Performing Group Diversity Stories

From time to time, I like to share questions that are emailed to me such as this one:

Q: A few of us at our college would like to perform stories around cultural differences similar to what you do in Tribes& Bridges and More Alike Than Not: Stories of Three Americans – Catholic, Jewish and Muslim. How do we get started?

A: If you are going to perform stories around race and issues of justice, be prepared for deep emotions to arise, yours and others. If you are going to work with others, besides all the difficult, nitty-gritty, normal collaboration issues of schedules and responsibilities, you will be faced with unique challenges precisely because we have been trained to keep quiet about issues of social significance.

First, talking about these issues often breaks many family rules. In order to survive, many families didn’t talk about what they’d been through. For example, after the Holocaust, the internment camps, the Boarding Schools, the Jim Crow mistreatments and lynchings, many parents enforced an unspoken, yet deeply felt, “No talk” agreement.

Speaking the unspeakable as well as even attempting multicultural colleagueship can feel like a betrayal to the people and communities from which we come. As you collaborate and discuss the care and nurturing of your audiences, you must do the same for each other.

Our hurts run deep. Tears will be shed; memories and, therefore, creation can be blocked; doubts will continually surface. We have to have a long and large love for our stories, our country and each other to keep going. Opening the wounds is never pleasant, but healing happens in the light of day.

However, open the wounds gently, gently, gently. Ground rules around support, communication styles and the like are essential. As in any relationship, talking out fears, limitations, preferences and visions beforehand can help make the uncovering process easier. Still, if you are hitting the true repressed veins of our individual and communal psyches, I would imagine your team will experience some of the things we did: fitful sleep, times of “I can’t do this,” and moments of incredible connection and freedom as we finally faced and spoke long-buried truths.

Good luck and let me know how I might support you!

This article may be reprinted when this full byline is used: Susan O’Halloran is a story artist, workshop presenter and keynote speaker whose work explores the complex (and, with Sue, entertaining) issues of social justice and valuing differences. She is an author of four books plus diversity curriculums, CDs and films. The Chicago Reader says O’Halloran “has mastered the Irish art of telling stories that are funny and heart-wrenching at the same time.” Find out more about Susan and her online classes plus download a free audio interview at: www.susanohalloran.com.

Interviewing techniques

Q: How did you get the people in your Kaleidoscope Discussion Videos to talk so openly? We’ve tried to interview people – to hear others’ stories – but I found most people don’t think they have much to share.

A: First of all, thanks to all who sent messages about the recent post of the Discussion Videos Promo.

I pre-interviewed over seventy people before I videotaped forty-two people’s stories for the Kaleidoscope curriculums.  You’re right. Often, people don’t know they have stories.  Sadly, they don’t think that their lives and their experiences are important.  They need to be drawn out.  Before I asked the interviewees one question around diversity, we talked about our families, neighborhoods, schools and so on. When some rapport was established, I asked questions such as:

• Who is your inspiration?  Where do you find hope and encouragement?
• What has your culture given you?
• Have there been times you were judged by appearances or stereotypes?  How did that make you feel?
• Have there been times you judged by appearances or stereotypes and, then, found out you were wrong?

At all times, I strived for balance, portraying the truth that we have all been both the insider and outsider.  I’m often an insider on race and physical abilities in this country, for example, but, sometimes, an outsider on gender or class.  I also strove for balance between examples of discrimination and models of inclusivity, knowing that we learn just as well, and sometimes better, from what is working.  Plus, when presenting our country’s hidden history around race, for example, we must be careful not to paint any group as victim (only), but to always include the magnificent stories of resistance and success as well.

To preview the Kaleidoscope Discussion Videos go to:

http://inspireaclassroom.com/?page_id=20

This article may be reprinted when this full byline is used: Susan O’Halloran is a story artist, workshop presenter and keynote speaker whose work explores the complex (and, with Sue, entertaining) issues of social justice and valuing differences. She is an author of four books plus diversity curriculums, CDs and films. The Chicago Reader says O’Halloran “has mastered the Irish art of telling stories that are funny and heart-wrenching at the same time.” Find out more about Susan and her online classes plus download a free audio interview at: www.susanohalloran.com.

Chris Rock’s “Good Hair”

Chris Rock’s documentary, Good Hair, opens this week and it got me thinking about all the things I’ve done to my hair over the years.

There was ironing my hair. Yes, I laid my head down on an ironing board like some wrinkled old shirt and came as close to my scalp as possible with a hissing, steaming hot iron. Only problem: I couldn’t get to the hair root so when I lifted my head off the board I had a circular two inch protuberance of bumpy, curly hair then straight pieces of locks jutting off the knob at a 45 degree angle with fried, split ends that hissed as loud as the iron.

Then there was Dippity Do. I slapped layers of the clear gop onto my bangs and then taped the whole sheet of hair to the rest of my face with scotch tape (I’m talking down my temples and onto my cheeks because the tape would only stick to skin, not more hair). I could just about hear the stuff crackle like Arctic ice as it dried through the night and, then, one by one, strands of hair broke free from the stiff, hardened gel to climb their way upward and backward into a natural, relentless curl. In the morning I awoke with a shelf of semi-straightened bangs that flipped at the ends making a trough in which I could have carried my pencils to school.

Then there were the empty orange juice cans used as curlers that lifted my head a half of foot off my pillow and gave a permanent tilt to my neck and head that looked kind of cute in my prom photos. And don’t forget the Spoolies which were my attempt to make my curls line up in neat rows. Spoolies were akin to sleeping on plastic cones of Medieval spikes but were actually more comfortable than lancing my hair with long, unyielding bobby pins and teetering on all those metal x’s. throughout my dreams. To say nothing of being woken from those dreams because I thought someone was in my room, only to discover the steirofoam head wearing my wiglet and sitting on my dresser staring at me.

