Origin Stories

In preparation for a week-long ASTEP residency I met with the C.P.O of ASTEP, a writer and a dancer. The four of us make up the team that will take an arts component into a facility that is home to children and young adults dealing with life, being HIV positive and life. It was a planning meeting. What are we going to do with the participants? What do we want to accomplish? What do we want to leave them with? What is the theme of the week that will prompt them to create a performance piece that will be shared with their peers, parents and facility staff when the program culminates?

We went through the gamut. There is nothing more intriguing than people in a room, an assigned task and a time limit. Well maybe a few things but you get what I'm attempting to convey. We ended with JOURNEY as the through line of the week. The questions posed to them will be: Where are you from? Where are you now? Where are you going? Everyone has the ability to define or determine their life's journey. Right? Where you are from matters, where you are at this moment matters and where you are going is of utmost importance.

Next step was to plan the first day. The jump off point. How would we introduce the idea? Origin stories. The first day is focused on the first question of course. Where are you from? We brainstormed and came up with a day full of lessons disguised as fun activities and an opportunities to be creative. Origin Stories. They will tell their own and each others in several ways including performance.

This was the beginning of my day. When I left the meeting at 2 in the afternoon I carried the idea of an origin story with me for the rest of the day, the rest of the week really. I watch and listen to people all the time. People are characters. Since the meeting, that day and all week I have been focused on figuring out people's origin stories as I slyly watch and listen to them. You can't really figure out an origin story by looking at and listening to a person but you can guess and imagine.

On Saturday I went outside to this little slip of fake park for some fake fresh air. Sitting on one of the benches was this woman (see pic below). She looked as if she had been there for hours. I'm still working on my idea of what her origin story is. I've actually created four origin stories for her. I wonder if any of them are even close to accurate.