When the Writing Itself is a Dialogue

When the Writing Itself is a Dialogue

by Jan Cohen-Cruz and Rad Pereira

Our collaboration as co-authors of Meeting the Moment: Socially Engaged Performance 1965–2020 By Those Who Lived It, across racial, age, gender-identity, and nationality—was a core aspect of the work of this book. As we observed a great many people retreating into the arms of those with whom they most identify, we felt it was all the more important to deeply understand someone with whom we share values but not the particulars of how we go about contributing to a vibrant culture. Moreover, Jan wanted to pass on what she’d learned about producing books and wanted to learn from Rad what was most relevant to someone centered in socially-engaged performance now.

Meeting the Moment is, therefore, a dynamic dialogue and reflection between the two of us and the amazing people we interviewed. While we were committed to finding our joint perspective, with Jan grounded in the early to middle years and Rad practicing in the middle to late periods of our book’s time frame, we did not always agree. The reason is often generational: for example, Jan has become cynical of the sweeping language of care and the too often unsubstantiated profession of high values, having seen it used in so many self-serving ways (e.g., advertisements proclaiming you have a friend in such and such a multi-corporation.) For Rad, such language must be reclaimed, embodied, and used as a means for accountability.

We considered our two perspectives, sometimes aligning and sometimes contrasting, to be a strength. Our analysis was shaped by weaving both of our perspectives throughout. Our collaboration was made possible by the bridge of our shared Jewish, feminist, and theater identities, the breadth of our perspectives, our dedication to communicating through complexity, and the values we share of kindness, curiosity, patience, and grace.

The following excerpts from the Introduction articulate our respective contributions:

JAN: Coming of age in the late-1960s and 1970s, I did experimental and street theater and facilitated workshops with people in a mind-blowing range of circumstances, including men in a maximum-security prison and teenagers in a psychiatric facility. My performance knowledge came from lived experience and formal study; in the early 1980s, I was part of the first class of the Department of Performance Studies at NYU. I have lived a hyphenated existence, in rural Pennsylvania and (urban) New York City, employed by universities and on-the-ground community-based cultural projects. Working as a socially engaged performer, then teacher, and then writer into the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s provided a prismatic perspective on the field.

[…]

Around thirty interviews in, I realized that I could not write the book alone. I have been at a distance from the making of performance in recent years and did not know whom to approach particularly from the past ten years. And while married to a “Nuyorican” (someone born in New York City whose parents are from Puerto Rico), who has made me more sensitive to diverse cultures, and being the mother of twins, who have kept my feet on the ground, I am a white, middle- class, formally educated septuagenarian who carries the baggage and privilege of those identities. I sought an artist/thinker who could complement my effort, but from the perspective of a much younger generation, and grounded in different culture markers. I found that in Rad Pereira.

I quickly appreciated Rad’s nonhierarchical ways of relating to people of all ages and their openness to all who cross their path. (Rad uses gender-inclusive pronouns, i.e., “they/them/their.”) Rad’s mother is Brazilian and their father is a Russian Jew, which in Rad’s case has led to a broad and intimate understanding of diversity, denying no part of their ancestry. Further, Rad’s commitment to performance, policy, teaching, and social justice are aligned with the purposes of this book.

RAD: I am from Pindorama, Abya Yala (Latin America; specifically, what is currently known as Brazil in this case), a mixed-race descendant of African diasporic, Indigenous Brazilian, and Ashkenazi Jewish refugees. […] As I grew, my mentors became my first Black acting teacher, who introduced me to liberation work, and the radical elder Communist man I worked with in the mailroom in high school. They celebrated and informed all my contradictions and interests, my queerness, my brownness, my mixedness, my unnameable wisdoms and curiosities, by asking questions, encouraging my spirit to go deeper, and flaming the fires of my boldness to have the courage to disagree and say no.

My mother is a radical community organizer. She has always invited me to question my perceived reality, as well as the systems that uphold it, which are often exploitative. She encouraged me to stick with the other “underdogs,” stand up for ourselves, and fight to make our own ways. My father instilled in me the ability to make friends with anyone through charm, laughter, and the resourcefulness to find what I needed anywhere in the world. The interpersonal and systemic power dynamics between my parents were a microcosm for the ways the world works, who has access to what and why, who has power where, and how power is kept or shared. Being raised between cultures, between countries, between worlds allowed me a quantum view of the realities around me and provided the prism through which I perceive the interplay between society and art. […]

When I met Jan in 2016, I felt the possibility of a life dedicated to interweaving ethics, education, politics, equity, and art. Jan was amazing in the way she could talk to all different types of people and synthesize analysis that could transform systems. Jan has helped me to understand my value by encouraging me to bring together all my different passions. She told me about this book, and I was committed to supporting it in any way I could. 

Now that the book has been launched into the world, we are together shaping excerpts of text, designing workshops, and offering webinars, in each case deciding together what we think is most important for a given audience and then having each other’s back while we are actually presenting, helping each other make a point if one of us falters in the moment. It is a heady experience and we are grateful for this other benefit of our collaboration!

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Weaving stories from over 75 interviews with socially engaged theater makers and performers, Meeting the Moment explores the experiences of a diverse range of progressive theater and performance makers in the U.S., in their own words. Injecting critical reflections of their own, Jan Cohen-Cruz and Rad Pereira present the experiences of performance artists on the front lines of culture shift — artists committed to both rigorous theater-making and community care.

Meeting the Moment offers insight into the field, its challenges due to discrimination and unequal opportunity for these artists, and aspirations for change. Jan Cohen-Cruz and Rad Pereira center diverse voices who shed light on opportunities for inclusive practice and give hope for the future of the art. The book ultimately reveals why performance matters in the present fight against injustice.

“Meeting the Moment is a reminder of what is possible when we return to our bodies, collective performance, and the poetic expression of social movements. This book offers a look into the complexity, the richness, and the aliveness of liberatory art practices, in a time where art is being co-opted for elite interests – a must read for all interested in freedom and dignity.”

– Niki Franco, co-founder and political education direction for Fempower MIA

Jan Cohen-Cruz (right) wrote Local Acts, Engaging
Performance, and Remapping Performance, co-edited two books about the work of Augusto Boal, and edited Radical Street Performance. As a past director of Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life, she co-founded its journal, Public. While a professor of drama at NYU, she founded its applied theater minor. Cohen-Cruz was director of field research for A Blade of Grass, which supports socially engaged artists. An awardee for Leadership in Community-Based Theatre and Civic Engagement, she currently teaches in TouchstoneTheatre/Moravian University’s MFA in Performance Creation.

Rad Pereira (left) is a queer (im)migrant artist and cultural worker building consciousness between healing justice, system change,
reindigenization and queer futures based in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn). Rad is co-creator of YOU ARE HERE with LILLETH, which aims to create equitable access to healing through creative expression specifically for and with queer, trans, and two-spirit BIPOC through happenings, popular education, and community projects. Rad is a proud board member of Superhero Clubhouse, making theater to enact climate and environmental justice. Rad’s work has been supported by communities, institutions, and groups all over Turtle Island.

ADVANCE PRAISE

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing