the end

One of my favorite drama games involves a giant imaginary map of the United States on the floor. It starts with everyone standing in the place on the map where they were born, then moves on to where they say they're from, and so on, until everyone is asked to stand somewhere they once spent a really magical summer. Every time I've played this game, I've immediately made my way to upstate New York, where I went to summer camp, but next time I play, I think I'll end up in Minneapolis. It's strange to think this magical summer is over (I arrived back in Evanston two days ago), but I'm excited to be back with friends and my own apartment. Leaving the TAT basement for the last time on Friday was unbelievably hard - the people I met and the things I learned from each of them have made me grow so much, and I'm so grateful to have had this experience.

How we left our mark on CTC - the blue handprint on the bottom right is mine!

I went into last week's camp, Madeline and the Gypsies, in the second week of its two-week run. It felt really different to be coming in after a class dynamic had already been firmly established, but it was a good experience regardless. The teaching artist, Emily, only worked with the young kids all summer, so it was exciting to see her work with older kids. I liked having the opportunity to see two teaching artists work with age ranges outside of their comfort zone two weeks in a row. Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing's teaching artist really didn't change much about his teaching style for the older kids, while Emily used such different methods of classroom management for this group than I had seen her use in K-3 camps. The dynamic in her classroom was still very similar, but she used completely different exercises, especially for warm-ups.

Emily comes from a circus and clowning background, so her approach with Madeline and the Gypsies was so fun to watch. The story largely took place at a carnival, so there were a few scenes that featured cool acrobatics (with 4th-6th graders!). But my favorite part of the process was Emily's decision to use a shadow screen, which became a totally essential part of the show. It was such a clever solution to the "how do we teach a ten-year-old how to swallow a sword safely in just two weeks?" question, and it looked really polished and interesting. The kids love it, too (because who doesn't like shadow puppets?), and I had lots of fun being behind the shadow screen, watching the magic happen. 

On Wednesday, I took the day off from the Theatre Arts Training basement to attend CTC's Neighborhood Bridges conference. Neighborhood Bridges is a program that goes into public schools and uses storytelling and creative drama to teach critical literacy, a method of reading and writing that recognizes that no text is neutral or objective, and asks students to question what appears normal, then to re-think it. The keynote speaker, Vivian Vasquez, gave a really fascinating speech on young children's abilities to create change in their communities when given the opportunity.

My favorite part of the conference, though, was the last workshop I attended. We started in three groups and were asked to listen to a short fable from a specific character's point of view. We were then asked to react in character to the story. Did we feel as though we had been fairly represented? What did we think of the decisions made by other characters in the story? We then created a short scene in which each group retold the story from their characters' points of view. It was such a tangible way to create change and find ways to include silenced voices. Some of the teaching artists involved in Neighborhood Bridges talked about how activities like that one give children agency to recognize unfair circumstances in their lives (for example, many of them come from abusive households) and know that they have the power to change them by looking at things from different points of view. I was so inspired by the people at this conference and left the building on Wednesday feeling absolutely positive that this field is where I want to be.

Outside of CTC, we'll have to rewind quite a bit so I can tell you about some of the most incredible experiences I had in Minneapolis. The first was Ball's Cabaret, an open mic night every Saturday at midnight at the beautiful Southern Theater. Ball's has been running for twenty-one years, making it the longest running midnight cabaret in the world, and I'm pretty sure there is nothing else like it in the entire universe. For those of you who know Rives, it should suffice to say that Leslie Ball, the MC, is a female version of Rives. She has long grey hair, sings folksongs, and is one of the kindest, most generous souls I've ever encountered. The cabaret is open to anyone who wants to perform, as long as they've attended Ball's as an audience member once before. And like any open mic night, it's subject to some incredible performers and some truly awful performers. But what sets it apart is the unparalleled level of support in the Ball's community. I watched a couple workshop a dance piece that they're opening at the Guthrie in the fall and then watched Leslie Ball tear up because the piece started as a performance almost ten years ago at Ball's Cabaret. I also watched a stand up comedian who could barely project his voice to the second row get as many laughs and as much applause as you might expect George Carlin to get, were he still alive and had he decided to perform at Ball's. After the performances, everyone is invited to have candy and mingle in the lobby, and I talked for a bit with Leslie Ball, who was absolutely thrilled that my friend and I had found our way to Ball's all the way from Northwestern. One of my biggest regrets about this summer in Minneapolis is that I didn't make it to Ball's sooner, but if I'm ever back, it'll be one of the first things I do.

