Escaping in the Work

It’s the beginning of my final week here at University of East London and it all feels kinda surreal. As I look back, I realize I haven’t touched on London at all due to all of the literal and emotional detours. What I will say, however, is the one thing that has always been good and right and true (besides God) are my classes here. I absolutely love my coursework here and am nerding out and wish I could stay on this specific track forever. I’ve been spending the last twelve weeks studying Drama, Applied Theatre, and Performance, and I couldn’t be happier with the program. In the beginning, I had many many complications with the school here but the theater department has been nothing but dependable. When all of the disorganization of my first 10 “free days” was unclear, lecturers in the theater department were reaching out, checking in on me, and accommodating me smoothly into their program. It feels like yesterday I was at inductions making friends. Each of my classmates have such a unique background and perspective, with different reasonings for being in the program. This specific study is something I’ve been waiting for for a long time now. I’ve known I wanted to do theater for social justice since early high school but somewhere along the way of being a freshman in college, I forgot about that dream and when I was reminded of it by sophomore year, it was a little too late. I struggled with figuring out what I wanted to do, adding or dropping a minor, whether I wanted to perform or not, not feeling passionate about work I was performing, and what the next step would be. I almost didn’t come to London at all due to the sole reason I was originally told if I “wasn’t coming for Shakespeare, what was the point”. Well, there is and was definitely a point and I finally feel like myself again.

I have learned and grown in the field so much in just twelve, condensed weeks and been exposed to so many ideas and programs I didn’t even know existed. My Urban Interventions class has been exploring urban identities and usage of space, specifically revolving around issues of race, gender, age, and even gentrification. Our final is a devised piece about gentrification of the Stratford area. Stratford is the area my classes are in and it is also the home of the 2012 Olympics. There is a lot of homelessness in the area and it is known for its big, new shopping center, Westfield mall. However, before Westfield was Stratford Center, the older shopping center for the area. There is a significant difference in architecture as well as atmosphere between the buildings and obvious characteristics of older versus newer which is personified within our devised piece.

My Applied Theatre course has exposed me to a whole new range of ways to create applied theater from nontraditional spaces such as prison theater, World Factory Theater, and performance protests to theater for marginalized voices such as people with disabilities, immigrants and refugees, and youth in foster care. Theatrical work with youth in foster care is something that has always been on my heart and an issue that has always been very important to me, ever since my family used to have foster babies when I was just three years old. A few years back, I took a Storytelling course that centered around ideas of the Orphan Train and connected it to contemporary issues with youth in foster care, but since then, I have not had time or specific course to explore this topic in depth. When given a prompt for our final paper to choose one critical social issue and explore how theater responds to this issue, I immediately chose this. At first finding a case study was challenging, but as I went out and saw more work in the UK, I found myself stumbling upon more and more companies that work specifically with youth in foster care here. I only hope upon return I can find similar programs that emphasize this.

Finally, my Politics of Performance and Memory course was phenomenal. For the last twelve weeks we focused on telling stories based on personal memories which has been therapeutic and helps our group bond. We have worked on creating our own one-person show, body mapping, the Hero’s Journey and mythmaking, and working with ritual and performance. Each session was enlightening and interconnected. The course was applicable outside of the classroom as I was constantly learning new cultural rituals amongst my travels and meeting people from new places with unique rituals. It brought to light a lot of topics I am interested in exploring more and developing into future pieces of theater.

The track of Drama, Applied Theater, and Performance at UEL is formatted so I was with the same set of peers every day through each class, a lot like my experiences at Milwaukee High School of the Arts. This gave me a familiar feeling because unlike my experiences at Columbia, you really get to know people outside of the class and are able to interconnect topics and projects more. I often found myself connecting a lesson from one module to a project for another. The lecturers are all aware of what you are learning in your other courses so they are able to provide feedback and resources for the overall subjects. Talking with peers about the topics is a lot easier because you can use examples from modules from the day before and recycle resources within projects. I didn’t realize how beneficial this was until about halfway through the course when I really started to get to know my peers and hear their unique perspectives. The community here in my theater class is one of the best escapes I could have while studying abroad. Amidst everything unplanned and challenging that has been going on this term, focusing on the work here and seeing the work I’m learning applied in shows across London keeps me motivated to pursue this. When I return to Columbia, I am only taking one theater course next term which makes me nervous not being able to do this work as intentionally and frequently as currently, but knowing I have this expanded toolbox from the journey will be carried with me wherever I go.