What can happen when art carries people across a boundaries they rarely cross?

in 2019, a remarkable theater project brought together two very different communities: rural largely white Brussels, Illinois, and the predominantly Black St. Louis-area communities of Normandy and Pagedale, Missouri. Separated by the Mississippi River—and by race, geography, and very different assumptions about one another—they became collaborators in a new version of Shakespeare’s As You Like It.

Under the direction of artist/activist/educator Kathi Bentley students, teachers, residents, artists, and audiences traveled by bus and ferry between the two communities. Along the way, strangers became castmates, hosts, guests, and friends.

This reprise show is the first in a four-episode journey exploring what can happen when artists enter communities, cross into unfamiliar territory, and create the conditions for people to hear and change one another’s stories.

Threshold Questions and Juicy Quotes:

Can collective creation change settled world views?

I mean, there are a couple of Mexican families in Brussels. They're no black folks. So, I would always kid that I was like, you know, that's a cute little house, and if I bought that, I'd be okay. Like, yeah. You know, for some of those students, this was prayerfully life changing in how they see folks and communities that are different than them and for our students from Normandy.

Can we build lasting bridges between communities separated by race and culture?

You’ve got to have people love each other. You’ve got to have people like, "Can't wait to see you at rehearsal."... because then on stage, I got your back ... that experience it was so affirming to me about the power of just having people just talk to each other, you know, so they fell in love with each other. I fell in love with them.

What kind of leadership grows community ownership and accountability?

I'm humbled by the whole experience. You know, because often people don't know or really care who the director is, and that's okay. That's my goal. So, it's nice to just be on the ferry and nobody know what my roll was in it and hear people like, this is so cool. Oh my gosh, I can't believe we're doing this.

Notable Mentions

Blackberry Productions

St. Louis Shakespeare Festival:

Shakespeare, in the Streets

Art and Upheaval,

Wedding Community Play.

CHIPS Health: Community Health-In-Partnership Services (d/b/a CHIPS Health and Wellness Center) is the place where uninsured and underserved people in the St. Louis metropolitan area can receive free primary and preventive health care services.

Bread and Roses Missouri An organization with the mission of organizing arts and humanities projects about workers and their families.

Hey there. Can art build trust and even love between separated communities? From the center for the Study of Art and Community.

This is Art Is Change chronicle of art and social change, where activist artists and cultural organizers share the strategies and skills they need to thrive as creative community leaders. So what can happen when art carries people across boundaries they Rarely Cross?

Separated by the Mississippi river and by race, geography and very different assumptions about one another, they became collaborators in a new version of what Else? Shakespeare's as yous Like It.

Under the direction of artist, activist, educator Kathi Bentley, students, teachers, residents, artists and and audiences travel by bus and ferry between the two communities. Along the way, strangers became castmates, hosts, guests and friends.

This reprise show is the first of a four episode journey exploring what can happen when artists enter communities, cross into unfamiliar territory and create the conditions for people to hear and change each other's stories.

Next week is a very big week. It will be the premiere of Shakespeare in the Streets, Love at the River's Edge, a rendition of as yous like it with a little bit of a twist.

We are combining the counties of Brussels and St. Louis 24:1. So basically we talk about the divides in the two communities, our similarities, our differences, our very unique, unique ways of living.

The voice you heard at the beginning of this week's episode was Margaret Michoud, a student and actress from Normandy high school near St. Louis, who was one of the dozens of people touched by the story we are about to tell. We call this week's episode Love at the River's Edge.

In it we hear from actor, director, dancer and educator Kathi Bentley, who's life's journey has taken her from St. Louis to the Great White Way and back again to the home of the Gateway Arch. My conversation with Kathi took place on May 27, just 38 hours after George Floyd's murder in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Part 1 Love Hate how are you Kathi?

I think I'm okay.

I thought I was doing good and then I made the mistake of getting on social media and looking at stuff and I'm just, you know, I mean, I already knew about the killing in Minnesota.

Minneapolis police fired tear gas and rubber coated bullets at thousands of demonstrators who gathered Tuesday to protest the killing of George Floyd. African American man in Central Park. People dying of coronavirus. It's just a lot.

