Minnesota Original

Sarah Bellamy, Bee Yang, Marcie Rendon, Giving Voice Chorus
Sarah Bellamy puts her own stamp on Penumbra Theatre, founded by her father. Bee Yang is a respected traditional Hmong song poet of kwv txhiaj and a refugee of war. Author, poet and playwright Marcie Rendon is a citizen of White Earth Nation. Giving Voice Chorus commissions new work inspired by its members' experiences with Alzheimer's disease.
TRANSCRIPT
(upbeat music)
- I was really fortunate in that I grew up here in Penumbra,
literally, I think I was on a stage with my father
when I was six months old and he was sword fighting
or jousting or something during this scene
and my mother slightly threatened my father and said,
if you drop her, we're done with this theater thing.
This is our dressing room.
You can imagine being a small child and encountering
this kind of a space, right?
There's fake blood. This is an amazing place for a kid to be
so I used to love playing back here
and watching the actors get ready.
They would come in really jovial and happy
and then they would sit down and they would
put their makeup on and you could see this transformation
happen as they got into character
and I was always fascinated with that.
(upbeat music)
Growing up inside of a theater community emboldens you
and helps you realize that the things that people dream of
can become a reality and that was a profound lesson for me
as an artist and also eventually would be a very profound
lesson for me as artistic director of Penumbra.
(upbeat music)
Penumbra Theatre is a African American theatre company
that was founded in 1976 by my father, Lou Bellamy.
(piano jazz music)
Penumbra was born out of the black arts movement
which was a time period when black artists
were really trying to create work that propelled people
to care and get involved in the political life
and the social conditions that black people
were experiencing.
Because we come out of that time period, we say that we make
work that is by, for, and about African Americans.
We confront difficult realities here at Penumbra,
but we do it in a way that feels, I hope,
challenging but deeply compassionate.
Regardless of who you are, if you're willing to come,
you're willing to invest yourself emotionally
in the stories that we're telling,
there's real transformation that's possible
because of the kind of work that we produce here.
(calm guitar music)
I began working at Penumbra Theatre almost 20 years ago.
(typing)
My dad had a conversation with me out in the lobby
and he said, do you think you want to do this?
Would you be interested in leading the organization?
And I said, I'm 26, I don't know what I'm doing.
Please don't ask me that now and he laughed
and shortly after that it sunk in that, you know what,
this is a place where I can really dig in,
I can put down roots, I can make a difference here.
Good to see you.
I feel tremendously fortunate to be able to be here,
to have the kind of team that we do and the kind of trust
that we have from the community.
There's a great legacy here.
I don't intend to change that legacy,
I intend to strengthen and evolve it.
- Repeat after me, you are my other me.
- You are my other me.
- Quieter.
- (whispering) You are my other me.
- [Leader] It gives me chills.
- I know it does.
- [Leader] A little bit.
- The young people who come here to Penumbra,
some of them think, oh, theatre camp
and then the social justice element hits them
and they're like, whoa.
- Be courageous.
- [Woman] I am not weak.
- I am not weak.
- In addition to the plays that we produce,
we train young artists to embrace their talent,
their passion for the art, as well as their potential
for civic engagement.
- I carry attitude and responsibility.
- I carry attitude and responsibility.
- The practice of making theater is tremendously informative
to the practice of being a good citizen.
You show up, you give your best, and you rely on the others
who have different skills to give their best
and then you invest in a shared vision.
If we practice that more as a society we would be healthier.
More theatre, period.
(applause)
- Yes, queen!
- You did it, we are so, so proud to have you
taking the stage this evening and there are big shoes
to fill, giants who have walked this stage,
who have written for this stage, who have directed
in this room and made a community for us
to benefit from today.
You are amongst them, they are here with you.
(applause)
- Thank you.
- As artistic director of Penumbra, part of what I get
to do is imagine curating a year's experience
for a community to engage in black culture,
but the thing that I didn't realize I would have
to do is become an organizer.
There is incredible disparity that's been documented
which shows that theatres of color across the country
are not faring well and the reason why is
because there's a tremendous amount of discrepancy
in who gets funded.
