I am black in color and tall

I am black in color and tall
I wonder if I be the super actor
I hear the sound of sweetie song
I see the sun rise
I want to be the actor in the world
I am black in color and tall
I pretend I am Prince
I feel happy
I touch the fruit in Eden garden
I cry to fail my future
I am black in color and tall

- David - Nkoandrua Secondary School

from Laura Stewart! Day One

"Think of our lives and tell us your particularized world. Make up a story. Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created. We will not blame you if your reach exceeds your grasp ....
- Toni Morrison, Nobel Prize Lecture, 1993

Two nights ago, I sipped sweet Tanzanian chai in the darkness and waited. The power had gone out. I couldn't see anything, so I listened for the sound of a car horn at the lodge gate. In only a few minutes the 2011 ITLP team ought to be arriving from the airport. Then our teaching adventure would get underway. I had come to East Africa earlier than the others and was looking forward to my team's approaching reunion.

At about 10 p.m., the crunch crunch of gravel announced an arrival. Felicia, Rebecca, Kate, Lauren, Karis, and Abby piled out of two vans. In the light of my headlamp, I saw their tired, eager faces, and realized that in only two days, we'd begin leading our playwriting workshops at Tanzanian schools. What would our classrooms look like? How would our students respond to our theater exercises and writing prompts? These questions mixed in with my greetings. I think the whole team was entertaining similar questions.

The next morning (that's yesterday), our jet-lagged team dove headfirst into preparing and fine-tuning our lesson plans. St. Margaret's teachers face a new, joyful challenge this year - creating an original play - from scratch - out of the kids' writing. (Last year and the year before they created scripted plays as adaptations of Midsummer Night's Dream and Our Town). All three plays (one class at St. Margaret's, two at Nkoandrua Secondary School) will center loosely around a Shel Silverstein poem, but the content will come from the students' own writing and work. And I must admit that, during the course of preparation, our task sometimes struck me as daunting ... I wondered, as Toni Morrison wrote (see above), if our reach had exceeded our grasp.

Only one way to find out - and that's to try. "Joy lies in the doing," as Shakespeare said. This morning, plan in hand, my teaching partner Felicia and I set out to St. Margaret's Academy for our first day of theater and English instruction to a class of twenty 9-11 year olds. Our students, neatly attired in golden and green uniforms, greeted us politely.

It was soon evident that one thing they really loved was exercises involving group movement. They showed more hesitancy at standing out in any way - moving or speaking in front of their peers.

We faced similar challenges with our writing prompts. We noticed how students wanted to get answers 'right', and reach a group consensus. When responding to questions designed to draw on their individuality, they shied away from differentiating themselves. We worked to pull out specificity. When we encountered specific ideas or questions about God, family, culture, sports, education, nature, we were pleased. Specific answers are the stuff of good stories, and the means by which we connect to one another as people.

At the end of a long day, the bell sounded. Felicia and I hitched a ride home on a school bus. As we careened down dusty roads, my foot brushed up against a bag of raw chicken on the floor. I saw fields of coffee plants and matoake trees - those spindly but powerful plants that channel all their energy into the production of just one bunch of bananas.

And now night has fallen. Again, I am sitting in the middle of a power outage. I hear dogs bark outside and the low hum of music. I am grateful to be in Tanzania with ITLP. Theater has connected me to other people, expanded my sense of what is possible, and set me free from apprehensions. I know it can do all these things and more for our students, too.

- Laura Stewart, teaching artist, 2011 - St. Margaret's Academy

The International Theatre and Literacy Project 2011
Teaching Artist Bios: Tanzania Team

Kate Cook is a member of the faculty at Illinois State University, where she teaches movement for the actor with a particular focus on the Alexander Technique and Rudolph Laban's effort action work. Kate enjoys new play development; she has helped workshop plays for Enda Walsh, Richard Kalinovski, Aline Lathrop, J.R. Sullivan, and Rahul Varma. Kate's acting credits include: Utah Shakespeare Festival, Illinois Shakespeare Festival, Dallas Theater Center, Chicago Dramatists, Classical Acting Company, and Willamette Repertory Theater. Upcoming work includes Elizabeth Bennett in Pride & Prejudice at Round House Theatre in Bethesda, MD. Kate is a proud member of Actors' Equity Association. Kate is thrilled to be joining ITLP this summer.

Karis Danish lives and works in NYC as a quadruple threat actor/singer/writer/economist. She has degrees in music performance and an M.F.A in acting from Florida State University's Asolo Conservatory. She has worked as an actor in regional theaters around the country including the Asolo Repertory Theater and Cape May Stage as well as independent films that occasionally pop up at your local film festival. She enjoys cultivating the work of emerging playwrights and composers and has work-shopped new material in New York City with New Georges Theater, Project;Theater, NYU and The P.I.T. She believes in the importance of story, hers and other peoples, and endeavors to create the space in life where the two intersect. She's also a member of Actor's Equity.

Lauren Lanker is thrilled to be joining the ITLP team in Tanzania this summer. Originally from New York, she currently lives with her husband Mark in Columbus, Ohio, where she teaches English & theatre to the talented and creative students at Canal Winchester High School. Highlights of the year for her include coordinating the annual Poetry Out Loud competition and directing and choreographing the spring musical. Recent directorial endeavors include Godspell & Side by Side by Sondheim. Lauren received a B.A. in English-writing with a theatre minor from Wheaton College, Illinois, where she was a four-year member of the theatre company WorkOut. She obtained an M.A. in Educational Theatre & English Education from New York University's Steinhardt School in May 2009 and was blessed to have the opportunity to study community-engaged theatre in Dublin, Ireland. She has an ever-growing passion for the development of original theatre as a means of bringing voice to the voiceless, and she looks forward putting this passion into play in Tanzania this summer. Let the adventures begin!

Abby Jackson is an actor and teaching artist currently living in New York City. In the past, she has worked with the Shakespeare Theatre Company (Washington, DC), Will Power to Youth, and in several smaller community organizations teaching theater to students of all ages and backgrounds. Most recently, she has been facilitating a theater group with participants from a wellness cafe for those in recovery from homelessness, addiction or mental illness. Abby believes strongly in the power of theater to cultivate compassion and transform communities. She is so looking forward to emerging from the desk of her day job and into the joy of collaborating with students, teachers, and artists in Tanzania!

Felicia Bertch mostly just likes stories and laughter. She has traveled the globe collecting other people’s stories, hijacking her way into those stories and subsequently learning the best and most laugh-worthy ways to share these stories with anyone who couldn’t come along in person. Felicia received her MFA in Acting at The University of South Carolina, studied at the LeCoq School in Paris, and currently works as a clown and an actor in Chicago. She teaches Modern Dance and Theater Movement classes/workshops at various institutions in the Chicago area, including Wheaton College, Columbia College, and The University of Chicago. She is also a theater choreographer and performance devisor. Since Felicia considers children to be the physical embodiment of story and laughter, she has spent the past 20 years teaching, nannying, playing with, and observing them in every imaginable way. This is never boring. She has made every effort to include children in her life’s story and is so grateful for the opportunity that ITLP has given her towards that end. www.feliciabertch.com

Laura Stewart studied acting at Wheaton College, IL and at the National Theater Conservatory's intensive program in Denver.

She has also worked as a writer and editor for nonprofit organizations. Last year she served as a Fellow in Uganda with International Justice Mission (a human rights agency that provides legal representation and psychosocial services to victims of violent oppression).

Laura has also taught French classes to young children, and tutored inner city youth in Denver. She is grateful for the opportunity to return to East Africa and to bring together art and justice issues.