So today, you know, so you know how you wake up, I'm like Oh, I'm doing good. And then. And then I just.

Yeah, I mean, it's really weird. We're isolated, but we're bombarded.

Yeah.

Kathi, hopefully this conversation will be different because I want you to tell a story. Which, of all the people in the world, you know best? Because it's yours.

I'd like to begin by asking you to reflect that you're sitting across the table from your colleagues, and you. You're sharing with them what it is you do in the world. What's your work? What's your mission?

Okay.

My mission is to bring people together to create a space where we can jointly create, excavate, build, nurture, activate stories from our shared experiences, from maybe not shared experiences where we can have space for each other's unique experiences and places where our experiences intersect.

My work is about leading people to that place of self discovery and affirmation that we helps them to see themselves in a different way as storytellers, as members of a collective group of people. My work is to hold space for people who may not feel like they have a place or a space to be who they are.

What was the path that led you to that mission? What's the story of how you came, came to that work?

Well, you know, I think as a.

As a person who's always been connected to the arts just for my entire life as a dancer and an actor, I moved to New York to perform and did that and.

And love hated it a lot, and got connected with an organization in Harlem that helped me to see all these other ways that I could be creative and artistic.

And they had to do with working with schools or community groups or, you know, just in ways that didn't look like the traditional going to an audition.

And I thought that was really gratifying, like, oh, I can help build a curriculum around Harlem Renaissance and how it relates to being a young boy or girl in Harlem right now, you know, or in the 90s.

So that, that led me to look at my creative self in a different way as somebody who could actually instigate these kinds of stor, not solely be someone who is given a story to recreate as an actor. So that got me very excited and like, oh, okay, I could actually help people create, help people devise work and direct other people's stories.

And, you know, so I think that my lifelong mission of building community has just been part of what I've been raised to value, is that community is really, really important. And the only way I know how to do it is through the arts.

So that just has been the center of how I do what I do is this community building piece that's really important to me.

What was that organization that you mentioned?

Oh, BlackBerry Productions. I'm still really good friends with the founder. She's like a sister. She's like a big sister to me.

And we did a play together and I thought, she is looney tunes, this woman who is this Stephanie Bear. And she was just the most talented and creative person that I had met. I mean, she just.

It was like, you know, somebody who wakes up with like 15 ideas, her feet hit the floor. That's how I felt about her. And I'm like, wow. And we had. We came up with a bunch of stuff. We. We were. We still.

Every time we talk, we got something new. But that as a young performer, she was so inspired as far as just the limitless creativity that we have as human beings.

So I got to work with BlackBerry Productions. After we worked together as performers. I worked with the company quite a, you know, maybe five years or so in different capacities, writing grants.

I mean, stuff that I was like, okay, well, yes, and, you know, creating curriculum, you know, all that, just really directing. That's when I first started directing, was with her company. And I got really excited about that.

So you ended up. You're in St. Louis?

I'm in St. Louis, Missouri.

What took you from finding a new spark on the street in New York back to St. Louis?

Yeah, right. Well, yes, I'm from here. And then right after college, I moved to New York with my high school friend. No clue. And I lived there for 10 years.

You know, a lot of growth happens between the ages of 23 and 31. Perform all over the place, you know, and just be an actor. A lot of that did happen, you know, in different ways. I made friends for life there.

Had experiences that I just could never have had anyplace else but New York, because there's nowhere like it. And. And am so grateful for that experience, you know, and would advise anyone to do that. If it's in your heart to move somewhere, do it, do it.

And I lived there for 10 years and got married, had a baby. A couple of years later, got separated. I was like. Felt like I needed to be back home, close to family. And so that brought me back here. And my.

My mentor, who I've known for since I was in college, actually got me to finish my degree, convinced me. Bill Grivner, he just kept, you know, he talked me into it and he got me on at siue, where I Teach. I want to direct.

I love this and I want to do some other things with this theater stuff.

Part two, the Golden Eagle Fairy Kathi has a growing reputation for her social justice and undoing racism work. She's made this a central part of her practice as both an educator and as a theater director.

In Part two, we explore one prominent example of how this has played out in the community.