In 2014, I founded the
Twin Cities Theatres of Color Coalition
and we've been meeting monthly since, trying to think
about the sustainability of theatres of color regionally
and also across the country.
My want is that by the time I'm done here, whenever that is,
that we're done having this conversation,
that we're done arguing for the worth and the value
of theatres of color because my father did that for 40 years
and I'm doing it now and I don't want the next generation
of leadership to have to make that case.
I want that to be a given.
(guitar music)
- [Bee] (singing in Hmong)
(speaking in Hmong)
- Song poetry in the Hmong tradition is a method
of carrying story.
- (singing in Hmong)
(speaking in Hmong)
- Kwv txhiaj is a sequencing of language.
- (speaking in Hmong)
- Patterns of word that can carry the yearning
and the hopes of a people together.
- (speaking in Hmong)
- My name is Bee Yang.
- (speaking in Hmong)
- I'm a refugee from the country of Laos.
- (singing in Hmong)
- My name is Kao Kalia Yang, I'm Bee Yang's daughter.
In 2016, I wrote "The Song Poet" and the song poet
is sitting right beside me right here is my father.
A Hmong man, a factory worker from the Midwest
who would remind others of not loss, but of love.
(upbeat music)
- [Bee] (speaking in Hmong)
- [Kalia] I was born with a love of language,
a love of song poetry.
From my earliest memories, if there was a celebrated
song poet or even anyone just singing at all,
I would stand close to them, move closer,
so I could hear those words.
- [Bee] (speaking in Hmong)
- I was a child who knew loneliness early.
My father died when I was just two.
My song poetry was my way of expressing what was
in my heart, what was weighing me down
and that the wind and the world carry it with me.
February 17th, daddy.
- [Bee] (speaking in Hmong)
- [Kalia] (speaking in Hmong)
- [Bee] (speaking in Hmong)
- January 10, 1983, Daddy that's your birthday.
- [Bee] Yeah.
- [Kalia] Yeah it's your birthday, daddy, you were 23.
- (speaking in Hmong)
- When we were in the refugee camps of Thailand,
I would sing, and I would sing so that the people
who I knew had tears inside of their hearts
that those tears could come out and so in that way
for me my process has been very communal
because it was the responses of my audience
that prompted my songs to exit into the world
and to live on and on.
- [Bee] (speaking Hmong)
- [Kalia] In America, when we got here, I was unable to do
what I was actually good at.
- (speaking in Hmong)
- The gifts that I'd been born with couldn't translate.
- [Bee] (speaking in Hmong)
- The refugee is inherently broken-hearted
because how you can you not when you witnessed the death
of entire villages, your loved one's left behind.
- (speaking in Hmong)
- [Kalia] For the refugee to survive in a country like this,
finding food for the table, finding drink,
all of these are issues of heartache,
not just problems to be solved.
- (speaking in Hmong)
- Unless you've gone through war and unless you've left
so much behind, it is an experience that is incredibly hard
to translate into simple human understanding.
(calm guitar music)
- [Bee] (speaking in Hmong)
- [Kalia] When Kalia wanted to write the story of my life,
I said don't write it, it's a life soaked with tears.
It's too heavy for the pages, but more than anything,
I think I wrote my father's story because people kept
on asking, what are your biggest literary influences?
Where did you learn your love of language?
And I used to talk about Robert Frost,
and I used to talk of Louise Erdrich who I thought
was phenomenal, who is phenomenal, and then there was
that day when I realized, my father's poetry,
and the truth is I think my father is quite an incredible
man, an incredible song poet in this tiny little language
and I understood the vast loneliness of that.
To be a great song poet, to be trapped in a language
that people are perpetually saying is dying
and he's so keenly aware.
Isn't that the stuff of great literature?
(calm guitar music)
- [Bee] (speaking in Hmong)
- [Kalia] I do song poetry and I do it in understanding that
because I raised my children in a different country,
maybe they won't understand all the nuances within my songs
or even the language.
Part of what I've learned to do is to preserve the song
as a gift for future generations.