So, yes, white girls go to great lengths to have fashionable hair as well.

There was a lot of talk on shows such as Oprah and The View about whether all the time, effort and money black women spend on their hair was a sign of wanting to be white and trying to “fit in”.

Both Whoopi Goldberg and Sheri Shepherd of The View, for the most part, argued “no.” They both said that black women, like all women, want to look nice and want a change from time to time.

I know that was part of my motivation. Growing up with curly, wiry hair limited the number of styles I could talk my hair into. Also, it is frustrating to decide on a certain look and spend a good deal of time creating it, only to step out and have the humidity snatch the whole thing within minutes. Yes, products start to line your bathroom shelves in order to exercise some meager measure of choice and control. Not to mention, sometimes, when my hair was long (down my back) and I wore it “natural” it just plain hurt to sleep on. The steel wool texture across my face or in my eyes was not like a lover’s caress and about as pleasant as being woken through the night because I’d forgotten to remove my hair shirt.

But there was a part to all of these machinations, at least for me, that was about more than just wanting to fit in with the latest styles. When I was a young adult, about twenty-three, I saw a movie made in Ireland. I do not remember its name to this day, but there was a young girl in it with long, red, wiry hair. I was looking at her on the screen, all of a sudden, I burst into tears. The words in my mind were, “Oh my God! I have Irish hair!”

Now, of course I knew I was Irish but, as crazy as this sounds, I never thought about having “Irish” hair as hair texture, not just color. First, as with all ethnic groups while there are similarities, no one group is all alike. (My brother did not have red hair; he was “black Irish”. He inherited the traits from the Spanish or prehistoric Iberians’ visit to Ireland – dark hair and dark eyes with his milk white skin.) But the whisper below the discovery “I have Irish hair” was the additional revelation: “And nothing is wrong with it. My hair is the way it’s supposed to be.”

In other words, in all those scenes of self-imposed torture throughout high school and into adulthood, my hair rituals and experiments were not merely a desire for variety, beauty and going with the fashion flow – which does seem innately human and even, in ways, self-loving; there was also a tinge of who I am is not okay, is less than. Some part of me felt that I was just plain not as good as all those girls with naturally straight, silky hair who could walk next to a beach or ride in a convertible and count on returning home, and after a quick comb, appearing much like how they looked when they had left (as opposed to my having to walk sideways through the front door because my hair was permanently four feet wide).

Hair, make-up, clothing – how I look – seems to be a mixture of self-caring and self-loathing. The gift of growing older is that the percentages have swung higher and higher toward the former. Learning to love ourselves and claim our beauty is a journey for women of all colors.

(P.S. This “mod” look from high school, 1968, probably took hours to create, complete with straightened hair and wiglet. For more on Hair see my blog post from September 11, 2009 “A Hair Brained Idea”.)

This article may be reprinted when this full byline is used: Susan O’Halloran is a story artist, workshop presenter and keynote speaker whose work explores the complex (and, with Sue, entertaining) issues of social justice and valuing differences. She is an author of four books plus diversity curriculums, CDs and films. The Chicago Reader says O’Halloran “has mastered the Irish art of telling stories that are funny and heart-wrenching at the same time.” Find out more about Susan and her online classes plus download a free audio interview at: www.susanohalloran.com.

Funding and the Arts

From time to time, I want to answer questions that come to me via email that I think might be of interest to more than just the sender. Here’s a question on funding that goes to arts funding but for anyone looking for sponsorship.

Q: How did you raise the money to shoot the videotape Tribes & Bridges at the Steppenwolf Theater and produce the Kaleidoscope Curriculums for inspireaclassroom.com?

Like many artists, the phrase, “businessperson,” can make me squirm.  But hiring tellers, shooting videotapes, printing curriculums, all of it, takes money.  I have been fortunate throughout the various Kaleidoscope projects to have Father Derek Simons and the Society of the Divine Word’s support plus support from my own regional storytelling organization, Northlands Storytelling Network.  However, I had to branch out further to turn dreams into reality.  The Tribes & Bridges videotape, for example, was made possible by a unique collaboration between religious (The Society of the Divine Word and the ACTA Foundation), arts (The Steppenwolf Theater, Illinois Storytelling Festival, Northwest Area Arts Council), business (The Kaleidoscope Group, Diversity Consultants) and corporate (The Northern Trust Bank) sponsors.

Fundraising is storytelling: What stories do you have to tell a corporation or an arts organization to motivate them to get involved with you?  You are a story:  What relationships have you or can you develop?  What will potential funders tell themselves about you?  “She’s trustworthy.”  “They’ll be around for awhile.”  “He’s accountable.”

Your potential funder is tuned to one station: WIFM – what’s in it for me?  Don’t tell a future funder or business partner your story alone i.e. why your project is so worthwhile.  Speak to their needs.  Do they want publicity, a name in the community or a long lasting product at the end such as a book or video?  For our multicultural shows on justice, we had to ask: what are our funders’ ideas of how things can or should change in our society?  We needed to write a clear business proposal that spoke to their vision.  Yes, organizations care, but they need more than that to have your project rise above all the others that come across their desks.

Fundraising, scheduling, feeding the PR machine, answering e-mails, bookkeeping and distributing tapes are all responsibilities I’d gladly do away with, but the nuts and bolts of business hold the artistic structure together.  The art of commerce is a story that makes creative projects happen.