is not willing to take chances. He feels they need to do a Latino queer festival.

He says Bailey is in charge, even when they come to consensus, but he has "the best interest for Jump-Start at heart" and "understands the bigger picture." Parrilla says the decision-making process is complex, but it works, and board members have tried to change the process, but "they’ve all chosen to leave rather than put up a fight." He says all the same things said by everyone else about the company’s openness, its mission to be there "for the people that don’t have any place else to go," but he’s not sure the younger artists know it. He says "people like being in charge" and that "has been the downfall of a lot of arts organizations that started off as a grassroots organization. It falls apart because that one person who is in charge, or who started it, rises to the top and starts making decisions. People don’t agree with those decisions and organizations just die because of that." He says they went through a rough period where they grew very fast, but now they have retreats to help the group focus. He says they are "running at top efficiency." He stresses that those in the organization must "learn to respect other people’s opinion. You have to believe in what the organization is."

To read the entire (edited) interview with Max Parilla, click here

Interviews with Ed and Irene Scharf, community collaborators/participants

The Scharfs were interviewed after a Critical Response session for Dianne Monroe’s play, "Comfort," about the Freethinkers of the town of Comfort in the Texas hill country, during the Civil War. Ed Scharf was a principal researcher for the play, and says he was instrumental in installing a memorial to the Freethinkers in Comfort. He says the "timing was good" for this play about their persecution 140 years ago. [According to the interviewer’s field notes, the memorial was recently removed by Christian extremists on grounds that it honored "godlessness."] "Actually, some of them probably have relatives on the Confederate side that might have been at the massacre site, as well," says Scharf. [It is unclear whether he refers to the artists, the audience or the Christians.]

Irene Scharf notes that "there was quite a lot of persecution. It was ironic, because they came to Texas for freedom. They were fleeing the autocracy and the tyranny of the church and the state." Asked about arts funding, she responds, "I’ve been very sad about what the federal government is trying to do to end the NEA and defund a lot of the arts programs because artists are controversial. They are to say things maybe that other people don’t want to hear. Everybody has the freedom to not hear it, but certainly they should have the freedom to say it. I think the defunding has taken our country in the wrong direction."

To read the entire (edited) interview with the Scharfs, click here

Interview with S.T. Shimi, arts-in-education instructor, WIP coordinator and company member

Shimi, with Jump-Start for seven years, talks about her project with middle-school girls in the education program, started because "feminist collaborative theater in college really changed my life" and her realization that "you could use it to affect change and educate people." She wanted to "have them be able to talk about themselves and their bodies, build that kind of trust and see if that has any effect on their lives," ending with a performance or video. She was curious about the work she did in college: "Would it have changed me even more if I had gotten to do that at a younger age?"

She details the WIP program (Wednesdays in Performance/Works in Progress), of which she is in charge, one of the few dance-oriented activities at Jump-Start. The monthly events include Critical Response. Shimi feels one of the benefits is that it offers a space for first-time performers, as well as seasoned professionals who want to show part of something they are working on. Shimi talks about her own work, which she says is often about journeying and being in exile. She aligns her work with Dianne Monroe’s "because she is a writer also and she is as political as I am."

Shimi came to Jump-Start as an intern, choosing it because of its mission statement: "It was all about giving voice to the marginalized and finding new ways of doing work." She talks about its growth, with productions every month. "My eternal disappointment is just that I wish that more people would come to the edgier political stuff that we do instead of some of the work that we do that is more pap that pop. I know the reality is that is what keeps us going." She fears things will change with further growth, or that there will be "compromises in terms of who we get money from and what kind of work we do."

Discussing Jump-Start as "community-based," she points to work that "comes from different sections of the community, so it is giving voice to those, such as the East Side community, the rising African-American community in Commerce Street, the queer Latino community. She says their presence in the schools is "really strong, almost all the kids in the neighborhood know who I am." She see Jump-Start as unique: "I think that when I came to Jump-Start and I thought about grassroots theater, I thought about, you know, San Francisco Mime Troupe or something. We’ll be out there picketing with the people and guerilla street theater and stuff. No, we don’t do that."

Regarding leadership, she says, "I think that all of our organization in some ways is just this negotiation of how much can we expect Steve to do. What will Steve let us do is sometimes how it feels," yet "we all answer to each other. When we need to pull together we have always managed to do that. Some of that is just maturity and some of that is really sticking to this Critical Response method." She sees their biggest challenge "is being torn between wanting things to be the way that they were and hurtling forward towards a future that may not be all that it is cracked up to be. People looking back on wanting to do company ensemble shows." They stopped doing that because "people have jobs teaching art in schools, or people are just tired of working together, they’ve said everything they want to say." She says she will stay because "it is the closest thing to a home that I was not embarrassed to call a home without a sneer."

