Learning to Listen, Part 973
Treasured Readers:
Last night I saw Red Ink, an excellent play at Mixed Blood Theater in Minneapolis. It is unusual to be truly entertained, challenged, and in some meaningful sense enlarged in the course of 90 minutes; the performance created an experience on which I will reflect for some time.
The play itself is a collaboration of multiple Native American playwrights and actors, a fairly rare occurrence in the theater, even in a metropolitan area with a significant Native population. Mixed Blood’s Website described Red Ink as, “a play within a Pow Wow,” written by seven indigenous writers from nine North American First Nations. An introductory note in the program from lead playwright Rhaina Yazzi further described three “guiding lights” for the work: that writers were to “have an opinion, be contemporary, and write their plays as if they were for an all Native audience.” She closes her note by warning us that “Outsiders” may not get all the in-jokes, and finally by welcoming us to the Pow-Wow.
From my perspective, the play made good on the promises of its various preambles: it was contemporary, at times pointed, and consciously by and about people other than me. It was also fantastic. I felt as if the performance welcomed me into a world and invited me to participate, but didn’t stop for me to catch up. It didn’t need to. While these were Native stories, they were mostly human stories, at turns poignant, striking, funny, and sometimes painful. They were well-crafted and richly rendered.
In the course of my life, I don’t spend much time feeling like an outsider. This is a distinctive feeling, even in an explicitly welcoming environment, and even in a theatrical world bounded by our willing suspension of disbelief. Outsiderness is a valuable feeling, for those of us who are not confronted by it all or most of the time. It is a critical feeling for those of us who strive to plant and tend the seeds of community.
I didn’t spend my brief time in that world focused on how central or marginal I might have been at the moment. I listened and watched and felt and appreciated. Still, some broader awareness crept in, and continues to grow. I was struck by the realization of how often I assume that people are really “just like me.” I felt some very real anxiety about the degree to which that assumption emboldens me to wade right in to situations, and to talk when I ought to be listening. Really listening. That cautionary anxiety alone was worth the price of admission. The stories themselves were pretty good, too. Now I puzzle over the power of sameness and difference. I'll keep puzzling, and listening for what comes out.
While excellent, the play is entirely consistent with my broader experiences at Mixed Blood, which describes itself as, “A Movement and a Theater,” dedicated to the spirit of Dr. King’s Dream. Artistic Director Jack Reuler founded the theater in 1976; I had lunch with Jack last summer, and our wide-ranging conversation impressed upon me the degree to which that commitment informs and animates their work to this day. Theater is not Mixed Blood’s mission, but its medium. Remarkably, that ideological orientation seems to improve rather than detract from the artistic dimension of their work. It’s almost sneaky how well that works. It is also truly an honor to be welcomed into that unique community, again and again.
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Sameness and difference surround us at every moment, yet we mostly fail to see them. Our lenses color people and objects with "same" and "different" according to what our minds project onto them without first shining a neutral light. It's ironic that we often suppose same when it is different and different when it is same. We can, and should, guard against this tendency with some vigilance. Seeing a thing in a neutral light lets us bask in its true color and consume its beauty and value, which in turn makes us better participants in the world's play. IMO. :- )