"Community" Theatre

This ain't no "Waiting for Guffman!"

The process involved in creating Community Theatre serves as a model for creating community in other ways.

If you participate in theatre--the kind with a stage, not a screen--as a performer or as an audience member, you might think community theatre is a designation of quality that falls below semi-professional and above your child's school play.  While this may sometimes be the case, a more useful definition of community theatre may be:

"A theatrical process undertaken in a localized geographic area, drawing upon the resources and talents of the people inhabiting that area, culminating in a 'locally-grown' entertainment experience available to fellow members of the same community."

Or, in other words, "community theatre" is theatre of the people, by the people and for the people of the same city or county or area.

Without exception, each community theatre production with which I have been involved has had more positive effects than negative on the people involved and the area in which they participated.  That trend has led me to believe that there are some generalizations about the community theatre process that can serve as a model for other community building experiences.

• Each person has a clear idea of the overall goal towards which he or she is working.
• Each person has a specific role to fill that clearly relates to and contributes to the overall goal.
• Each person expresses interest in filling a specific need, but is assessed to see where he or she is most capable of giving his or her best contribution.  Where interests and abilities do not intersect, dialogue can lead to reconsideration of opportunities, but generally the result is that the person does not participate.  This is not generally viewed as detrimental to the process, but allowing anyone to participate in any way they wished regardless of ability is viewed as detrimental.
• The creation process is a balance of collaboration and following-the-leader.
• There are plenty of "checkpoints" at which progress can be measured.
• There are appropriate opportunities for recognition throughout the process.
• Effort, sacrifice and time must contributed by each person, according to their role.
• Feedback, both positive and constructive, is regularly given, but only by those people whose responsibility it is to guide based on their role in the group.
• There is generally an overt discussion at some point in the process of group energy and group chemistry, how it is present or lacking, and if lacking, how to create it.
• Many people, if not the whole group, meet to work on the project regularly and together.  There is some important work that can be done individually, and it is expected to be done in order for individuals to be prepared, but the bulk of the work is done collectively and simultaneously.

The artistic, creative process always requires something personal, and of the soul, from those that engage in it.  

Heartfelt involvement naturally bonds individuals together.  However, I think that the structure and process of community theatre, rightly done, is an ideal way to encourage unity and community and is transferable to such common situations as interactions among family members, co-workers, supervisors and the supervised, teachers and students, church leaders and congregations.

That being the case, how is your group's energy, ownership, progress, and recognition coming along?  

Are you creating art?  

Are you creating relationships?

Cheap but Quality

You make a living by what you get, but you make a life by what you give.-- Winston Churchill

What can you give: money, time, skill?...

(part 3 of a blog deluge)

Capable of spending time and effort in order to build your community?  This list of ideas is for you.

• Offer a free class for others in your area and teach your talent.  Think particularly in terms of what you can teach to kids or parents that they would normally have to pay for, and offer it free.  
• Volunteer at a consistent time each week at your local school.  Reading to children or listening to children read takes a lot of volunteer time, but has huge payoffs.  

• Organize a canned food drive.  
• Shovel more than your own driveway, or mow more than your own lawn. 
• Join a community choir, community orchestra, or audition for community theatre.  
• Start a community choir, community orchestra or community theatre troupe.  

• Organize a neighborhood swap meet.  
• Grow food in a community garden or volunteer to help in a community garden.  
• Check out http://treeutah.org/ and help plant trees.
• help cook or serve a meal at the homeless shelter.
• adopt a "grand friend" and write letters to him/her.
• spend some time visiting, singing, or reading to others at a rest home, nursing home, or assisted-living facility.
• hold an afternoon dance at a senior citizen center.
• Tutor.
• plant flowers in public areas that could use some color.
• offer to pass out election materials.
• Help build a home for Habitat for Humanity.
• organize a book drive for your local school or library.
• start a book club for your area.
• participate in a marathon for your favorite charity.
• coach a children's sports team.

• participate in Job Shadow Day (February 2).
• volunteer on a hotline.
• become a Big Brother or Big Sister.

• help children in foster care as a volunteer or as a foster family.
• get CPR and First Aid certified.
• start a neighborhood welcome committee
• organize or participate in a day of service.

