This Winter issue is reaching you as the calendar turns over and New Year’s resolutions are yet to be fulfilled. Perhaps this issue can be a hopeful springboard to motivate us through the rest of the winter ahead, when the air is cold, the nights are long, and summer is still distant. During this season, I’m reflecting on recent events here in the U.S. with the awareness that our future is intricately connected to what happens in the world around us.
I live in New York, and in late November, I was excited to see We Live in Cairo at New York Theatre Workshop (covered in this issue). The musical, with an ensemble of six Arab actors, begins with the protests at Tahrir Square and follows the characters through the aftermath of the post-Mubarak years. Egypt joined the Arab Spring on Jan. 25, 2011, with tens of thousands gathering in Cairo and thousands more in other Egyptian cities. They were protesting a ruler who had been in power for 30 years, before many of them were born.
As I watched the journeys of the musical’s student activists—some of them already fully embracing a path of protest, and some in the throes of breaking through a wall of fear—the invincibility of youth came to mind. This risk-taking, coupled with an absolute sense of purpose and the strong conviction that change is possible, fuels many in the age group that we at TCG call “the inheritors”: those in their teens to 34 years old who are inheriting a world in which economic, social, and political choices were made by adults decades older.
I was 15 years old when I joined the student strike at San Francisco State University. It was the longest student strike in U.S. history, lasting from Nov. 6, 1968, to March 21, 1969, and it changed academic institutions forever. When the strike ended, the administration, in response to student demands, established the country’s first College of Ethnic Studies. The administration also agreed to create a special admissions program for 400 students of color for the fall semester of 1969. I graduated high school a year early and went to SFSU. It was a time when my friends and I, and young people throughout the world, were trying to understand and change the direction of a world in chaos and crisis. In college I met teachers who would become my mentors and champions, as they recognized the artist and leader I was becoming.
Each January American Theatre focuses on theatre training, and Jacqueline E. Lawton’s roundtable with five theatre professionals and educators covers the realities and difficulties of their jobs. It also gives us a window into their earliest personal memories of politics and how they helped to shape them. They share adolescent experiences that gave them insights into the complexities of power, race, and politics, which in turn evolved into a foundation for how they work with youth. We build future generations of theatremakers and theatre leaders by teaching and mentoring. A key part of educating is encouraging students to think about world building and world changing, and developing their own nascent sense of leadership.
You may already know about Young Invincibles, an organization started by a group of students in the summer of 2009, who believed in their generation’s capacity to stand up and make themselves heard. They were eager to organize friends, educate the public about new health insurance options, and develop real solutions to the challenges they face. Young people are a historically underrepresented constituency, and Young Invincibles’ focus is on ensuring young communities with the least access to political and economic power have a say. They are building a community of young leaders to take action for social change, sharing the stories of young adults, and providing tools for their generation to make smart economic choices and embark on mission-driven social enterprise ventures. The work shared by those most impacted by health care, higher education, workforce, and financial policies is also a source of collective care.
At the end of the year, I also had a chance to see The Art of Care, conceived and directed by Derek Goldman, developed with the performers/storytellers, and produced at Mosaic Theater in Washington, D.C. Like We Live in Cairo, this was an ensemble piece with music. The central theme is world building, in which care for others is an antidote to feelings of isolation and loneliness. As I left the theatre that night, a thought from the play stayed with me: What if interdependence is even more important than independence? Our practice as theatre people is world building. But world building, and world changing, can only succeed with connectivity and collaboration.
I have a quote-for-the-day calendar on my desk, and as I write this, today’s is appropriately from Albert Camus: “In the middle of winter, I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.” Camus was committed to the value of individual human life, believing that even in the most difficult and challenging times, like winter, there is a resilient and enduring hope or strength within us, like the warmth of summer, that cannot be defeated—that within us is an inner resilience to overcome adversity. May your summer be ever invincible!
Emilia Cachapero is TCG’s Co-Executive Director, National and Global Programming.
