Emboldened/Unsung Jazz Heroes tickets are now available!

Did any of you check out that fantastic piece in City Arts about our upcoming Engaged Theatre production, Emboldened? If you haven't, you should!

D'Vonne Lewis (left) and Reginald Andre Jackson (right)

Photo by Steve Korn

“When we’re playing well together and we don’t realize it and we’re in some other place, that’s where the beauty is,” Lewis continues. “But Buddy took it to that place and couldn’t handle it. Music can make you go crazy if you always want to get to that place. He always wanted to blow people’s minds every time he played, so much so he blew his own mind.” 

Read the full article by Jake Uitti here.
Buy tickets to Emboldened/Unsung Jazz Heroes here.

Emboldened poster. Artwork by Jay Mason

Freehold's Engaged Theatre program, in association with Theatre Off Jackson, presents an immersive music and theatre experience commissioned by Freehold and produced in partnership with the Central District Forum for Arts & Ideas and The Mahogany Project.

Emboldened/Unsung Jazz Heroes investigates the need to seek - both individually and collectively - an identity and a durable sense of self; and inquires into how necessity leads to the birth of inspiration. Juxtaposing stories from Seattle's historic jazz scene with the forgotten legacy of Buddy Bolden, the project examines the extraordinary internal worlds of these under-noticed souls and their struggle to break out of imposed limits - creatively and destructively.

A two-part experience featuring an interactive site-specific installation as well as an original play, Emboldened/Unsung Jazz Heroes will combine video, performance and music for a night of storytelling that will invite the public to encounter theatre - and each other - in a new interface.

The event features an original play, Emboldened: The Rise and Fall of King Bolden the First, byReginald André Jackson (winner of the 2010 AATE Distinguished Playwriting Award) about the life of Buddy Bolden, accompanied by an original score composed by D'Vonne Lewis (of Industrial Revelation, winner of the 2014 Stranger Genius Award in Music). The play will be prefaced by the live installation Unsung Heroes of Seattle Jazz, a contextual historic gallery showcasing the stories of Seattle's vibrant yet underdocumented jazz scene.

Freehold's Engaged Theatre program presents

Emboldened/Unsung Heroes

July 23, 24, 25 at 7:00pm; July 26 at 5:00pm

July 31, August 1, 3 at 7:00pm; August 2 at 5:00pm

Theatre Off Jackson, 409 7th Ave S, Seattle WA 98104

PAY WHAT YOU CAN

Engaging with Theatre by John Helde

John Helde is a Freehold Board Member who attended an enhanced performance as part of Freehold's Engaged Theatre tour's production of The Flower of England's Face: Henry IV this past summer. Freehold hosted an enhanced performance which brought together audiences from seemingly disparate, disconnected communities where guests first saw the play, then broke bread together and engaged in debates with characters from the play while using improvisation, story telling, free writing and group poetry to explore the themes of the play. Freehold invited groups from Path with Art, Expedia, UW, Boeing and Getty Images to participate in the enhanced performance.  Here's John's experience of his participation in the event ....

I’d been anticipating this summer’s Engaged Theatre production The Flower of England’s Face: Henry IV – a special cutting and reworking of three of Shakespeare’s historical plays – for awhile.  I had the opportunity to see a work-in-progress last summer and it was electric even then.  Then last May, Robin Lynn Smith asked me to collaborate on a unique “surveillance” film she planned to integrate into the play; it was a blast to work with the cast and Robin to shoot the noir-ish flashback one morning in a back stairway at Freehold.

So when I was invited to attend the first “enhanced” performance I happily signed on.  The workshop following the Sunday afternoon performance promised to include “story telling, free writing and group poetry inspired by themes from the play.” The play was a completely compelling piece of theatre with a clear story, passionate actors and brilliant live music pouring from the wings. And, yes, it was sweaty!  It was a hot July night with no AC.

But it was in fact a great night to gather outside the UW’s Penthouse Theater afterwards with fellow audience members. Daemond Arrindell, Robin’s collaborator on the workshop, is a poet and teacher. He has a resonant voice and a generous spirit and he led us through a series of exercises that gave the group a way to interact with each other. My favorite was a “group poetry” project inspired by the play. The premise is this: it’s intimidating for the vast majority of us to write poetry spontaneously. Daemond went around the circle soliciting words and phrases that emerge from our understanding of the themes of the play, while Robin scribbled them up on a piece of butcher paper.  When we were done, Daemond read our “instant” poem aloud and lo and behold! - it was a surprisingly powerful piece. I love that one piece of art combined a willing audience can create a wholly new piece of art in a matter of minutes.
 

Then, we rolled up our sleeves and made our own poems. Daemond offered a prompt:  “If my dignity was a coat…” and away we went scribbling as fast as we could without thinking. When I was through covering one side of my 8 ½ x 11 sheet of paper with my illegible handwriting, I found myself hoping a little that we were done; but we kept on cranking it out until Daemond called it.   Then, an even bigger challenge: sharing this work with the group.  I’m a filmmaker and a writer, and of course a big part of making creative work is sharing it. However, I’m used to editing and tweaking for a long time in private before that point.  Now, there was no opportunity for that.  One after another, we stood up to share our instantaneous poems. The idea of dignity – such a personal and tenuous one – grew to have many forms and facets. A young man who’s had difficult experiences growing up; an aging woman who’s passionate about peace… back to back the poems made the idea grow both more personal and more universal. I felt like we began to realize how tied we are by one word, and how each individual voice brings something new to our understanding. The words that poured out felt powerful and true, and I admired people’s courage and vulnerability.