There are many wonderful things that will never be done if you don't do them. -Charles D. Gill

Fast and Quality

Dolly Levi: Money, pardon the expression, is like manure. It's not worth a thing unless it's spread around, encouraging young things to grow.

Looking for a quick and effective way to dump money into your community in a meaningful way?  I'd be glad to help you! 

• Donate to a worthy cause at donorschoose.org.  A growing number of teachers are finding this a great way to get materials into their schools that are beyond the scope of their shrinking budgets.  
• http://www.donationtown.org/ is a great way to donate stuff you don't want or need anymore without having to leave your house, you schedule the pickup online.
• There are many websites through which you can donate money, so I'll only mention two more: https://www.justgive.org/ and http://www.lic.org/aboutus.asp

Now let's think of things that are a lot more fun than just writing a check...

• make kits containing personal care items for the homeless shelter nearest you.
• find a grocery delivery service, I really like Winder Farms in Utah, and set up regular grocery delivery of essential food items for someone else.

• Pay a local artist to paint a mural over some graffiti.
• Sponsor a fund-raising event that is already organized, or commit to matching funds up to or beyond a certain dollar amount.

• bring new toys to the cancer ward of a hospital.
• donate money to a school so they can plant new trees and flowers.
• hire an out-of-work or underemployed neighbor or teenager to fix things, work around the yard, or assist you with tasks.
• distribute spa gift cards and certificates to teachers at a local school.
• set up a scholarship.
• donate to a local playhouse, zoo, or park.
• get a $500 gift card to Walmart or Target for the person who will win first prize and hold a "Best Neighbor Contest."
• sub 4 Santa
• Hire a babysitter for someone else.
• donate to Youth Service America.

This list is by no means exhaustive.  But the most useful list for you will be one that you think of yourself.

“Money is like manure; it's not worth a thing unless it's spread around encouraging young things to grow.”

― Thornton Wilder, The Matchmaker

Fast and Cheap

Short on time and cash, but want to help out in your community anyway?  Here is a non-exhaustive list of ideas:

• go out of your way to introduce yourself to others at the park, and your kids sporting events and recitals.  Get to know people even if you don't know if you will ever bump into them again.  I tried this the other night at a school skating party.  Turns out the women and I knew mutual friends.  While we may or may not ever bump into each other again, and may not even remember each others' names, I had a more enjoyable evening chatting with her than I would have otherwise.

• Invite other people to join you in a pickup game of soccer, basketball, tag, etc. at the park, or in your front yard.

• Chat with people when you see them get the mail, put out the garbage, mow the lawn or shovel the walk.

• Join the PTA, registering takes less than 10 minutes, costs $6 and at a minimum you have added to the budget that provides your child and your neighbors' children with school carnivals, book fairs, fun runs, 6th grade graduation, school-recognition of birthdays and a host of other extra-curriculars.

• Respond to canned food drives, and requests for coats, clothing and books.  Almost everyone has more of something than they really need.

• VOTE

• volunteer at a polling booth the day of the election

• teach English or learn a language needed in your neighborhood on Facebook for a half hour a week using Language Exchange, because hey, the world is one really big community and it would be nice if we understood each other.

• pick up litter

• pick one of the ideas presented in this video about the best birthday idea ever!

• write a thank you letter to a city employee

• set up a recycling receptacle for your family

• hold a door open for someone

• become an organ donor

• listen to others

• write a letter to the editor that is positive and thankful

• visit a small, local museum

• donate outgrown toys to foster children

• visit the post office and answer some letters to Santa

• give blood 

20 ways for teenagers to volunteer

volunteering with your younger kids

The Two-Thirds Theory of Life...and Community Building

Here is a theory that applies most of life...brace yourself:

Consider three categories: 1-Fast, 2-Inexpensive, 3-Quality.  You can get any pairing of these qualities in an experience or product but you are not likely to get all three.

Example, you can get food quickly and cheaply by going to a fast food drive-through and ordering from the dollar menu, but it likely will not have quality nutrition or ingredients.  You can grow quality fruits, nuts and berries in your garden for less expensively than you can purchase them, but it will take time.  Or you can throw down a bucket load of money to have a brilliant chef cook for you on demand.  Finding the "Trifecta"--something of quality that happens fast for not much money--is exceptionally elusive.

