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Chapter Seven TRANSFORMINGPRACTICE Artists, Activists, and Academics Working across Boundaries A key strategy of the Austin Project is to empower women through ensemble writing and performance in the jazz aesthetic, giving them methods and insights they can take back to their own creative, intellectual, political, and spiritual work. In this chapter, an artist, an activist, and two academics talk about the impact of such work on their practices. The contributors are theater artist Florinda Bryant, international development officer Rajasvini Bhansali, English professor Lisa L. Moore, and sociologist Gloria González-López. Florinda Bryant How do you break down the science of the cipher? Ihave participated in the Austin Project since 2002. However, my relationship with the jazz aesthetic goes beyond tAP. In 1998, I was cast in Sharon Bridgforth’s blood pudding, a piece directed by Laurie Carlos. Through that experience, I, at eighteen, would learn jazz and I would learn about the cipher. At the time, I was not rhyming publicly. I was supporting a large number of male-centered hip-hop groups, singing background, carrying gear, and watching from the sidelines. The cipher then was the sidewalk outside the club where I would rhyme alone to whatever my homeboys were rhyming to onstage. There was definitely a time and place for the sisters to get on stage, but not without a fight. I called myself an actress, or a singer, or a dancer, singularly, depending on what I was auditioning for. The cipher as I knew it was a straight hip-hop thing. Not a theatre term. The idea of an ensemble in a traditional theatre sense was nothing more than the group of people lucky enough to secure whatever gig was in 324 question. What I would begin to learn in 1998 at frontera@hyde park theatre would change me. What I would learn about my art and myself as a member of the Austin Project has changed everything. The Austin Project taught me to listen. Being able to work with international artists has been amazing. Having the opportunity to work so extensively with Sharon Bridgforth and her Finding Voice method has been instrumental to my own work and my development of my own techniques, which I use with my youth theatre companies and the students I teach through the Theatre Action Project. Sharon Bridgforth made me examine not just my writing but myself as a writer. It has been like conservatory training that never would have been available to someone like myself who did not graduate from college. Seeing myself beyond labels, beyond lack of privilege, and beyond résumés and talent is one of the best blessings. It is the best teaching method, one I hope I have adopted. The added bonus is how Sharon presents her methods: she takes it to the next level, saying, “I ain’t just going to tell you, I’ma show you the method.”That is what Sharon does through her teaching and her living. She is in the same hot seat with her own work. She leads the group to be solid because, if you are not standing solid, structure will fall. For any writer, having the opportunity to work your work with a group of people who have no other interest than making sure you write your ass off is unheard of.The truth sometimes is ugly. On the journey to finding the truth of my work, I have often times found myself in some ugly territory. It has been painful at times, and hard. I have had to fight myself and everything I have allowed myself to believe about myself. The cipher created in the Austin Project has supported me through these discoveries. There is no room to fall off, to be too broken down, to not get back up. You ain’t got to win every time but you got to fight and commit to the dance. That is the process, and it is not complete until you get back up. The Austin Project has created space for me to get clear about a lot of things, particularly around the subject of identity. In year one, Carl Hancock Rux did a workshop where he asked why we give one singular answer when asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” It is as if, in the many, many years you are hopefully granted, there is room for only one focus, one thing we can be when we grow up. The...

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