Labyrinths, from this page, were laid on the unceded lands of the Massachusett, Nahaganset, Pokanoket, Wôpanâak/ Agawam, Nipmuc/ Abenaki, and Wabanaki tribes.
FRINGEPVD The 2022 Providence Fringe Festival Photo by Erin X. Smithers
Journal Entry from July 28, 2022
It happened. We brought a Labyrinth to the Fringe and it was good. We engaged with Fringe staff and their names were Chaz, Willa, and Remy. Last night I also met Gemma, Marsha, Orla, Jody, Roberta, Emily, Shaniece, Jorden. People that came and lifted the space with us were Vlad, Jenn, Brian, Annalise, their partner Marshall, Mabel, and her friend Jeremy, and Christina and her friends mentioned above. There were a lot of people I didn't get to meet because Hebe and Bri took care of them! Oh and Brian Face timed my Momma in! The more and more I live, I realize the importance of naming people who were a part of things. How last night there weren't just butts in seats, but humans with such a breadth and depth of experiences that all chose to collect together. It was exquisite! The learning and laying that happened. At the first show, we were very few and it was really windy, she wanted to collaborate with us, I guess. We stuffed a bit of the fabric pieces of the labyrinth in between the slats of the roof deck. At one point, there were about four to five people openly running around the labyrinth and that brought me such joy! We wouldn't have been able to have that moment with a lot of people. There were moments we messed up the laying and we fixed it together and worked through it. When Bri was starting to close us out again, the wind spoke to us and unleashed a big gush to help us begin the picking up of the labyrinth. The small first crew felt good and right. Not to say the second full community didn't, that was sweet in its own way, but I was thankful for the small group too! As I sit and reflect on last night, two thoughts surface. One from Vlad, on the way home. How do we invite the community to give back, and speak up, so we can receive from them? How do we keep inviting the play? A question I have been wrestling with for some time is making more space to receive from the community that collects. The next thought I had was when we walk around, do we add Mark's walking and connecting with our eyes mantra?
You are the Walking Wounded.
You are Seen and Loved.
You are the Imago Dei.
Last night one of the rocks I picked up for the seed pattern had a message on it from a previous participant that laid with us. It said, "I see you!" I felt you, Mark. There. Seeing me.
The Journal entry from above was written at the height of the summer season after our two performances at the Providence Fringe Festival. In between the height of Summer Solstice and Lughnasadh/Lammas. We used summer's energy to lean into sharing this practice with others. "At summer solstice nature is at its most powerful point, the height of its energy. The land and Sun together have an energy surge giving us a boost of power, but it is not a manic, frantic, stressful energy...[rather]...Solstice power is deep rooted. Steady" (Cross 120).
This season called for a lot of activation and collecting of our critical yeast to continue the cycle. We planned a lot of different performance possibilities, and the few that stuck were a dress rehearsal performance at a new collaborator's family farm, two performances at the Providence Fringe, and then a Goddard Residency Community Performance. For these performances to occur, our group of facilitators had to coalesce.
Finding our Critical Yeast
In the middle of this season, my dear friend, and lifelong collaborator, Kendra DeMicco-Lovins conversed with me about an intellectual metaphor that held what I was trying to accomplish. An idea called critical yeast theory, by a man named John Paul Lederach. This theory asks people to look away from always trying to achieve critical mass for movements and instead asks them to think about the critical yeast. Who are the people that, if brought together in a good environment, could catalyze a movement? In his own words: “It is a metaphor that asks the “who” rather than the “how many” question: Who, though not like-minded or like-situated in this context of conflict, would have a capacity, if they were mixed and held together, to make other things grow exponentially, beyond their numbers?” (Lederach 7).
The metaphorical premise is that collecting the critical yeast and nurturing the environmental conditions to lead to growth would prime the yeast, so when placed in the critical mass (the flour) it would have the capacity to bind and raise up the protein potential of the flour to produce something far greater than the sum of its parts. I immersed myself in a practice of making sourdough at the start of 2022. I know, two years late from being Pandemic cool. Regardless, entering into this practice set me in the reality of this metaphor. I witnessed the science of yeast expanding from the smallest amount of starter on a weekly basis. As I watched this yeast amplify, I realized I have done this in my own way for years with other people's projects, and other's stories. I became intrigued to continue this practice for the projects that were bubbling up inside of me, specifically for the Laying Labyrinths: A Living Performance.
Sourdough Starter Stella, who taught me a ton this year!
I wanted to explore how I create a space where all of the yeasty people, for this experiment, could combine our webs of understanding and our communal webs of people we know, so the Laying Labyrinths experience could become a catalyst to "transform social fields"(Scharmer & Hayashi). Where the experience could become a place where we (facilitators) were transformed too, by what we received from the community of participants. This metaphor continues to prop up adrienne maree brown's principle of "Small is good, small is all. (The large is a reflection of the small)" (brown 41). The importance of the Micro and Macro, the fractal nature of how living systems expand, and how humanity plays a part in improvising and devising with it.