On Sunday, I went with another intern to Mixed Precipitation's production of The Return of King Idomeneo, a Mozart (picnic) operetta. The project travels around to different community gardens in the Twin Cities area, and the performance I saw was at the Eat Street Community Garden. The weather was a little cloudy, but the rain held off the entire time, and I'm so glad it did. Mixed Precipitation is a really creative, wonderful company that came about through a collaboration between a director and a caterer. The show was half Mozart's music and half original music written in various different styles from the 1960s, and the show's book was created collaboratively by the entire cast and creative team. They took the story of The Return of King Idomeneo and reset it in the 60s (with really beautiful  vintage costumes). But the best part was that at various points in the show, food would be passed around to audience members to illustrate what was happening - when the king's son set out to sea, we had boats made out of cucumbers stuffed with feta cheese and topped with dill; when the town was covered in algae as a result of Neptune's wrath, we had "seaweed on Neptune's trident" (sauteed kale wrapped around a compostable plastic fork). The production perfectly encapsulated almost everything I love about Minneapolis - really creative art, delicious locally sourced food, vintage clothes, and a beautiful environment. It was absolutely magnificent.

One of my favorite things about Minneapolis is that Black Eyed Susans are everywhere.
These were right outside of the Eat Street Community Garden.

Thursday, after work, my roommate and I made our way to the Walker Art Center, a modern art museum in the Loring Park area of Minneapolis. I love art museums, and this one was particularly fascinating. The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden is outside, so we walked around for awhile before making our way inside the museum. We saw a number of great exhibits, but my favorite was called "This Will Have Been: Art, Love, and Politics in the 1980s." It featured a lot of feminist art and art about the AIDS crisis, which I found so interesting that I completely forgot to take any pictures. You'll have to go to the website and check it out if you're interested. I did take a few pictures in other exhibits and in the sculpture garden, though, and since I think visual art speaks for itself, here they are.

"Bits & Pieces Put Together to Present a Semblance of a Whole," by Lawrence Weiner 

A squished lady! I couldn't find the artist's information anywhere, but I loved this sculpture. 

The most famous sculpture in the garden, Spoonbridge and Cherry by Claes Oldenburg 

"The Parachutist," by Robert Mallary

I already miss Minneapolis more than I ever thought I would have. It's definitely somewhere I'll end up again, though I have no idea when. In the meantime, I'll just keep listening to my mpls summer playlist, which may just be the best playlist I've ever made. I guess I was pretty inspired.

1. Scenic World - Beirut
2. Hard Believer - First Aid Kit
3. Lonesome - Dr. Dog
4. My Body - Young the Giant
5. Dancing On My Own - Robyn
6. King of Spain - The Tallest Man on Earth
7. Treehouse - I'm From Barcelona
8. East Harlem - Beirut
9. We Fools - Leslie Ball (!!!)
10. White Winter Hymnal - Fleet Foxes
11. The Wild Hunt - The Tallest Man on Earth
12. Do the Trick - Dr. Dog
13. Good Day - Jukebox the Ghost
14. Some Nights - Fun.
15. 1904 - The Tallest Man on Earth
16. Santa Fe - Beirut
17. Shadow People - Dr. Dog

Thanks for reading. Maybe someday soon I'll have more blog-worthy adventures, and if I do, I'll make sure to let you all know! 

Love,

Alison

pierogis, people watching, and pancakes

It's been awhile since I last posted. I won't make any excuses, but I will apologize in advance for the length of this post. I have a lot of ground to cover!

This past week I was in a 4th-6th grade camp called Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. We worked off a script based on the Judy Blume book by the same title. For those of you unfamiliar with the book, like I was before starting this camp, the story is about a fourth grader named Peter and his struggles with his three year old brother, Fudge. I think Fudge is a nickname, but I never managed to figure out what the kid's real name was. Fudge is, to put it lightly, a nightmare. He bangs incessantly on pots and pans, he eats Peter's pet turtle, he jumps off a jungle gym and knocks out his front teeth, and commits any number of other behavioral atrocities you could think of. 

I'm not sure if it was just the group of kids or if it was the influence of Fudge (all the kids thought he was hilarious and wanted to play him in every scene), but this was one of the most difficult groups I've worked with so far. It was nearly impossible to get them to stay focused, which generally doesn't bother me, but their unfocused energy wasn't creative so much as it was just distracted. There were a few moments when we were able to harness that energy and get the kids to put together something creative and, ultimately, really funny, but those moments were rare. Needless to say, it was a pretty tough week. 