To read the entire (edited) interview with S.T. Shimi, click here

Interview with Annele Spector, apprentice, company member

Spector, whose degree is in radio, TV and film, has been with Jump-Start since 1999, paid for ten hours work a week through a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts. Her duties include mailing lists, membership, fundraising, program advertising, "ghostwriting" the monthly newsletter for board and company, and sound for shows. She says that when she was hired, "They said, ‘It has to be a minority,’ and I fit that. This is all I do and I love it." She talks about her first project, as assistant for Festival de Libre Enganche, and about instituting Young Tongues with Shimi.

Describing Jump-Start’s "kind" of theater, she says "our mission is to reach people who don’t have a voice. Youth, minorities, women, women of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, whatever. Our kind is just the different person that gets made fun of in high school, that gets laughed at and teased in public. They are part of the family because they are just like you." She says being involved with these people "fuels the fire. It motivates people to do their work. To reach the mass audience. All we want to do is bring in new people who have never been to Jump-Start, never seen our work. To bring them in and have them like what they see and come back." She reiterates the point made in the staff interview about the power-sharing principles by which Jump-Start operates. "I’ve never worked at a place where your ideas are welcome, appreciated and nurtured and people respect you as an artist. It’s not like everyone is fighting over this small piece of meat. There’s plenty to go around."

Spector talks about her teaching at the local schools, how she wanted to do it, but had no experience. "So what if I’m afraid? I’m still going to do it because these people believe in me and they are giving me responsibility. These kids. Some of them are so smart and you can’t wait to run into them at Jump-Start or Blue Star in ten years."

To read the entire (edited) interview with Annele Spector, click here

Chuck Squier, board member, company member

Like Parrilla, Squier, a founder, talks of Jump-Start as "family. Our longevity allows us to have a shared vocabulary of experience and all kinds of stuff. That is the reason that I stay." He talks about their move from the 24th Street Experiment at Our Lady of the Lake University. "We had butted heads with the university several times because they were wanting to censor us." During a discussion of what they each wanted, someone said, "I just want to jump-start the art community" and it stuck, though Squier argued against it.

They moved several times, nervous about making rent. "Each time we have made it. I think that is in large part due to Steve Bailey and the backing that the company gives him. Certainly, without Steve I can’t imagine Jump-Start being here." He tracks their continued growth and funding, their focus on activism. He said it was "headline news" when they did "Comfort," because "it is about white people."

To read the entire (edited) interview with Chuck Squier, click here

Interview with Lisa Suarez, special projects director, company member

Suarez talks about how ideas emerge for projects at Jump-Start and how they get to the stage. Having artists in all media, she says, "We have all of the different components that might go into making a production." Eventually every idea needs a meeting. "We go crazy with how many meetings we have everyday. The fact is that unless you have a meeting and talk to people, things are not going to happen. We certainly try and motivate each other. That is where the excitement for those types of things starts to happen." For feedback, some use the Critical Response process, which she considers helpful. Other evaluation is more informal, sometimes measured by "seeing who comes to your work. If they show up and start to talk about it."

About audience, she says Jump-Start always did "work for disenfranchised communities," but diversity really began when more people of color were brought into the company, "the Latino community, the black community, putting our faces up on the stage I think was really important." Now there is a wide mix of colors in the audience and "they can come here and be comfortable and not feel out of place, even if they come to see a production that is not about themselves. Knowing that you can sit in an audience and be different and still be treated okay is very important. We have done that. We keep ourselves in check as much as possible." Strong audience response to their ideas, she says, makes them feel they "have touched somebody that has the potential to change the world out there." The Jump-Start vision, in her view, is to create a space where people with different beliefs can be together "and get along without imposing our beliefs on other people." She calls the whole constituency "a support group."

She describes the power structure as Bailey and Houston, then the company members (all associate directors), then the interns. She concurs with the other interviewees that Bailey makes the hard decisions with input from the company, and they can fight for their own opinions and point it out if his behavior is "racist or sexist" and "you are not going to be kicked out." She says she won’t leave because she is making a living as an artist and "I am interested in a home and making a difference here." Their biggest challenges are "money and changing the minds of closed-minded individuals." Her favorite projects were the Festival de Libra Eganche and creating "La Frontera" as a touring show.

She underscores their freedom to do anything "if you are willing to work at it." Asked if that includes censoring others whose mission is not aligned with yours, she says, "If we are trying to break down oppression you have to provide freedom. We don’t always like what we are going to see up there. At times, even we may want to censor something that is going to be up there, but it is like, whoa, wait a minute. Would we be going against our own mission? We have serious talks about that kind of stuff."

To read the entire (edited) interview with Lisa Suarez, click here

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