Community Arts

We did achieve both artistic goals set down in our proposal. The first goal was around the performance development process, specifically, that it should: 1) be professional; 2) challenge the creativity of members; 3) expand member appreciation for theater arts and collaborative work; and 4) broaden the creative perspectives of the artists. The work was very professional, led by History Theatre Teaching Artists who each had extensive professional experience and substantial experience working at turning real-life stories into theatrical performances – work they do regularly with the History Theatre’s education programs, where that is the focus. Their ability to maintain a professional working environment depended on their success at gaining the trust of Vail Place members. It’s a real credit to the Teaching Artists that they developed working relationships close enough to, as one put it: "Allow us to ask questions and push the members to try things they might not try without a belief that we’re all in this together," Brian. This brief story from one of the Teaching Artists about her goals going into the project reflects how much the Teaching Artists asked of the members, and also how much the members got from the experience. "I really wanted to dig into and encourage more specificity in the writing, to make it content rich, and to encourage the members to get comfortable crafting performances. Evidence of performance crafting came when one member dressed in a hospital gown and walked downstage to deliver her monologue about Electrconvulsive Therapy, while two other members, 'cast' as doctors, helped her sit down while giving the audience the definition of shock therapy. The whole thing had been crafted originally as a story, but then the member who wrote it was very open to letting the 'doctors' impart the technical information she wanted as part of her story, and was also very open to changing the voice of the story from past to present tense, which made it more like a monologue. We were also able to get another member who swore she would never, ever, ever, get up and read her stuff, get up and read her stuff," Annie. The participating members unanimously expressed appreciation for the project: "The experience helped me live beyond my comfort zone! Getting these stories out has impacted my personal growth and my mental health recovery big time. It’s been very cathartic. I’ve built confidence and learned to better open up to the “real world,” Kathy. "Writing in the theater project has been an eye opening experience of exploring my own thoughts and hearing other people’s perspectives," Kevin. Likewise the Teaching Artists were deeply impacted by this project. "I love that we get to do something and work with a special group of adults who teach me and humble me every session," Brian. Our proposal stated that the project was for the primary benefit of Vail Place members. We projected 30 members participating and we had 37. We also projected 150 to 200 other members would attend performances. We had about 140 members attending either the performances at Vail Place or the final performance at the History Theatre. There were two main reasons that prevented greater member attendance: 1. Limited transportation for members wanting to attend the History Theatre performance. 2. Performances at Vail Place were scheduled last minute to accommodate additional time that the groups at each location wanted to rehearse. This left little time to do outreach and promotion. Audiences for the final performance were about 200, just short of the 250 projected. However, we did do a couple of public performances for a professional women’s group and another nonprofit. Those performances were scaled back (fewer members performing) and reached an additional audience of about 250 people. On the whole, we successfully reached our intended community. The project was open to all Vail Place members and we promoted it through a variety of internal communications to make sure all members knew of the opportunity. The biggest barrier to participation we encountered, as has been true in the past, was personalities. We had several members at one of our clubhouses who participated who are very challenging personalities. The Teaching Artists did a great job respecting and trying to engage everyone in their groups. But some members, because of their illnesses, find certain people difficult to deal with and that prevented a few members from participating. In terms of diversity, each group represented, as our proposal detailed, a wide range of backgrounds, experiences, and abilities. The groups at each location closely reflected the total membership at that location. Our biggest challenge is in drawing larger audiences to our public performances. Word of mouth and strategic social media outreach has brought more attention to this project. We are receiving requests from businesses and other organizations to perform for them. We expect this to help us build a broader audience for this project in the future. Also, Vail Place is planning to expand to St Paul in late 2017, early 2018. The community we will be serving there is more diverse than our current Hennepin County locations serve, which will help us build more diverse membership and supporters/audiences. Members found a creative outlet that was powerful in terms of self-expression and also in communicating to others. Members achieved self-confidence and social skills that have positively impacted their mental health recovery and their overall quality of life. We found that theater is a great tool in fighting stigma. Performances informed audiences about mental illness very effectively.