One of the things that, that I would like to ask you to do is to think about one or two stories of your work that represent the kinds of things that you're trying to accomplish with your efforts in community.

I feel so grateful because I, I feel like I put in the path of projects that can be so fulfilling. I'm thinking of wonderful experience that I got to have last year, Shakespeare Festival St. Louis.

I got to direct their Shakespeare in the Streets production, which is a big community involved production. It's like a year long prep period. I was asked to come on board and it was going to be something unique that they hadn't done before.

So it was Love at the River's Edge. And it was an adaptation written by a phenomenal writer, Mariah Richardson, good, good friend of mine.

And this was going to be bringing two different communities together. A rural community and urban community in the area separated by the river. How do we do this?

It's usually a production that's done over the course of a weekend and now we have these two different communities where you have to take a bus and a ferry to get to the different communities.

This sounds fairly complicated. What was it about this production that really attracted you?

I love puzzles. I love. That's one thing about theater that I love and about directing as I get to figure out, you know, like work with people.

I love the collaboration. How do we fit all these pieces together? So this was a true test. It was a way to really validate building community. We worked with schools first.

So you're working with a school in Brussels, Illinois, a town of 150 people.

I believe, am I right, that the other community was in Pagedale, near St. Louis. They're not on each other's dance card typically, are they?

Never. They didn't know each other. They had heard of each other.

Well, Russell's had heard of Normandy because Normandy in St. Louis, it's a part of St. Louis County. Michael Brown went to Normandy High School, who died in Ferguson. So Ferguson is part of that community.

So the people in Brussels, their idea of What Normandy, what St. Louis is just like a lot of them, we don't go there they just would not come to that part. You know, there was a lot of work that we had to do as a team as to, you know, getting people together.

We had a journey where the schools came over, visited each other. A couple of the parents did not want their children coming to Normandy, so they had to miss out.

You know, it was so funny when we first got them together and, you know, we had all these activities. First of all, the Brussels school is a little school house. It's a small one building. Normandy is this huge. Looks like a college campus.

Beautiful, big, beautiful school. So when they came over, they were like, wow, okay, this campus is huge.

And so they were just so shocked to discover that they listened to the same radio stations, that their parents said the same kinds of things. I mean, those kinds of things that, you know, we know how important that is and that it's.

Yeah, we know that this is true, but to have them experience that, I'm like, oh, God, please let this stick with them.

Well, this reminds me of one of the stories that we covered in my book, Art and Upheaval called the Wedding Community Play. It's about a young Protestant and Catholic couple in Belfast, Northern Ireland, during the Troubles.

They produced the play in both neighborhoods, going from one to the other for different acts. Needless to say, it was a logistics nightmare.

So were there any bumps in the road that you encountered trying to move people back and forth between Brussels and Normandy? Normandy and Brussels.

When we were going over to Brussels, the river flooded, and when it happens, it's devastating. You cannot get to the other community.

So we didn't know what we were going to do with this production, if indeed the water rose and we, you know, together for the year, trying to, like, figure out how are we doing. When we think about it, it's, like, unbelievable that that got pulled off. But, yeah, so we.

Because we were trying to figure out, is it two separate casts? And I knew this was important. There has to be one cast of folks from both communities or why do this? Or why do this? If. If none other than these.

I forgot how many people written it now. 15, 20 People. If they build a bond, then that's. That's if that's what we got, you know, so why else do this?

And so I'm glad that we stuck to that and we found a middle ground. So we can only rehearse, like, two hours a night because they'd have to get that last ferry to get back home to Brussels.

Like, it was all the things that any, you know, theater people were like, that is disaster waiting to happen. And I was like, this is not. This is like phenomenal waiting to happen is what it was.

At this point, I thought it might be useful to share a very brief summary of as yous like it, so here goes.

Rosalind is a young and frisky royal who is banished to the Arden Forest with her cousin Celia.

While there, Rosalind, who is disguised as a shepherd boy named Ganymede, encounters Orlando, Rosalind's true love, who is also in hiding and in fact, pining away for her.

After Orlando shares his desperation with his new unsympathetic friend Ganymede, the wise shepherd convinces him that he can be cured of this terrible affliction and proceeds to do so, winking and nodding all the way.