Never did these games feel contrived, like, say, an overly upbeat session you might encounter at a company morale booster. The evening felt like a great meal. Maybe the play was, surprisingly, the appetizer. Sharing ourselves with our fellow audience members in a forthright way on a beautiful summer evening was the main course. And writing a poem, dessert.  The workshop was an honest and collaborative way to extend the emotional experience of the play into a connection with those who experienced it with you.  It was also a reminder that people are surprising and full of creative spirit, if they take the opportunity to play.  I walked out into the twilight of the U-District feeling like I’d traveled someplace pretty stirring with a bunch of new friends.

The Power of Art in Action: WCCW Residency by Eva Abram

Freehold facilitates an annual residency at three separate Washington Corrections facilities including the Washington Corrections Center for Women (WCCW), in which we enable the participants to write, direct, rehearse, and perform their own show in a five-month period. Residencies guide participants through the creation of an original performance based on an exploration of the archetypal hero’s journey. Participants invite their peers, friends and family to watch their performance at the culmination of the residency. The residency performance at WCCW is held in the spring.

When I was invited to participate in the Engaged Theatre WCCW Residency, learning that a theater-oriented group of people would guide participants through a series of writing exercises that would then be used to create a play, I was, well, curious.  As a storyteller and actor I’m quite familiar with story structure so I wondered how random writings would be used to create a cohesive, thematic play. 

I didn’t have to wonder long.  The ‘Group of Five (or so)’ Teaching Artists held meetings long before entering the WCCW.  We held several planning meetings to discuss ways to approach our task, asking questions such as: What classic stories might we use to start the creative juices flowing that might lead to possible themes?  We explored well-known stories that helped guide us in gathering ideas about how to approach the writing workshops. 

Still we had lots of questions to answer:  How do we create prompts that will encourage writing and not intimidate participants?  How do we convince those who have never written to write from a place of truth?  What kind of physical exercises could we do within WCCW rules to help mentally free the group?  These questions and many more had to be addressed before setting foot into the workspace.

In thinking about these tough questions, I had one of my own, “Are you sure I’m the one you need for this work?”  I sat in the meetings with a talented playwright, (a newbie like myself) and three veterans of the program.  As the playwright and I struggled to get up to speed, my concern vanished; I simply had no time to worry over that.  We listened, learned and discovered ways to contribute. Another question was, “How do you convince the new participants that ‘Yes, we can and will use your writings to create an awesome play?’"

I found that if we, the ‘Group of Five or so’, were willing to open up and share writings about ourselves, participants were more than willing to do the same.  We presented writing prompts that were developed with sensitivity for our participants.  Through thoughtful self-exploration, the women created heart-felt stories; they wrote of love, loss, death, forgiveness, standing up against injustice and transformations.  Through this program, lives were changed. 

The participants’ stories were beautifully astonishing and the truth in their messages was well received by those privileged enough to experience the play Cape-able Women, Journey through the Maze.

Throughout the creative writing process I was inspired, renewed and honored to have been a small part of this program with its audacious ideas and huge goals, all of which were met in the end.

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For more information about Freehold's Engaged Theatre program, go here.

My Story of My Work by Taryn Collis

“What do you do?”
“I teach theater at the women’s prison.”
“Oh. That must be… interesting.”
“Yeah.”

When you tell people you volunteer at a prison, they instantly know what you do. Or, they know what they think you do. Last year was my first year volunteering at WCCW, and I too thought I knew exactly what I was getting myself into.

Since graduating from college I’ve spent the majority of my artistic life making art with people who didn’t spend outrageous amounts of money on an arts education, didn’t have any semblance of ‘advanced training,’ or who straight up thought theater was for rich white people wearing pearls. I’ve sung and danced with underprivileged teens, I’ve paraded through the streets with farmers and homeless populations, I’ve even moved to the West Bank of Palestine to make puppets with refugee children.
“Prison?” I thought. “I got this.”

I love being proved wrong.

My favorite thing about working with the women at WCCW is their ability to surprise me each and every week. More so than most ‘trained artists,’ they are willing to jump right in and risk and try new things and be messy. They are brave, they are generous, and I don’t think they have any idea that they are some of the most talented artists I have ever had the pleasure of working with. It’s easy to title someone as a “prisoner,” an “offender,” a “criminal” and think you know everything about them. But when you walk into a room full of “women” and give them the space and the freedom to tell their stories, you never know what might come up. You look around the room at a sea of grey sweatpants; everyone equal, everyone the same. But within a few hours you begin to notice that, in fact, this one is a poet, and this one a master at improv. This one can tug your heart strings, and this one can make you laugh till you cry. Within moments everything you knew flies right out the window and over the sparkling barbed wire fence.

When I talk someone through a typical Sunday afternoon out at WCCW they usually prep themselves for a story filled with crying women lamenting over their crimes and the ordeals of incarceration. It’s not that those things don’t happen, it’s just that within the same three hours you’ll also see a room full of grown women throwing a “ball” of gibberish at each other, transforming into a dog or an elf or a surfer, or harmonizing in a haunting wordless song. As we kick off the residency this week, my only goal is to remain ever present and open. We head in with a book full of exercises and writing prompts, but there’s no telling what they’ll bring to the table each week. More so than getting up in front of the women to teach, we’re there to listen. Each and every one of these women has been through things I can’t even imagine, and I feel blessed that they’re willing to share even some part of themselves with me and with us.

We all have stories. We’re just waiting around for someone to listen.