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Drop any thoughts or offerings of abundance here

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This column is where you can drop any unlreated or related questions and comments as the session moves, or even post-session!

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This column is where you can drop any unlreated or related questions and comments as the session moves, or even post-session!

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What do you need to the community to hold? 

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What do you need to the community to hold? 

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Solidarity Economy Survey - A Series Wide Survey

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Solidarity Economy Survey - A Series Wide Survey

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Please take this survey to help us inform our session programming https://tinyurl.com/NETsolidaritysurvey

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Until we create collective ones together

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Bridge Ensemble Community Agreements +NET Values

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I've been thinking about this particular post for over a year, and am now finally feeling called to write it. The immediate impetus is our discourse around race, in the context of uprisings for racial justice that have now gone global. But it's a broader and deeper question, one upon which everything hinges: how and why do people change? What is it that inspires people to take action to build a better world?

I want to use this post to explore this inquiry: how can we create enough discomfort (pain?) to move into - and stay! - in the growth zone? And I specifically want to focus on the complex interplay between guilt, shame, and accountability, and the implications for both personal growth and our movements for social justice.

TL;DR: This is about moving from fixed mindset to growth, from shame (I am bad) to guilt (I've done something bad)... to accountability (I can and must make amends). It's about intentionally cultivating our resilience, learning to separate the message from the messenger, and turning toward curiosity. Our ability to survive this moment of intersecting crises depends on us individually and collectively building this skill-set.

Shame - The intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging. We feel like something we've experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection. Shame often leaves us feeling immobilized, or worse, feeling ready to strike out as a way of offloading the pain of disconnection.

Guilt - Feeling bad about something you have said or done, or failed to say or do. We feel guilt when we compare our actions to our values and they don't match up. It creates a sense of psychological discomfort. This comparison and discomfort often motivates us in a positive direction, either apologizing or doing things differently in the future.

There's so much going on here. The key difference I think is the difference between fixed and growth mindset, between noun and adjective. Shame = I am bad; guilt = I did something bad. Shame focuses on our identities; guilt focuses on our behaviors. I think a lot about this in our current discussions over racism. As activist T1J said: "Racist is an adjective, not a noun." (And so too with anti-racist: it's not something we are, it's something we do). It's a subtle but for me transformative shift in perspective.

If shame is trauma.... perhaps guilt is debt. My favorite exploration of this topic came from Eula Biss, whose 2015 article " White Debt" (and subsequent interview for OnBeing) is a beautiful meditation on guilt and responsibility in the context of race and whiteness. It's an incredible read, and difficult to excerpt a pithy quote. Her core insight is that the German root for the words "guilt" and "debt" are the same. As she reflects on the legacy of whiteness in America, she finds herself resonating with Ta Nehisi Coates' analogy of "our compounding moral debts." Guilt, that is, conveys a sense of responsibility: something is owed.

The literature on guilt and shame agrees that shame leads to disconnection, and as such is a barrier to empathy (empathy by definition is our ability to connect to an "other"). The literature is mixed on whether guilt does this too. Some argue that guilt as an emotion re-centers ourselves (those hearing the feedback, responding to the presumed critique) and as such deadens our ability to continue to "feel" the other's experience. Honestly, I'm not sure - I think it can be both. The task for those of us on the receiving end of feedback is to stay connected to the other's experience, to stay on the side of guilt that urges us to action rather than tipping over into the disconnection of shame.

I take this line from a beautiful reflection from Lawrence Barriner II, who in turn attributes it to Djalóki Jean-Luc Dessables. Lawrence reaches the same conclusion I've found myself coming to:

Pain involved with healing is, in my mind, necessary in order to move forward.

Clean pain is pain that mends and can build your capacity for growth. It's the pain you experience... when you step forward into the unknown... with honesty and vulnerability. Clean pain hurts like hell. But it enables our bodies to grow through our difficulties, develop nuanced skills, and mend our trauma. Dirty pain is the pain of avoidance, blame, and denial. When people respond from their most wounded parts, become cruel or violent, or physically or emotionally run away, they experience dirty pain.

