The beginning
Healing Through a Dreaming He(art)
A Discovery and a Search of a Utopian World using
Expressive Arts Healing
“In this mirror [of theatre] we see the present, but can invent the future of our dreams; the act of transforming is in itself transformatory. In the act of changing our image, we are changing ourselves, and by changing ourselves in turn we change the world” (Boal, Aesthetics 62).
I had a recent realization through my work with theatre for social change that the act itself of envisioning the world the way I want it transforms the person I am and helps me to have concrete examples I can work towards. This type of theatre, like this online platform, creates a space for dialogue to brainstorm ideas together, both of what we want and how we could actually work to get there.
This online assemblage is both a discovery and a search.
The discoveries come from my time as a graduate student studying theatre for social change (specifically while working as an intern at a local high school - LAHSA) and from attempting to practice what I preach by using expressive arts as a way for healing after my sister died (while I was a student in the graduate program). The main artistic expression I've used so far was writing Deep in the Meadow.
The search is for what I want the world to look like, including where I fit into it, and how expressive arts healing can help to be a vehicle for that change.
The search is also how to expand communal expressive arts healing, both through live practice and through the digital format; this online site is an attempt to begin that communal sharing space to both live in the truth and to dream of what it could be.
I invite you, the viewer, to become the creator - the writer, the artist, the dreamer - in this project with me. Please comment, submit writings, artwork, audio files, videos - whatever you desire - to contribute to this project. It can be however brief or long, however critical or creative as you wish (or not at all), and in any form you want. All I ask is to lead with your heart and speak from your own experience, recognizing we all have different circumstances and dreams of the future.
“To resist, it is not enough to say no. It is necessary to desire! It is necessary to dream. Not the technicolour dream of television which takes the place of the black and white harsh reality, but the dream which lays the ground for a new reality, a new reality where the quest is to unify Humanity, but not to make human beings uniform” (Boal, Aesthetics 62).
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