As with so many things in life, building a close-knit or vibrant community can be done a variety of ways, but they generally fall into the three categories:

1- Fast and Inexpensive, which generally precludes high quality

2- Inexpensive and Quality, which can take time

3- Quality and Fast and you usually end up paying for the convenience.

Accepting this as our paradigm, three posts are coming your way, in this order: 1- Fast and Cheap ways to build your community, 2- Cheap and Quality ways to build your community, 3- Quality and Fast ways to build your community.  You decide which pairing best suits your circumstances, resources and goals.

Stay tuned.

Trick-or-Treat v. Trunk-or-Treat

Which is better, taking your kids trick-or-treating around the neighborhood, or taking your kids to a "Trunk-or-Treat" event?  Let's assume first of all that you aren't anti-Halloween or anti-copious-amounts-of-candy.  Let's also assume that the "Trunk-or-Treat" event is already in your community or neighborhood, so you don't have the hassle of a long drive, and that it is free beyond what you are going to pay to purchase candy to hand out yourself.

I don't have a straight answer.  I have been to two "Trunk-or-Treat" events in my whole life and am looking forward to my third this year, as well as to my first neighborhood Halloween Carnival.  None of these events fall on Halloween so, like both times before, I will be doing "Trunk-or-Treat" in addition to regular trick-or-treating rather than in lieu of walking my kids around and handing out candy at my own door.

Confession: one year we did "travel-or-treat" where we drove to a Grandma's neighborhood ostensibly to hang with family, but we were very aware of the fact that we considered it a safer, "nicer" neighborhood likely to hand out better candy with less walking.  I do not endorse this and won't be doing it again unless it really is about family.

I live on a street I like to refer to as "the trick-or-treat wasteland."  In an otherwise festive neighborhood, it seems we are the only family on the street that decorates for Halloween and leaves the porch light on for the night of Oct. 31st--taken together, this is the universal signal for "candy available here!"  As a result, our first year we had less than 10 total trick-or-treaters.  Discouraging.  Depressing when you consider the extra candy in the house on the number one day of the year when I already think we have way too much candy in the house.  We have slowly, but surely, enticed more trick-or-treaters each year as we are better known in the area and persevere in our decorating traditions.

On the other hand, we have seen 100+ people in attendance at the "Trunk-or-Treats" we have attended.  Overall, we interact with more of our neighbors at "Trunk-or-Treats" than going trick-or-treating.  Even that interaction is limited though, as young kids tug at our costumes to walk with them or other kids trick-or-treat our car in the parking lot.  And how depressing is it to decorate your car and share candy from there as opposed to your home?  For me, nothing equals the personal-touch of someone opening their front door, even just a crack, to happily greet you on their own porch.

Which leads me to notice something interesting.  My favorite Halloween experiences have nothing to do with candy collecting.  I'm not anti-Halloween, so stay with me here.

Fave Halloween #1:
When I was younger, my ambitious older brother convinced the whole family to stay home and erect a make-shift, but appropriately spooky, haunted back-yard.  Trick-or-Treaters were directed down the north-side of our home only to be sprayed with silly string by me, dressed as a spider, and hiding in our gigantic cherry tree.  They then were startled silly by my sister who had buried herself in the fallen leaves from said cherry tree.  My mom handed out witch's brew, apple juice made foggy by dry ice.  There was a headstone stage-prop and a phony guillotine before the exit on the south-side.  It was totally safe, not uber-scary, and way better than getting candy, even for a sugar-loving little girl.  And boy did it give us something to talk about with our friends and neighbors for days after.


Fave Halloween #2:
For the years between the trick-or-treating age and the dating age I generally held a spooky sleepover.  We played the usual party games, and watched "The Private Eyes."  Which you should totally watch this Halloween if you can get your hands on it.  HI-larious!

