WEEK ONE
ARRIVAL
We met our partners upon arrival, one day before our workshops were to begin. Being an ocean apart, we had only collaborated digitally throughout the year. It was so exciting to finally be in the same room to work together. We all meshed like old friends, and began work on the project immediately.
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During the conversation, we dove right into talking about workshop planning. We discussed our individual strengths and divvied up the tasks accordingly. When we parted until the next morning, we all had a much better idea of how the program logistics would run.
We were able to navigate the city easily and learn our way around quickly; everything ran smoothly with our location reservations and planned meetings. Having never before been to the country or region, this was a success.
When we arrived at Termokiss, the first of our three locations for the workshop, we were beyond eager to meet everyone. While we waited for the operator of Termokiss to open the space, the participants began to arrive and, as we introduced ourselves, we learned they were just as excited to start the program.
SELECTED ACTIVITIES
On the first day, we focused on “getting to know you” activities and began to discuss the tenets of drama, theatre, storytelling, and playwriting. A full write-up of these activities is available in our training manual, accessible here. Highlights from the first day include the following:
What is Drama? Word Cloud
In order to start the program on the same foot, we decided to collectively create a word cloud to establish what we all consider to be “Drama.” With different colored markers in our hands and a big sheet of paper before us, we all wrote down anything we could think of relating to theatre. With a variety of colors, the paper became vibrant and we wrote until we filled the page.
The beauty of the word cloud lies in the variations of answers. In this activity, we had words from “street drama” and “masks” to “Oscar Wilde” which are very sophisticated and packed images for theatre. The first relates to the concept of “All the world’s a stage” and how theatre can be found anywhere, not just in a building with a stage and lights, the second digs into the idea of obscuring the actor’s identity when portraying a character, and the third emphasizes the Western canon of drama’s prominence globally. By drawing connections between all of the words on our sheet, our collective definition of “Drama” became a little more concise, while leaving room for innovation in the art form.
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Placemaking through Postcards
In this activity, students were introduced to writing settings. The setting, or where a play takes place, is an important part of the piece and can help students ground themselves in their work, connecting personally with an environment or identifying an interesting point in history. After reading and analyzing settings in existing scripts, students were given a blank postcard. On one side, they drew a place, and on the other, wrote the postcard as if it were the setting of a play.
This activity emphasized an important part of writing places in theatre, which is that the ‘micro’ is always situated in the ‘macro.’ For example, one student wrote a scene in 1959 Los Angeles, where the scene was to take place inside of a nursery. Two would-be parents were stranded here, childless. This brought on a discussion about the “personal in the political” and how human stories take place in all types of “micro” locations (gardens, living rooms, street corners, etc.) but they are not separate from the “macro” locations — a country or a time of war., for example This activity intentionally mixes media, involving visual arts to begin to tell stories for the stage.
Space Walk
In theatre, the playing space or stage isn’t just a platform for drama to occur. It is an ever-changing landscape that integrates individuals, relationships among them, and the imagination. In this activity, we taped three squares on the floor, each one smaller than the one before like a dartboard. In the largest square, participants were told to move about the space, trying not to touch the other participants while making eye contact and connecting with them. Then, they moved into the middle square and tried to do the same thing, which was difficult but not impossible. Finally, they moved into the smallest square and practically no one could move. Everyone shuffled in a circle but had to look at their feet to avoid stepping on anyone. Laughs were abundant.
When we reflected on this activity, one participant observed that when they were in the largest square, it was like everyone was strangers, acknowledging everyone’s presence but moving along independently. When they got to the smallest square, everyone was so close and laughing that it was like they were old friends. This, in our mind, was one meaningful way of tying together the people in the space with the world of peace-building. The stage is defined by the relationships formed in it. In a large space, people can pass by and bonds aren’t formed. However, in a tighter space, kinship is bound to occur and tasks can be accomplished.
Other skill-building activities of the first week include an introduction to monologue writing. During the first week, we spent a lot of non-activity time getting to know one another informally, through long lunches.
