From Inspiration to Impact

Reflecting on my He[art]land Arts Fellowship

A bit of a longer newsletter today as I reflect on the last 9 weeks with He[art]land Arts KC. There’s so much more I want to say, but I’m still unpacking and reflecting. Feel free to drop questions in the comments or email me if there’s something you want to know more about!

Stepping into the Room

I’m skeptical of most experiences, it’s my nature. The idea of trying to write and produce a musical in 9 weeks is a wild undertaking if you take it at face value. And as Marley Lowe reminded us during our talk back, we really wrote and produced it mostly in the latter half, so like 4 or 5 weeks…

However, working with a group of generous, smart and damn talented artists, made it one of the most inspiring experiences I’ve had in awhile.

One of the first things we did was create something “bad.” Logan gave us something like 5 minutes to write a bad version of what we normally do, and then we performed it in front of our fellows, a group of relative strangers at the time.

And we were not allowed to clap for each other. (But we laughed a lot.) And we realized that even our “bad” things were still pretty fun and engaging. It set the tone and revealed the amount of talent in the room.

“There’s nowhere to go but up from here, and that wasn’t even that bad,” Logan told us. Then, we immediately got to work.

A Formative Moment

On one of the first days of the fellowship, we were paired with one of our other fellows for a writing exercise. I (a comedian/writer) was paired with Aidan (a musician).

Our task was to write a scene (or something) where Aidan would say funny things and I would do something musical. We ended up writing a fairly funny scene full of innuendos about learning how to play the cello.

At first, we didn’t know where to start. I’ve always been an advocate of just getting something on the page. My experience with improv comedy in the last year has taught me the trick of just saying something to keep the scene moving and that’s there’s value in not overthinking. So I suggested we should just start with the basics, I know nothing about the cello, teach me?

As Aidan explained the basics to me he already had some jokey lines from his time as a teacher, I said “Oh, that’s funny, now we just need to sharpen it.”

This moment was formative for me because it showed me that the fellowship was going to be fun and challenging, but that I could rise to meet that challenge. It revealed to me how much I had already learned about comedic timing and shaping jokes, something that I’m still figuring out and, to be quite honest, had been feeling self conscious about at the time.

Photos in this newsletter are by Fawn Lies!

A Magical Moment

My favorite night(s) with the fellows were the nights where we story boarded and wrote the initial script. Following teachings from Save the Cat (distilled very wonderfully by Logan), we actually lifted a plot line from one of our exercises earlier in the fellowship about a houseless individual running for City Council.

We storyboarded the whole plot scene by scene, creating the main conversations that would drive the story forwarded. Just pushing ourselves to get things on paper, knowing we could reshape it later. The next meeting, we came together at Washington Square Park (the setting for our show) and then moved into the food court at Crown Center.

Divided into groups, we wrote the whole script in roughly a 3 hour session. Even in our groups, we were leaning over to the others pulling threads that would tie it all together. There was a lot of laughter, some moments of silence, and in the end we walked into the night with a full story that we were all excited about.

A Challenging Moment

One of the things I’ve been working on for the last year (with hit or miss intentionality…) is being more present in my body while on stage (and in life, I guess).

When we committed to a musical, we were already bringing in Madi from the KC Ballet to choreograph the show. I was not excited to have to dance. Learning our final dance number was the thing that I had the most trouble with.

However, the exercises we did to get present in our bodies and with our characters, were very moving. My character, Robin in the Hood, was mostly meant for comic relief but it was still meaningful for me to consider the ways that Robin interacts with her friends and the world.

What was super cool, and something I hadn’t thought about as someone who hasn’t done Theater(™) since I was a teenager, was how Madi also helped us choreograph little moments of movement throughout the show, not just the dances. It helped bring our characters more to life in very fun way.

Overall Reflection

I walked away from “Go Outside” with such a huge amount of gratitude for my fellows and He[art]land Arts. I’m excited to take everything I learned from the fellowship into my art and advocacy efforts going forward.

There are still lines from the songs that keep popping into my head as I go about my day, thinking about what it means to be “outside” and present with my community and the challenges we face.

He[art]lands mission is to empower artists to have impact in their community with story-centered advocacy and lead audiences to greater civic engagement. There are so many threads throughout our show and the conversations about our next steps as artists that reflect that mission.

The talkbacks after each of our performances were very fun and showed how engaged the community was with our show as they asked insightful questions.

Several of us mentioned that the fellowship felt like a microcosm for how we can engage in advocacy. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it needs to be done, sometimes the hardest part is starting.

We need to have the conversations if we want to make a difference, and we have the power to create something beautiful if we try and trust each other through the process.

During one of our talk backs with the audience. Aidan referred to this experience as a “canon event.” And I think he’s on to something.

If you’re a Kansas City Artists, I can’t recommend this experience enough. So give He[art]land a follow on Instagram, get involved, and look out for the applications next year!

Where You Can Find Me Next

I’ve got a college gig in Indiana this week, but I do have a couple shows coming up in KC in early May! As soon as details are finalized I’ll be posting about them, but here’s what I have so far:

I’ve got a virtual showcase on April 21 at 6 p.m. with the LaughtHER Collective as part of a comedy class I’ve been taking with them.

May 2nd, I’ll be on a comedy show in Lawrence at Grounded Coffee at 8 p.m. as part of the Pure Kansas Comedy Festival.

May 4th, I’ll be doing poems at a house show with Teri Quinn & friends - details on this one are still TBD!

Then, at the end of May I’m heading to the Atlanta Fringe Festival for 2 weeks for 6 performances of Godzilla’s Not a Dinosaur!