If they don't like it, that's okay, but if one
of them should come searching, then it is there to be found.
(calm guitar music)
(upbeat guitar music)
- What's an Indian woman to do when the white girls
act more Indian than the Indians do?
My tongue trips over (speaking Ojibwe),
mumbles around the word (speaking Ojibwe),
my Ojibwe's been corrected by a blonde UVM undergraduate.
What's an Indian woman to do?
My name is Marcie Rendon, my English name.
My Ojibwe name is (speaking Ojibwe).
I'm originally from the White Earth Reservation,
but I have lived here in the city since 1978.
(descending footsteps)
This stack of books and this stack of books
are all books that I have something published in.
I write novels, short stories.
I write creative non-fiction, poetry.
I write the lyrics for songs for classical composers.
What I say is I'll write anything that pays
because part of what I've done is I have made my living
since 1990 as a writer and it really does mean that
if a writing opportunity comes to me, I'll take it.
"Murder on the Red River,"
where's "Murder on the Red River?"
This one is my novel that come out in 2017.
I have had this whole career working as counselor
and a therapist, but I decided that I would be a writer
and so I spent a year just really writing
and it took off from there.
(guitar music)
I'm a parent and a grandparent and for the majority
of my life, I have always had other people around me
who are dependent on me, who I need to somehow interact
with and take care of, and so my writing process
happens a lot inside my brain where you can be talking to me
and I can be, yeah, yeah, yeah, but really I'm writing
a story in my head and so then by the time I get
to the computer, I can actually just sit down
and write it out because I've been working it and working it
and working it.
(guitar music)
My book, "Murder on the Red River," won the Pinckley Award
for 2018 for debut women's crime novel of the year.
With a crime, my topic seemed to cover women, children,
resiliency, the power of who we are as native people
and the other thing that I always am trying to do
in my writing is to present present-day images, thoughts
of who we are as native people.
I think that there's so much oppression
in the native community that reading the crime novels,
there's always some kind of resolution.
There's a crime that happens, there's a character
who's incredibly resilient and she helps solve the crime.
(calm guitar music)
Olivia's my nine-year-old granddaughter.
She's enrolled at Leech Lake.
She's an amazing mathematician.
I have 12 grandchildren, the oldest two are 22
and the youngest is two years old
and a lot of them are artists.
Encouraging them to do the talents that they have
in whatever form and shape that that takes
and trying to show them they can do anything
and be their own people.
You can do this, you can get on stage, you can direct,
you can dance, it's like there's no limit
to what is possible for us as native people.
Whatever it is you want to do, do it.
(calm guitar music)
(upbeat music)
- [Woman] When you start with this disease,
you can still do a lot of things,
but then as it progresses, there's more
and more things you cannot do.
Singing is one of the things that stays
with you until almost the end.
- ♪ They say that this life is a colorful journey. ♪
♪ A trip you take to discover yourself. ♪
♪ Once you embark, you pray for good weather. ♪
- With dealing with something like memory loss,
it's so easy to withdraw and then just feel that sense
of loss that really overwhelms your ability to do things.
Giving Voice is affirmative and upbeat
and encouraging and social.
- ♪ A new beginning, a marvelous song. ♪
♪ This journey is stormy, it made it so strong. ♪
- When you're there singing, I don't feel
like I'm the caregiver or care partner
and Marv's a person with dementia.
It gets you out into the community
with a community that understands and cares.
- ♪ Thank you, thank you, we thank you. ♪
- When you have a disease like this,
I really believe you have to keep the mind going
and I want to be as functional as long as I can
because then we have more fun.
(laughing)
Yeah.
- Yeah.
- ♪ We thank you.
(applause)
- [Elaine] I found some old photo albums.
- [Marv] Oh, yes.
- [Elaine] Aren't we cute?
- [Marv] Ah, yes.
- [Elaine] We do look like we're 21.
- [Marv] Yeah.
- [Elaine] Maybe 18.
(laughing)
I can't help grinning
- Uh huh, yep.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Elaine and I met in high school and I just thought
she was the best-looking girl in the class.
