Request!

Dear All,

I have a special request for all you.

Here is the background info first:
Okay, so for school I have been doing some research on film, theatre and music as emerging art forms in Kenya. And one of the major things that I’ve been following has been the Kenyan International Film Festival. One of the highlights of the festival was a film called “The Kibera Kid,” a Kenyan film shot in Kibera, with actors from Kibera that has garnered 7 awards world wide. The star is a 14 year old kid named Ignatius Juma, who today I went to find and interview at his school in Olympic Kibera. I talked to him for over an hour and had an incredible conversation with this really astounding kid (who wants to either be an actor, a lawyer, or the president, and turns out lives really close to where Kennedy and I will live in Katwakera!). We were soon surrounded by about 20 of his friends, and we all soon just began to talk together. They asked me all about life in America—wanting to know if we have slums, if they have electricity, if there are poor people, if you can buy a gun if you want a gun, if abortion is legal, if most people go to high school, and if poor people can go to college…and on and on. We also just talked about their lives, and turns out, they are all really interested in theatre. They all told me that they want to be actors because then they get to imagine that they have “different lives.” So I had an idea…what if the school would just give me a space for like 2 or so hours on Saturday mornings to teach an acting class for anyone who wanted to come…. I asked them what they thought, if they might be interested, and I cannot describe the enthusiasm with which they responded. So I marched right down to the principal, who said that the school would happily give me the schoolyard on Saturday mornings to do with what I want!

Here’s why I need your help:
So I have about 20+ kids who want to learn “REAL [their emphasis] play acting” and I have NO material with which to teach them (I didn’t bring a single play to Kenya, and as for the library and internet…well forget it…no access.) SO I am asking you all if you might take like 10 minutes and type up and email me any monologues or even shortish scenes that you can think of/find. Here is some criteria: can be for either boys and girls, no language, no sexual (or minimal) content, appropriate for ages 10-16, and good for beginning actors—so nothing complicated but again nothing from a BS made-up-monologue-not-real-plays book. These kids have lived incredibly tough lives, and although they are young they are much more mature than their age, so I need to give them credit for that---while at the same time using material that is a) manageable and something that we can really work with (they speak perfect English by the way) and b) culturally appropriate. I’m looking for classics. Great characters. Imagination. Good writing… you know…things you worked on and loved when you were a kid…or just know of…something you yourself have taught….anything you’d want to share with them: Diary of Anne Frank, Brighton Beach Memoirs, Our Town…y’all get the picture as to type of thing I am sure and will send me things that are amazing and that I’d never have thought of on my own. As much as you can send me, it will mean THE WORLD to these kids. I will have anywhere from 20-50, and while many can work on the same piece, my thought was to just expose them to as much variety in repertoire as possible by setting it up so that they watch their peers perform different things…sort of a studio setting. THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart. Email anything to jrposner@wesleyan.edu and I will just print it, and give it to a kid (and I will also tell them who it’s from…I think that might be a really nice small way for them to feel that someone far away thought about THEM, and had them and their interests at heart…actually, if you feel inspired to write anything about the piece you send, your experience with it, it’s meaning to you, or any kind of note/advice…I’d be thrilled to pass that along to the kid as well…you can’t imagine what any of this will mean to these kids who live in the slums of Kibera, and who generally speaking, don’t feel like the rest of the world spends much time thinking or caring about them.) We won’t start until next Saturday, but the sooner I can start assessing what I’ll have to work with…the better.

(Raph, seriously counting on you…can you maybe even ask your friends and maybe you could even ask Moss/Shawn to tell Beginning about this, give them my email, and ask them to send a kid here a monologue…That would be a REALLY cool connection between DSA kids and a kid in Kibera who is the same age! Maybe you guys could each just type and send your scenes from scene night, or one of your audition monologues?!?!?)

Thank you all again. For reading my blog. For your endless support. And for taking a few moments to find something, type it and send it somewhere where it will mean a lot to someone. I can’t even describe to you what it will mean, both to them, and to me.

So much love and appreciation to you all,

Jess