Perhaps clean pain = guilt, and dirty pain = shame? Or maybe another way of putting it: this is the distinction between the pain of healing, and the pain of trauma. How can we build our capacity to withstand healing pain, without crossing the threshold to trauma?

When you're triggered, turn toward curiosity.

Her simple statement struck me with the force of its wisdom, its simplicity... and its seeming impossibility. Who among us has the skills to do that?

No matter what I say, this... person is going to react with anger and accusations and exclamations of their own innocence and my wrongness for attacking them, and nothing good will come of it.

This seems like just a truism of a culture that doesn't know how to say "I'm sorry." But I think it takes added weight under two seemingly opposed conditions:

1) When a core identity, something which we feel is foundational to our sense of self, is at stake (mother, teacher, police officer, American, "I'm a good person," etc.)

2) When a fragile identity, something we are already insecure about, is at stake.

They [we] haven't been equipped to hold space for their [our] own shame.

1. The first is a willingness to self-interrogate, to delve into the origins of your being... to investigate what happened in your childhood, in your family, in this toxic culture. [This requires a capacity for introspection.]

2. The second stage of an apology is a detailed accounting and admission of what you have actually done. [This requires acknowledging harm.]

3. The third stage of an apology is opening your heart and being, and allowing yourself to feel what your victim felt ... and then allowing yourself to see and feel and know the long-term impact of your violation. [This requires empathy.]

4. The fourth stage, of course, is taking responsibility for your actions, making amends and reparations where necessary, all of this indicating you've undergone a deep and profound experience that has changed you and made it impossible for you to ever repeat your behavior. [This requires atonement.]

Hoo, boy. This is what accountability looks like, and it's a high bar. When was the last time you saw, offered, or experienced a sincere apology that checked all four boxes? Have you ever?

Until you have a core sense of worth and belonging, it can be very difficult to get to healthy accountability to others where, upon hearing feedback about the impact of harm, your sense of self neither collapses nor a false sense of worth needs to be defended.

This post - and this larger moment of societal reckoning - is taking place in the context of race. But this insidious aspect of our disconnection traces its roots far beyond the emergence of white supremacy (some 500 years ago) to the emergence of patriarchy (10,000 years ago)... as V acknowledges in her speech. This was a core takeaway from my series on " why does patriarchy persist": the perpetuation of these systems of oppression and domination is contingent on subverting our ability to repair relationships, to reconnect. Returning to Brené:

Shame corrodes the part of us that believes we can be different.

Yes. Shame traps us in a spiral where we come to believe that change is impossible... and thus not worth striving for.

There's lots more to say on this subject, but I want to close with one practice and one invitation for others who are interested in continuing to explore this fraught terrain.

I was introduced to this tool by the Strozzi Institute in their Embodied Leadership course. I couldn't find a pithy definition online; here's one resource that gets at it. There are two components:

1) An assessment is neither true nor false.

2) It can be grounded (substantiated with some evidence) or ungrounded.

And ideally there should be a third component: they are shared in relationship (you have to grant the person permission or "standing" from which to offer their assessment).

When I know I'm going to get feedback, I try to remind myself of this, and listen for the kernel of truth: the message, not the messenger. (And I pair it with some sort of somatic practice to calm my nervous system: to ensure I stay in "stretch" mode rather than allowing myself to be triggered straight into panic).

The longest journey you will make in your life is from your head to your heart.

Yeah - tell me about it. And most of us haven't had any guides to point the way. We are fortunate to have a rich knowledge base: pioneering thinkers and practitioners around race like Angela Glover Blackwell, john a. powell, bell hooks, Manuel Pastor, and Angela Davis (and their successors in people like Ibram Kendi). But the evolution that I'm most excited about is not about knowledge, or cognition, or cerebral processing: it's about our felt experience. This is the work perhaps best personified right now by Resmaa Menakem, and people like Staci Haines.