I want to make an important clarification, any person or thing can become a part of the critical yeast. It depends on the project, the other people that are collecting, and the environment that is being created. This critical yeast theory calls for a space of inclusion, but it asks the important question of who!
Luckily, Hebe and I were able to find another part of our critical yeast during the summer season. We, without planning, captured this moment of expansion on one of our recorded reflections after a labyrinth workshop with a friend and ensemble member of the Karakatitsa Movement Collective I am a part of, their name is Brianna Lueders.
An Exchange: Cultivating your Critical Yeast
Before you begin, make sure to have something to write with and on.
If you are in the height of summer, take a moment to sit.
Breathe.
Let your mind wander.
Or find stillness.
When you are ready, ask yourself if there is a project, event, trip, conversation, or anything else you can dream of that is, or could, amp up to its pinnacle point of growth this season.
Let this thought wash over you.
Grab your writing tools.
Write an impulse poem about this thought.
Directions for this are below:
Write the first word that comes to your head.
Looking at that first word, what is the next word that comes.
Write it down.
Keep repeating this action, until it feels like the poem has brought you some clarity or an ending arises.
Here is one of mine for reference sake:
spiral. journey. next step. one at a time. patience. antithesis. hard work. sweat. heat. fire. mesmerizing. enchanting. otherworldly. fairy. magic. alchemy. scientific explanations. quantum physics. entanglement. connections. interstitial. turns
Oftentimes, the journey of these impulse poems might only make sense to you. Reflect on what came up as you followed your impulses. What critical yeast revealed itself to you around this idea? Is there anything it's asking you to nurture or cultivate for it to come to fruition? Do you need to gather more of something before it can be baked in the heat of summer sun?
Feel free to use the comment section below to share your Impulse Poem or any of the reflections from the exercise. I encourage you to tap into the energy of the summer sun and move these thoughts into action. One small step at a time.
Laying Labyrinths: Living Performances
The update from this season is that we moved into action. We were honored to perform with four different communities of people that collected together. They became our critical yeast. Each person was precious to us and became a part of spreading the seeds of the labyrinth. Each group learned how to draw a labyrinth from the seed pattern. They came into a community through different exercises. They listened to their senses. They took time to listen to the land, to acknowledge those that took care of it before and are continuing to care for it now. They honored their ancestors and the legacy of the people that would follow them. They laid intentions through the rocks and fabric of the labyrinth. We laid the labyrinth and then walked it. After we all had this experience, we talked about endings, and how ephemeral and temporal life is, and we entered a practice of ending well together.
The first was a workshop group at Bri's family horse farm. We had about 15-18 dear friends and family join us as the first community that collected for this performance. In the heat of the July sun, we gathered, laid a labyrinth, ate yummy sourdough bread and chocolate chip cookies, and each had our own experiences.
Here are some pictures from that performance.
The last of the performances was at Goddard College's Fall Residency in 2022, for the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts community. This residency was the first time many in my cohort had met and it was our only full residency before we graduated. This performance held a spectrum of experiences: from those that were deeply mourning the loss of loved ones to others that found themselves fully embodying trickster character energies and playful romps around the labyrinth. This labyrinth we laid held space for all of us in a different way that day. It was a bittersweet time to be collecting together and here are some thoughts I verbally came to on my ride home from that experience.
It was hard. It had been a hard week. We were all holding a lot. The deaths of people in our lives, getting to Goddard, and feeling safe being at this new place. We were taking care of and also holding each other from not-great moments that happened the weekend and many more that happened even before we got there. I looked around at all of the faces and people; many I had just met for the first time, in person, and I was so thankful to be sitting with them. On the grass, among the grasshoppers, chiggers, moths, mosquitoes, and spiders. It felt healing to me to be there together. I was only able to reflect with a couple of people about it since we laid the labyrinth. But those I could talk to said it felt like the embodied practice of something that we all needed to do, almost like a collective breath. A hug. Time to just be in that space, on that precious land, in community, and communion together. It was sweet and dear, charged and free.
Around this very time, the Wheel of the Year started to move to Lughnasadh/ Lammas which "is a time of harvest, sacrifice, transformation, of rebirth and new beginnings...To begin to store the things that will give us sustenance throughout the dark winter months ahead and to sacrifice what we do not need and offer it back to the Earth..." (Cross 141). As we traversed that labyrinth together, during our residency, and left it, we moved forward home, to our next steps. I knew that we were starting to take our steps toward harvesting our learning: putting it to pen, and gathering the fruits of our labors.
Here is a video of these last performances:
I would like to invite you back to the thesis where we will finish collecting the harvest.
A.M. Sullivan. Requiem For The Season. 1968. Internet Archive, http://archive.org/details/RequiemForTheSeason.
Cross, Emma-Jane. Walking The Wheel of The Year. Green Magic Publishing, 2020.
Lederach, John Paul. The Moral Imagination. Oxford University Press, 2005. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1093/0195174542.001.0001.
Scharmer, Otto, and Arawana Hayashi. “The Origin of Social Presencing Theater - News.” Presencing Institute, https://www.presencing.org/news/news/the-origin-of-social-presencing-theatre. Accessed 9 Apr. 2022.