- When I first met Marv, I thought he was
a little arrogant, thought he was a know-it-all.
- [Marv] You were a pretty good-looking date there.
(laughing)
- Yeah.
I got to know him as a person and we became good friends
and went on from there.
- [Marv] We had high school chorus.
- [Elaine] We were in high school choir
and then we continued with church choirs
after we were married.
We got to know people that way and the Giving Voice Choir
has expanded that.
- ♪ There is a song we sing together. ♪
♪ It catches life and love and hope. ♪
- Giving Voice Chorus is a chorus of people with dementia
and Alzheimer's and their care partners.
That can be husbands and wives, it can be grandmothers
and grandsons to friends, mothers daughters.
- ♪ Sing together.
- [Marge] Love Never Forgets started out as a collaboration
with MacPhail, Giving Voice,
and the American Composers Forum to create this new work
with composer Victor Zupanc and poet Louisa Castner.
- ♪ We have told our story, come and be. ♪
- [Marge] The collaboration originally was supposed
to be eight minutes of music that the singers would sing,
but Victor and Louisa had so much material
and so many amazing ideas that it turns out
that they wrote nine songs as opposed to two
because of the time they spent with the singers
and the singers really felt involved in this.
This is their music.
- ♪ Love.
(applause)
- Coming into this, I thought I knew a lot
about this disease because I saw my mom live with it
for 12 years and I thought I knew the stages, the decline,
what the characteristics were and I realized
I knew one person's experience.
(upbeat piano music)
- My father, for the last three or four years of his life,
was living with dementia, so when I did see
this listing for this project, working with an Alzeimer's
choir, I knew I had to do it.
- We gained so much material from the singers
giving us an inside glimpse of living with dementia,
but also the experience of being in this chorus
and what their friendship and the music meant to them.
(upbeat piano music)
- The emotions were pouring out from them and in turn us.
It became this project that was really, truly created
by all 100 of us.
- Yeah.
(piano music)
- As this built, we realized that we had something very,
very amazing on our hands and we started talking
to the Ordway about performing there.
We didn't know if this would work because to have
nine songs that are brand new was daunting.
It was daunting for us, it was daunting for the singers,
frankly, they weren't sure if they could learn all of them
and one of the things that we have found out
through the time that we have spent with them is that people
with Alzheimer's can learn.
- ♪ I am here, living in the moment. ♪
♪ We are here, living in the moment. ♪
♪ You are here, living in the moment. ♪
♪ Be here now, be here now.
♪ Be here now.
- Most likely, this is the first time
that a dementia chorus has commissioned a piece
of choral work that they have successfully learned it
and performed it.
- ♪ We are here for us, we are here for you, ♪
♪ We are here for all of the view. ♪
- Hearing them sing and seeing them triumph
over this challenge of learning new songs
and them singing their stories, it was very emotional
and I remember crying like a baby.
I just couldn't hold it back.
I think love is a really big part of this project.
- ♪ Love never forgets
♪ No, love never forgets.
- Having the theme of the concert is being
Love Never Forgets and embodying that with all the people.
That energy surrounded us, that love was there.
- ♪ You may not have a language. ♪
- What kept going through my mind in a way was,
we sold out the Ordway.
How many people can say you were part of an ensemble
that sold out the Ordway and was a hot ticket?
- ♪ Love.
- Those kind of things, they're the successes you need
that really make it easier to go on and on.
- [Soloist] ♪ Love cuts straight from the heart. ♪
- Sometimes you need that extra push a little bit,
that this is what I need to do to be able to help myself
and then help the others around me
and especially for me to help this person.
- ♪ Yeah.
- It's been a wonderful journey together.
We will do it 'til the end.
- Yes, 'til the end.
- Because it's love.
- [Marv] Yes.
- Love never forgets.
- ♪ Love never forgets, love never forgets ♪
♪ love never forgets, love never forgets, ♪
♪ no, never, never, never, no, no, love, ♪
♪ love never, never forgets, never, never, never. ♪
(upbeat guitar music)
- [Announcer] This program was made possible
by the state's Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.
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