In the end, of course, Ganymede reveals that he or she is Rosalind, and, cutting to the chase, marries Orlando during a festive and raucous group wedding at the close of the play.

In it, Shakespeare takes aim at Elizabethan beliefs of love and romance, particularly the notion that these amorous entanglements are a disease that captures the heart and wounds the souls of its victims. He also posits that depending on the circumstances, humans are both capable of extraordinary change and, yes, quite often silly.

You know, it's exciting and nerve wracking. Like, I would be up at night, like, what are we gonna do? How are we gonna figure this out? I mean, hundreds of people came to see.

We only did the show two nights and one dress rehearsal. We had ten busloads of people. We tried to do the bus ride so that people could get. So we could build more community on the bus. That was hard.

It's a school bus, not a Greyhound. The ride was bumpy, it was hot, it was dark. But we had actual games that we had the actors play. So people, they were just like, wow.

It was like nothing they had experienced before.

This sounds like an amazing five ring circus. Given all the moving parts, how was the play configured in a way that worked for everybody artistically and logistically.

So people would come from Brussels to see the first act. They came to Normandy to see act one. We had a whole. Two whole sets and two whole setups. So we had to time all this perfectly. So there were the.

The city folk, that was Normandy, and then they go into the forest. Those were. That was in Brussels.

A lot of it takes place in the forest, but we managed to have a lot of the scenes that happened in that first act with the background of Normandy, I mean, you're sitting on the parking lot of this right there in the neighborhood, because it's all outdoors, right? Student built this beautiful set and you can see the backdrop. So all of that, that happened in the. What would be called the court in the play.

And some things like we really talked about, she incorporated the flood that actually did happen that kept us apart from each other. We incorporated that into the play. And then we made sure that the two lovers, who they were from Normandy in Brussels.

Kathi, you are a dancer, of course, but this is an incredible dance that you are doing. I mean, the actors are on stage, but in a sense the audience is too on a larger stage.

There were like 400 people at the show. All 400 of them got on buses and we were on a ferry. Every night was beautiful. There were people who were not able bodied.

So I took my car over and took some people over, and this two older black women from Normandy, they were like, I've never been on a ferry. I've never been over here. And I'm just like. And you know, the fact that they even. I mean, this. You know, it's like this is a whole night.

You all are giving people five hours of your time. So they get to. It's a beautiful night. The stars are out, the moon is beautiful. You get across the water.

And then in Brussels, they had set up peach pie, homemade peach pie, and they gave everybody peach pie. And we did act two. And then, you know, people waved. You know, it was beautiful.

So, I mean, your goal, which was to build community, how did you feel after all that work and the outcome?

Grateful. I was extremely grateful. Humbled by the whole experience, you know, because often people don't know or really care who the director is.

And that's okay. That's my goal.

So it's nice to just be on the ferry and nobody know what my role was in it and hear people like, oh, my God, this is so cool, or, oh, my gosh, I can't believe we're doing this.

And I was just like, you know, you just want to burst with just joy because knowing how many people it affected and then knowing that bond that was built with that cast, that really was. I mean, there are a couple of Mexican families in Brussels. There are no black folks. So I would always kid them.

I was like, you know, that's a cute little house. If I bought that, would I be okay? Yeah, come on.

You know, for some of those students, this was prayerfully Life changing in how they see folks in communities that are different than them. And for our students from Normandy, what's.

Your sense of what happened in these two communities in the play's aftermath?

I knew from my experience and from being an elder, as I like to tell people I'm an elder, I know these things, is that that has to override production. You gotta have people love each other. You gotta have people like, I can't wait to see you at rehearsal.

You gotta have people who, after the whole experience, still went to Brussels for a cast party, like the next month to ride horses on one of the cast members farms. You got to have that. That I knew was more important because then on stage I got your back. You forget a line I got. Because we have.

These are community folks. These are not all actors.

We had some actors, we had some few, but a lot of them were teachers, you know, so it's making me tear up just thinking about that experience. Spirits was just.

It was so affirming to me about the power of just having people just talk to each other, you know, so they fell in love with each other. I fell in love with them.