Fave Halloween #3:
All the adult boys in my husband's family brought their wives and children over to their parents' house.  The men get dressed up as scary things and slump around the yard and porch among newspaper-stuffed Halloween effigies.  One brother roamed the street in front of the house, walkie-talkie in hand, letting the other brothers know if young kids were in the upcoming group of "trick-or-treaters," and if so, just how much they should tone it down.  As costumed kids approached, the brothers would jump out and scare them as appropriate.  I was dressed as Snow White and handed out candy with a friendly smile at the door. We had kids come by more than once, rejecting the offer to take a second dip at the candy bowl because, "We just wanted to see what you would do if we came back after [younger brother or sister] went home."

Fave Halloween #4:
In a neighborhood we no longer live in, something special has evolved.  Sick of giving kids candy they don't need, One neighbor decided to hand out hot dogs, grilled right there in front of you on the driveway.  Next door followed suit and started giving out apple cider.  And you know what happens?  People don't just ring the doorbell, receive a quick comment on the costumes and give an equally quick thank you as they head off in search of more.  They linger, they visit.  These two consecutive front yards become a gathering place, and a decent dinner on sugar-crazed night!

And that's what all these things have in common.  Call it quality time if you want but I prefer to think of it as celebrating.  All my faves involve making the effort to celebrate the holiday and the relationships, even at the expense of the time-honored tradition of handing out and gobbling up candy.

Let's get creative.  There's probably dozens of ways to make Halloween an event instead of "hit as many cars or as many homes as you can."  I will probably hand-out something at my door and at my car every year, but this year, I'm going to be thinking of ways to encourage you to stay and chat with me a little while, and to encourage my kids to be more excited about enjoying these relationships and playing than collecting cavities, meltdowns and tummy aches.

For those of you that think I'm crazy to suggest anything so dangerous as trick-or-treating at all, my favorite article on Trick-or-treating danger.

50 non-candy things to hand-out

Won't you be my neighbor?

Who lives next door to you? Behind you?  Across the street?

It seems in our digitized, fragmented world, the word "neighbor" is losing its connotations of friendship, trust and helpfulness.  It has retained its primary meaning of "nearness," but is becoming limited to strictly geographic relationships.  The definition--"A person who shows kindliness or helpfulness to his fellow human beings"--allows for much broader usage of the word.  So, of whom do you speak when you refer to your neighbors, or do you speak of them not at all?

I was surprised to see that a valid definition of neighbor is stranger, depending on the friendliness of the speaker.  I know the parable of the Good Samaritan, but I have never gone up to a stranger and addressed them in a friendly way, saying, "Hello, neighbor!"  If I did, would you think I was weird?

Modern technology has also changed the usages of the word "friend."  I have my work friends, my church friends, my parents-of-my-kids'-friends friends, my old high school or college friends, my friends-of-the-family friends, and my Facebook friends.  It seems an odd limitation of our language that I apply the same word to these very different, though often overlapping, groups of people.

Perhaps in our search for like-minded or similarly-interested people, we have dropped the concept of a neighborhood "community" of friends as people who actually live near us and interact with the same physical environments that we do.  Or maybe it is because we drive cars (enabling us to work, live and play in separate geographic areas comprising different groups of people) that we think less of neighborhoods and more of "circles of friends."  In fact the last time I carefully considered the word neighborhood was when I was looking to purchase the home that I have now occupied for over four years!

I want neighbors.  I want meaningful conversations over the back fence like Tim Allen had on "Home Improvement".  I want to have a block party that my neighbors attend and know each other's names.  I want to recognize more than a handful of people that I see when I take my children to and from their schools or activities.  I want to feel like this city is my "hometown" and not simply the title of the urban area in which my house is located. I want to create a community of neighbors...and I want help!

Recently, a friend of mine said, "I want to change the world, and I want you to help me."  I laughed inside because I thought, "I wonder if you realize how much you are approaching the right person."  I'm kind of ambitious.  I would love to change the world, someday.

Today, I think I'll start with my neighborhood community, the geographic one where my house is located. I've got a lot of ideas, a lot of questions, and I'm excited to discover where I'm going from here.  But I'm not interested in having a self-reflective, solo journey into my own egocentric creative process.  Healthy, stable communities are built by people, neighbors, friends--all nouns in the plural.  So, I'm starting a blog.  Ironic, right?  I'm reaching out online first, to rally a community of neighbors that want to strengthen, support, inspire and encourage each other to create meaningful "offline" communities.  Hey, stranger?  Want to be my neighbor?