I am feeling excited for common cathedral‘s talent show this week, although a bit nervous to see how it goes, since there are many unknowns: whether or not everyone who signed up will show up, how big the audience will be, if the tech that people need for their acts will work or malfunction, and any other number of things I can’t predict. I am trying to practice flexibility and trust myself to respond to whatever comes.

I am thinking of my role for this project as something like “therapeutic stage manager”,  someone whose job is to offer containment for the performances both on a technical/logistical as well as emotional level. I have already had a few conversations with some community members who expressed some anxiety about their performances and have tried my best to offer reassurance and solutions to their concerns. I also am planning on introducing and closing the show. For the closing, I plan to do a “fill-in-the-blank”-style poem using suggestions from the audience, which would reflect on themes and inspirations they took away from the performances. I am hoping that this would provide the participants with a sense of being seen, appreciated, and connected with one another.

I am also enjoying thinking of the talent show as a sort of assessment tool, a way for me to get to know these community members more deeply and see where their unique strengths, topics of interest, and creative capacities lie. I am hoping that what I observe will give me further insight into how I could continue to use the arts to engage this community with things that are important to them.

Colorful common-art session in our Parish Hall