Written by SuEllen Hamkins, psychiatrist, mother, and co-author of The Mother-Daughter Project: How mothers and daughters can band together, beat the odds, and thrive through adolescence.
Last night, I was again reminded how theatre—when it lets a young person give voice to her beliefs and passions through performance—can help forge a powerful positive identity like nothing else.
The show was Race Beat: In the Vernacular, A Celebration of Black History Month, a compilation of poetry, song, drama and dance directed by sixteen-year-old Ajay Wells, after the Black History Month show the previous year inspired him to go further.
Audience is everything. The school, Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter Public School has grades 7 through 12, and cultivates a wildly supportive and, in fact, a loving environment among its students. (Yes even among the 7th and 8th graders!) So at the show last night, when a girl stepped onto the darkened stage to perform, “Food”, a poem she had written about the origins of soul food and what that meant about the love and ingenuity of her ancestors and what that means about who she is today, she was greeted by a river of “You do it!” “You go girl!” “Angela!” “I’m your number one fan!” “Woo-hoo!”, then a complete hush as the audience of peers and parents leaned in to listen, followed by whoops and applause. She spoke and she was heard, she stood up and she was seen.
The teen girl who put on an elegant pale pink suit, pearl-colored stockings and ivory pumps and performed a monologue as Coretta Scott King experienced in her own body and voice the eloquence and dignity that we in the audience saw, which would now be more fully available to her—and to us in knowing that eloquence and dignity is part of the repertoire of every teen girl. Moreover, she chose the monologue based on her own values and preferences, and as she stepped into Mrs. King’s being, she was supported by her, a powerful historical ancestor, and then she was supported by the audience seeing her, including own ancestors, her parents, as she came more fully into her own voice and power. This is, I believe, what adolescent girls need to grow into powerful, articulate, happy women.
Just do it—because doing is how we become who we are. My fifteen-year-old daughter Frani took the stage with other members of her singing group, “X Block Village Harmony”. A vivid mosaic of orange, red, purple, brown, blue, and yellow, their scarves, pants, skirts and tights were expressions of their personal styles, and as they raised their voices in powerful harmonies, their joy in the singing was palpable. As they swayed and clapped and belted out spirituals and indigenous songs of peace and celebration from southern Africa, we in the audience were pulled into clapping and swaying along. Her singing group is student taught, led by three young women who had participated in Village Harmony summer camps and workshops, which celebrate the world’s harmony singing traditions with full-throated enthusiasm. (It meets during the school’s weekly free period, or “X-block”, hence the name.) We, parents and peers, saw them and heard their message, multiplying its importance in their lives and in our own. Frani sees that she has the power to touch and change and inspire me and the rest of the audience.
At the end of the night, the former music department chair, back for a guest performance, spoke of the enormous pride we all felt in our children and that they should feel in themselves, and I couldn’t have agreed more when in summary of the evening, he quoted Vladimir Mayakovsky: “Art is not a mirror to reflect the world, but a hammer with which to shape it.”
SuEllen Hamkins is a psychiatrist, mother, and co-author of The Mother-Daughter Project: How mothers and daughters can band together, beat the odds, and thrive through adolescence. Read more about her and the project at www.motherdaughterproject.com. She appears as a featured expert in the film Making History, a companion to the film, Heroic Girlz. See www.heroicgirlz.org.