One of the Building Belonging Conversations on Transformation will be taking up that subject in August with some of the best in the business (with Rev. angel Kyodo williams and Kazu Haga joining Staci and Tada). But tune in first on July 21st for a conversation exploring some of the individual aspects of transformation around this topic, here:

Anyway, I've reached the point in writing where I can no longer tell if this is an insightful post that conveys what I was hoping, or something repetitive and mediocre... so I'll press "publish" here and let you sort it out. I'm open to feedback, and, dare I say, accountability!

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"Love means having to say you're sorry": building our resilience and capacity for repair.

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Collaboration

NET promotes and celebrates an infinite range of collaborative relationships among ensembles, artists, presenters, audiences, communities, and more.

Equity & Inclusion

As an organization that champions ensemble practice and collaborative creation, NET advocates for access, inclusion, and the empowered agency of multiple voices. NET’s commitment to equity and justice is rooted in a holistic vision of cultural pluralism that values diversity of place, race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexuality, physical/mental/sensory dis/ability, class, national origin, religion, language, cultural heritage, age of individuals and ensembles, organizational size and structure, artistic form, and aesthetic orientation.

Transparency

NET works to make its own creative and organizational processes transparent to its members and the interested public, taking advantage of public dialogue, communication media, and open artistic practices.

Excellence

The processes and practices of creating ensemble theater can result in outstanding performing art and transformative community experiences. NET uses its aggregated resources to encourage excellence in the creation and presentation of ensemble work through a variety of styles, aesthetics, cultural standards, and performance vocabularies.

Respect

NET accepts the responsibility of working respectfully and effectively within a culturally diverse membership and society.

Active Engagement

NET actively seeks to engage with ensembles, artists, culture bearers, and practitioners from historically excluded and/or underserved communities.

Knowledge Building

NET understands that all ensemble projects and strategies, past and present, combine to constitute a body of knowledge. NET is committed to developing this body of knowledge, transmitting the legacy of ensemble practice and culture to current and future generations of artists, and supporting its ongoing evolution.

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https://www.ensembletheaters.net/bridge-ensemble

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1. No one is disposable

2. I agree that there is space for both half + full full-thoughts, and I will engage with I statements.

3. Anti-Blackness is very real and present in all rooms. Acknowledging that, I commit to struggling against racism, ableism, sexism, transphobia, classism, fatphobia shame, and other harmful systems in our time together

4. Engage as deep and fully as needed. Pivot as Desired!

5. Inviting open collective inquiry free of pathologizing judgements

6. Transformative Justice not Punitive Justice

7. We will practice collective care

8. Be responsible for your own emotional regulation

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Optional Prompts & Questions We Built This Weekend Around

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Optional Prompts & Questions We Built This Weekend Around

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Prompt 1: To evolve to a co-created, thriving, and sustainable future for the ensemble arts and for NET—what collective commitments for engaged action and shared accountability are needed from the NET community?

Prompt 2: What’s NEXT? And what does the NET that gets us there look like?

Prompt 3: Day 1: What’s resonating? Day 2: What’s Sticking? Day 3: What are you taking home with you?  (each a page? )

Prompt 4: As an ensemble arts community, what binds us? How can we tend to each other and help each other thrive? How can we activate and encourage each other – and our field – forward?

Prompt 5: What do we gain by coming together as a community – what is the value for you/your ensemble? What can we do or achieve together that we can’t on our own?

Prompt 6: How are ensembles – and how could NET and the ensemble arts community – be uniquely positioned and poised to navigate this moment of cultural change in our field?

Prompt 7: Please share 1-2 bright spots of national, regional, and local models of community collaboration that inspire you.

Prompt 8: What did you discover from the Solidarity Economy Workshop and Share Outs?

Prompt 9: Which Devising Sprint Responses most caught your attention? Which made you feel tingly? Do you have any reflections from the experience of creating under strict time boundaries?