The teaching artist for this camp, Matt, has only taught K-3 and preschool all summer, which is what he teaches during the school year. Seeing him adapt his teaching for a 4-6 camp was really fascinating. Matt has a great sense of humor and is a very gentle teacher, which helped me to keep a level head throughout the week. He is also the first teacher I've ever seen use storytelling so effectively as a classroom management technique. After lunch, when the kids were the most distracted, he had them sit down in a circle and vote whether they wanted to hear a myth, a legend, or a fairytale. He'd then explain what the genre they chose meant (for example, a legend contains elements of truth, so he'd ask the students to listen for parts of the story they thought were true) and then he'd start the story. He always told in a very quiet, gentle voice, so if they wanted to hear it, they needed to remain completely quiet and still. Matt is an incredible storyteller, and his sense of humor really comes through in his tellings, so after the first story, the kids demanded another story every day. After his tellings, we'd discuss the themes of the story and how they might connect to Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. Once we had a really engaging discussion about gender after his telling of the Italian folktale "The Robber with a Witch's Head." He never underestimated their ability to discuss the themes of a story, which was refreshing, since I think Judy Blume's book does underestimate the comprehension ability of a fourth grader. I think it was refreshing for the kids to have to think and process, rather than just absorb the silliness of Fudge's antics.

As I've said before, I signed up to volunteer at the Minnesota Fringe Festival. The festival began last Thursday and ends today. I've finished my twelve volunteer shifts and have seen four shows (I may try to see another tonight, but we'll see). The festival's atmosphere is really exciting. Five of the venues are within a minute or two's walking distance of each other, so in the thirty minutes between shows, there are hundreds of people on the street outside each of the venues, all wearing their Fringe admission buttons and talking about theatre. Honestly, I haven't liked anything I've seen so far at the Fringe, and since the shows are selected by lottery, I sort of doubt I'd have really loved anything I didn't see. Some of the pieces seem like solid first drafts, but I wonder whether they'll be workshopped further - everyone seems really confident about their work as it stands. Despite the somewhat sub-par quality of theatre at the Fringe and the occasionally stressful volunteering environment, Fringe has been a pretty good experience. If nothing else, it's kept my weekends busy and allowed me to meet some interesting people. 

Amazingly, between my crazy week at CTC and volunteering at the Fringe, I've found some free time to have more exciting Minneapolis adventures. Last weekend, on her last day in town, Ilana and I made our way to the Seward Cafe for the customary weekend buckwheat pancakes, and then wandered over the the Northern Clay Center, a really beautiful ceramics and pottery gallery in Seward. I know next to nothing about ceramics or pottery, so I'll just leave you with a few photos of pieces I liked.

My friend Lizzy and I had planned on seeing Tallest Man on Earth at First Avenue last Monday, but when we tried to buy tickets, the show was sold out. Because my goal this summer was to live everything as fully as possible, we decided to take a chance and walked up and down the line to get into the venue, sketchily asking people if they had any extra tickets. And someone did! We managed to get in and see a really beautiful concert. I think Tallest Man on Earth is much more suited to an outdoor venue in the middle of the afternoon, but I'm so glad we went, and I haven't been able to stop listening to him since the concert.

Outside First Avenue, as we tried to score tickets, we met this homeless man, who asked us to sign his "birthday card." He was wearing a white jacket and a white hat, both of which were covered in people's signatures. I chose to sign the piece of cardboard he had propped up against his legs. I ran into him again today outside the Seward Cafe, and in addition to his signed jacket, hat, and piece of cardboard he had at First Avenue, he had a birthday bike for people to sign in metallic marker. I'm not sure if his birthday is actually coming up, but he's hands down the most interesting person I've met here. I wish I had had more of an opportunity to ask him about himself, but I'm content to leave it up to my imagination.

Happy birthday to this guy!

This weekend, I made my way over the Stone Arch Bridge to the Twin Cities Polish Festival on Main Street. If you know me, you know I'm really proud of my Polish heritage (it's not entirely because of the food, but that plays a huge part). The Polish Festival was a beautiful event, complete with vendors of  beautiful handmade Polish Christmas ornaments, Polish pottery, painted wooden eggs, and, of course, plenty of pierogi, potato pancakes, and kielbasa. I waited in line for twenty minutes to get pierogis at "U Babci" ("grandmother" in Polish), and they were worth every minute of the wait. I think they were the best pierogis I've ever had (not counting my family's recipe - nothing could beat that). There was a tent which housed a few different polka bands, my favorite of which, purely for their hilarious band name, was called Doctor Kielbasa. Seeing dozens of old Polish couples polkaing made me tear up a little, and I wish I had had the guts to ask one of them to teach me to polka. 

The Festival also includes a film festival at the St. Anthony Main Theatre, where I saw a really interesting film called "Irena Sendler: In the Name of Their Mothers," about an incredibly inspiring woman who smuggled thousands of children out of the Warsaw ghetto and saved their lives. The trailer for the film is below.