During the reunion that Kathi mentioned, Ralph Moses, the Brussels based horse trainer that hosted that gathering and had a small part in the play, and Margaret Michoud, the Normandy high school junior we heard from at the top of the episode, reflected on their experience with the play. First impressions of people. When you meet somebody the first time, you have a first impression.

And I got to know people at a depth and a level of intimacy that you wouldn't normally encounter getting on.

The bus, doing the activities, interacting with the two communities combined. I thought that was just the most lovely part.

It's left me with such fond memories of the whole. The whole cast, the whole entourage, you know, all the people. Just great. It's just great.

It was magical.

That was love at the River's Edge. Playwright Mariah Richardson, adding her own exclamation point in our conversation. I asked Kathi to reflect on her own experience with the play.

And if you looked at the stories of those two communities and all the individual stories of all different people that you involved, you invited a surprising journey to intentionally change their story with a story with a piece of theater. So thinking back, I know an awful lot of the wisdom you've accrued in your life contributed to that. What did you come away with?

Well, for me, I learned to not be afraid to take risks. And I think that sounds cliche, but I think it's something I have to constantly remind myself of do not be afraid to take artistic risks.

Don't be afraid to speak your truth. Even in a meeting with folks that hired you. I had to be very clear about what I was and was not going to be part of.

And, you know, of course it made me feel better. In the end, I learned how what we as theater folks do, how important and influential and powerful it is, you know, it just validated it even more.

Imagine that some of your students came to you and said, we'd like to pick your brain and ask you if we're interested in going down a path like this, where these kinds of things happen. What wisdom can you share that would be good for us to keep in mind?

Well, I would. If they were involved with that or if they've been involved with me in a production, I would ask, how did you feel?

And then, how did you feel later on?

What I'm getting to with that is that first you have to see everybody for who they are, welcome them into the space, create a space where everybody feels like, I'm supposed to be here, I'm wanted here. My voice is important here. What I do here matters. And then I feel like it just festers.

I don't have to do anything but sit back and let it roll, you know, I mean, I know it's more to that as a director, but for real, once I've done that, I now realize this. Everybody is not comfortable doing that.

And that's the stuff that I love, you know, it's the stuff I love, you know, but everybody is like, let's just start blocking the play. Meaning that you're putting it on its feet, like, yeah, but first, can we just see how everybody's doing today? You know, how's your daddy's farm?

You know, we had a flood. How are we doing? How? You know, so really respect respecting who's in the space and just allowing love at the center of it all.

So allowing love to be there, allowing love to flow openly, and the rest, it just takes care of itself.

So what you're really talking about as a director is both setting the conditions for that to occur and also knowing when to step back and allow the chemical reactions to take place.

That's right. That's right.

And I have to say, you're aware of this. You know this. Not every person with long years of experience in theater or any other endeavor understands what it takes to make.

Help people go to that place. How do you know that? Where did that come from?

Well, I think that I know how I like to feel. You know, And I'd rather be in a situation where I feel that sense of security and love than not. It's developed.

I'm an actor first, you know, and then a director. And I've been in some situations as an actor where I'm just, like, out there alone. You just gotta figure it out. I was like, okay.

So that pulls on another set of skills. And then I've been in environments, like with blackberries, where it's like, oh, my God.

You know, just this family feel of, like, this is how we create that. That really. And I really will say that as I think about my development, that experience with my. My sister Stephanie really shaped.

And I tell her this, and she's like, ah, she does. But it's like. It's true.

It shaped how I approach what I do, you know, and coming from a family where community and working in community was always important, I think it's just. It has to do with how do I want to feel? I don't want to be in a.

In a. I don't even want to, as a director, don't want to be in a room for four weeks of rehearsal where, you know, where there's strife. So, yeah, I think it stems from just that. That feeling of, like, how do I want to feel? It's a collaboration, so.

And I would just add. And applying an awful lot of skill set to that, because some things work and some things don't work.

Right.

Trust is a delicate thing, and not everybody comes to it in the same way.

So, you know, hearing, listening, feeling, trying to understand where people are coming from and weaving whatever fabric it takes to hold that together is no small thing, Right?