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REFLECTIONS
From Practicer to Practitioner
Each member of staff has led programs in one way or another; from college classes to UN Youth conferences. However, this was our first time running a workshop with our passions for creative expression and empathy-building as the main focus. After our first day ended and the participants left Termokiss, we realized the words “Theatre Educator” applied to us, a moment we will cherish for years to come.
Cultural Exchange
One special part of the first week was the zeal with which our participants wanted to share their culture with us. While not having local knowledge can pose some challenges, it also offers some beautiful moments which have been rewarding. On the second day of workshops, participants had collaborated and each brought in a component of their classic “Russian Tea” to be enjoyed, some supplying the special glass cups, others the tea and the pot for boiling, and others the lemon and sugar. Together we prepared and shared the tea, and it opened many conversations about the traditions of the tea, like where it originates and how it’s consumed. Having outsiders in the room lets our students ruminate on what is important to them culturally, and offers them informal opportunities to “tell their story.” Storytelling is the root of these workshops, so this experience is special. Others brought baklava from a wedding, and we took turns choosing the music to be played during writing sessions, during which time students shared with us musical figures that were important to them, their history, their family, or their art. The exchange of ideas is reciprocal.
Strides for Male Expression
There exists a powerful stigma against creative expression by and for men. Men around the world have been taught to focus their efforts on “more masculine activities,” of which the arts are not part. Knowing this, we anticipated the men who signed up for the workshop not to come; when they did, we feared they may not connect with our programming, as society has taught them and others like them that their energies will be wasted on creative pursuits. However, when they came back the second day ready to create, and continued to be our most consistent participants, we knew we had struck a chord that we hope will keep ringing. Given our workshop goals, of decreasing communal and security force violence, occupations often held by men, having males enrolled in the program was imperative.
We believe part of this retention of male creatives was both the amount of individual investment and attention we were able to give to their work and the presence of a male facilitator. We attempted to give every participant a chance to share their own work, which allowed them to become comfortable with their own vulnerability. Secondly, arts education is a female-majority occupation. By having a male facilitator leading activities, it shows other men their creative output and expression is valid, breaking down stigmas they may hold.
Challenges
Our first challenge we faced was a lower turnout than expected. When we first sent out the sign-up for the camp, we had a large amount of interest. However, we acknowledge that commitments change in time and, when we reached out to some participants that didn’t make it the first week, we quickly learned many people go on holiday during their summers out of school. Additionally, some were sick and said they would come to later workshops. While we initially planned for the program to keep the same participants the whole way through, we had to adapt our programming and methodology to accommodate participants that would come and go. We did this by creating overarching program outlines that allowed for more drop-in participants and we made select workshops public Facebook events with descriptions in both English and Albanian and posted the events in Pristina art and youth Facebook groups. This way, more people would see our events and, if they came, might stick with the rest of the program. We also publicized an appearance one of our Kosovar partners made on Klan Kosova, a public news station in Pristina, before the program arrived. This was an incredible advertising tactic and, by circulating it on Facebook, we could reach more creatives through different mediums.
Another challenge was connecting with civil society organizations. While we had a plan for collaboration and partnership before arriving, we learned that many CSOs are also on holiday during our proposed workshop time. We troubleshooted this by reaching out extensively and casting a wider net, involving and communicating with more than 10+ NGOs, including advocacy organizations that serve as “umbrellas” for the civil society orgs functioning in Kosovo. While our initial, planned partnerships were not immediately reached, we began to expand our horizons instead. Similarly, we intended to collaborate with a series of local guest artists. However, upon arrival, many were unavailable for morning sessions. This time of day, however, was best for our participants so we had to find other creative ways to integrate guest and local artists’ work. (see Week 3)
A third challenge we overcame was learning to listen to participant feedback. At the end of the first week, we found out that many students needed a travel stipend to reach Pristina each day for workshops, as they were coming from Vushtrri, Mitrovica, and other distant locations. Wanting to preserve this diverse set of students, we established a weekly travel stipend fund to be distributed to out-of-town participants.