Prompt 10: What grief are you holding or needing to release? Is there someone here you can share any stream of consciousness responses? If you had to name what you need, what would you say?

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When/What? (Also Available in the NETneXt NOLA Virtual Event Schedule)

11:00 am - 11:25 am CT - How We NET

Claudia Alick

We begin the day with a grounding in values and collaboration with a local representative leading a ritual of grounding that is in their cultural practice. After this grounding and ritual, we will hear from our local host, André Cailloux Center For The Performing Arts, and from NET’s Board and Bridge Ensemble. We invite one of you to lead us in an art-burst moment!

11:25 - 11:45 am CT - Devising the Container

Meena Malik

Deep introductions through a gestural activity prompt participants to introduce themselves via a sacred core value. We move into group values mapping and will spend some time going through and adding to our pathways to community care (aka community agreements and requests) for the weekend together.

11:45 am - 12:00 pm CT - Break

12:00 pm - 1:00 pm CT - Devising the Container - Values Mapping & Pathways to Community Care

Sam Morreale & Meena Malik

Deep introductions through a gestural activity prompt participants to introduce themselves via a sacred core value. We move into group values mapping and will spend some time going through and adding to our pathways to community care (aka community agreements and requests) for the weekend together.

1:00 - 1:15 pm CT - Break

1:15 - 2:00 pm CT - Solidarity Economy World-Building Workshop

Sam Morreale

We continue to open the containers of imagination by working with the themes and principles of Solidarity Economy through an exercise of ensemble worldbuilding. Bridge Ensemble members will guide small groups in a world-building activity. The parameters for each group will launch from 1-3 Solidarity Economy principles chosen by the group and a spirit of invitation into a new world.

2:00 - 3:00 pm CT - Solidarity Economy World-Building Share Outs (HYBRID Session with the folks in NOLA!)

Claudia Alick & Sam Morreale

After the world-building exercise, groups will share their created worlds, we will reflect outloud what we witnessed and felt, and then, we will set the worlds in motion simultaneously and be present in the creativity and dreaming of the collective. To close, we will share what is buzzing from the activities in devising and witnessing. We will be joined by members of the virtual circle for this hybrid moment.

3:00 - 3:15 pm CT - Break

3:15 - 3:30 pm CT - Closing

Meena Malik

Slowing down is necessary! As we circle-up once more to close out this day of deep work, we will gather feedback on the day, sit with open-floor questions and synthesis from participants, and share breath.

Hybrid Host Hub

9:00 am - 1:30 pm PT - Community Devising: What’s NEXT for NET? via Zoom

at Studio Luna Los Angeles Hub

2003 E 1st St, Los Angeles, California 90033

BE IN THE KNOW - NETneXt NOLA DAY 2:

Don’t forget to bookmark or save the NETneXt NOLA LinkTree: Your one-stop-shop for all NETneXt NOLA links, resources, and event information (including anything linked in this email)!

Full Link: linktr.ee/netnextnola

View the Official NETneXt NOLA Event Program here and on the Event LinkTree! Read up on our speakers and ritual leaders, the expanded schedule for the evening, the land we are on, a welcome note from our leaders, and MORE!

View the Virtual Schedule-At-A-Glance for the weekend here and on the Event LinkTree.

Thank you for your participation in the NETneXt Circle-Up Series to help us create what’s NEXT for NET. Read more about the NETneXt Circle-Up Series and NETneXt New Orleans at ensembletheaters.net.

We’ll see you TODAY for the first sessions of our Hybrid and Virtual offerings of our NETneXt NOLA weekend!

In Community,

NETneXt Bridge Ensemble

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For today’s session, and really, all of these online sessions, think about NET not as a nonprofit organization, an event host, or grantmaker. Not as the Board, or Alisha, or our Founders. Think of NET, right now, as a body of your peers—your collaborators. The people you meet at events, who you exchange methodologies with, whose work you stalk online from across the country; the companies whose shows you attend and who attend yours; the people you make time to see when you’re in town.