That's true. That's true. I mean, I don't. I don't take it for granted. And I realize that some people just.

It's hard for them to do, and they don't see the value in it. When I go to a show, I can tell whether or not there was love in the room, you know? Cause I look, I look.

And I said, there is no heart in this production. And there's no heart because some director decided that's not that important. Let's get this sucker on his feet.

Let's get this sound and hear these lights. And I'm like, mm. But nobody is loving each other other up here.

Or even if they have to hate each other, they have to love each other first enough to trust that I can give you whatever's needed for this character. And so, yeah, so, I mean, I think, yeah, it's Not A, it's not something that I, I, I take for granted as a skill set.

And I, and as a professor for how many a long time? 16, 15. 16 Years. You know, I don't think that it's something that we teach in the Academy. Community Building 101.

Well, which actually brings to mind you and I are involved in an attempt.

Yes.

To bring people from lots of different walks of life into a space in a way that generates trust and security and a sense of agency. And so this is more important than just putting on a good play. It's right at the core of how do we move this world we live in from A to B?

That brings everybody along in a way where we all thrive. So, I mean, right now we're in a moment where it's not just a river that's between us. How do we roll up our sleeves to help build some new bridges?

What's your thinking about how all this plays out in the coming year or more?

So, you know, this has been most trying in this time as a person who is teaching young people the craft of theater and more than likely will not be able to be in the same room with them again this coming semester and possibly the next. And where the craft about looking at each other in the eyes, it's about touching, it's about, you know, all of these things, and now we can't.

What I am sure of is that as artists, because we are creative, because this is what we do, that we are going to collectively figure it out knowing that we're going to figure out a new way to do what we do. There are people doing things already that are really cool online. It's zoom theater.

It's different, you know, So I think that if we can keep creating and supporting each other in the different kinds of creation and renaming things so that it makes sense, because there will be another side to this where we will be in the same room again, I, I believe where we will be able to do some of the things that we did before. And for now, I am relying on community. You know, my creative folks, we have to hold each other up.

Right now, you describe your mission in a very simple way, actually, which is make a space where love can live, generate, trust, be with each other, and respect each other. And the real question is, how do we do that under these new conditions? How do we be together in service to the story?

And there's more stories now that need to be told than any time in the recent past.

Right.

And someone didn't turn off the Story machine.

Right.

You know, I mean, how did you get through the storm? The moment of being back together on stage, whenever that is, it's going to be a special thing.

Yes, it is.

Not going to take it for granted?

No, not at all. I can't. I'm just trying to imagine, like, what is that? Like, I have. I'm. I'm supposed to direct a play in November at siue, and I'm already like that.

That needs. We're just going to develop something to be online, and I.

What I really want to explore is how this pandemic has affected black folks, folks that are socioeconomically under resourced. I really want to want my students to look at that, and I want us to create something for this medium, whatever it's called.

Zoom theater, whatever it's called. Because I also feel like it's a time for us to really explore this. This is, you know, so this is what we're going to. We're figuring it out.

Well, Kathi, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.

All right, have a good rest of the day.

I will. You know, after what we just heard, I think that will be unavoidable.

And so thinking about what we just heard, I think Kathi understood that the success of Love at the River's Edge would not only be measured by the quality of the production, but it would be measured by the relationships that remained after the final curtain. Her job was to welcome everybody into the room, make every voice matter, and as she puts it, allow love to be at the center of it all.

Only then could she step back and let the community take ownership of what was being created. In our next episode, artist Eric Gottsman approaches the same challenge from another direction.

His experiences in Ethiopia forced him to confront the power an outside artist carries and to consider who has the right to tell a community story. That journey eventually led to an ambitious national project called Four Freedoms and a radically collaborative approach to making art in public.

So adios to you folks who have been listening in. And if you're of a mind, please share Art has Change with your colleagues and friends. Friends,.

Art is Change is a production of the center for the Study of Art and Community. Our theme in Soundscape springs forth from the head, heart and hand of the maestro, Judy Munson. Our text editing is by Andre Nebbe.

Our effects come from freesound.org and our inspiration comes from the ever present spirit of ook235. So until next time. Next time, stay well, do good, and spread the good word.