This morning was my last trip to the Seward Cafe. It's crazy to think that I only have a week left here. I won't reflect on the entire summer yet, but I can reflect on how important the Seward Cafe has been to my experience. It's been really comforting to have a place where people know me well enough to joke about making blackberry pancake scented perfume. The Seward Cafe may also be the best place in the world for people watching. Today, I saw a hipster in a sunflower t-shirt unknowingly sitting next to a napkin dispenser with a sunflower sticker on it advertising "Earth Day 25 - Let's Never Call it a Day." While I was appreciating the image of his shirt next to that napkin dispenser, he used the phrase "to witness the human spirit" casually in conversation. That's not something you'd witness anywhere but the Seward Cafe.

And, of course, my summer would not have been the same without those blackberry buckwheat pancakes. Because I've never posted a photo of them, here they are - my last two Seward Cafe pancakes.

fab brown rice

The little ones are much more difficult this time around, but somehow I've managed to stay alive and even blog on a Thursday! I feel like I've managed to connect with the kids so much more this week than I did last time I worked with these age groups - it's like it took me awhile to learn their language but now we're finally communicating. 

There's one girl (I'll call her Alex) who came in on the first day and didn't say a word. She cowered off to the side and only participated when the whole group was participating, and even then only occasionally. On Tuesday, though, her mom brought her in half an hour early and, through a series of events that are probably not interesting enough to explain in detail, I saw Alex crying to her mom and mentioned it to our teaching artist, Chris. Chris suggested that when Alex finally came into the room, I should go over to her and check in, since we connected when I saw her get upset in the hallway. I did, and after asking her a number of yes or no questions (because she refused to speak) about her favorite color and her pink headband covered in little roses, she finally started to answer me with more than a nod or shake of her head, and for the rest of the day we could barely get her to stop talking. She still clings to me and holds my hand through almost the entire class, but she's far from timid now. I was so proud of her, and it made me realize how much I've learned about how to read younger kids and figure out what they need to happen before they're willing to participate. It's an entirely different game than it is with the 4th-6th graders that I've gotten so used to this summer, but it's incredibly rewarding. 

I think preschool is such a fantastic time. It's amazing to look at the world through their eyes and realize what a huge risk they're taking by just stepping into the classroom without their parents, let alone putting together a play with people they've never met before. The journey they take over the course of one week is so huge, and I'm really happy I've been able to be a part of that. Besides, who wouldn't melt hearing these adorable little humans say things like, "all the good feelings make you powerful" or "when I close my eyes I'm painted all over!" It's really a gift to get to work with these kids every morning. 

The Minnesota Fringe starts today, and I stopped by the info desk today to pick up my volunteer packet, which includes comps to twelve Fringe shows (one for each of the shows at which I'm volunteering). The info desk is located in Intermedia Arts one of a number of different Fringe venues. Before getting there, I was a little irritated that I had to go a mile out of my way for my volunteer packet, but it was absolutely worth it. Intermedia Arts is one of the coolest places I've ever been. They are "Minnesota's premier multidisciplinary, multicultural arts organization. [Their] mission is to be a catalyst that builds understanding among people through art." What could be better?

The building is white brick, with "Art. Changes. Everything." painted in large, black letters on the front. The space houses an art gallery, a theatre space, and a small cafe. The exhibit currently in the gallery is called "We Exist," and is dedicated to artwork inspired by graffiti. 

There's also a smaller installment in the back of the gallery by artist-in-residence Robert Farid Karimi. The installment is a room whose walls are covered with recipes and food-inspired poetry. One wall is a chalkboard where visitors can write their thoughts about food or contribute recipes. There's a table in the middle of the exhibit with jars of spices and small baggies so you can create a spice mixture to take with you, and the entire room smells absolutely delicious. Pots and pans hang everywhere; there's a working, stocked refrigerator; and a really wonderful soundtrack plays over a muted cooking show on the small TV in the corner. It was magical.

My favorite part of the exhibit was a small section in the front of the room with a pile of index cards. There were instructions to take a recipe, but only if you left one of your own. I jotted down my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe and found a recipe for "fab brown rice" that I took home and made for dinner tonight. It just so happened that I had all the ingredients, so I'm convinced it was meant to be. 

The recipe called for half a green pepper, and I recently bought these beautiful purple and white bell peppers from the Seward Coop. The purple bell pepper tastes just like a green bell pepper (and is actually green on the inside!) so I used one of those, and threw in one of the somewhat spicier white bell peppers (really though, they just have the aftertaste of a hot pepper, minus all the heat) to give it a little more flavor. Though the recipe was a little bland, I liked it a lot, and it was my first time cooking rice by sautéing it raw first. I think there's lots of room for improvement, but it was a great start, and the story behind the recipe gives it all the flavor it really needs.