Public Practices: Rehearsing the Future Together

Mental health

Pilot or new project, program, or initiative (testing or implementing a new idea)

The experience of the global pandemic, the proliferation of substance abuse, and screen addiction, and a polarized socio-political climate have led to a crisis of loneliness, and social isolation, and shown how deeply we need to be present with and for each other. Community-based, collaborative art practice is uniquely positioned to address these root causes and outcomes of mental illness but most arts institutions cater to one particular sector of the population and present a myriad of barriers to engagement. Now more than ever it is crucial to cultivate intimate relationships across lines of difference – to get to know each other beyond what we believe, to discover and protect our common humanity. Through collective song, dance, and discourse – “Public Practices” creates a container in public parks across LA, free and open to anyone in the vicinity to take part in therapeutic collaborative arts practice, and builds a bridge across the divide between me and you.

“Public Practices” is a series of gatherings that unfold in three different collaborative areas; collective song, collective dance, and public discourse. Taken together each of the various gatherings proposes new ways for people to be present in public space – with each other, and with the land. Community-based relationships built around intimate and open exchange are widely accepted as treatment for loneliness and addiction, and collective singing as well as dancing have been proven to regulate the nervous system. These are ancient technologies that have slowly disappeared from public life and we want to bring them back. Rooted both in chant-based spiritual and political practices, and the legacies of experimental composers Pauline Oliveros, and Alice Coltrane “Vocal Assembly” creates a choir with whoever is present. “Body Politic” works at the intersection of tai chi, yoga, and line dancing to create group dances in public spaces, and “The Listening Room” restores discourse as a public good instead of a commodity bound institutions of higher education. Gatherings around each practice will happen in public parks across LA but each practice will launch at Lewis MacAdams Riverfront Park (formerly Marsh Park). Creating a home for “Public Practices” at Marsh Park – located right off the newly reopened LA Riverfront – allows for a diverse mix of participants and expands the possibility for people to find each other and be together in creative time across lines of difference.

Imagine the sound of people with all levels of musical expertise but most importantly, people with no expertise in music-making at all – lifting their voices together nonetheless in experiments in collective vocal improvisation. Imagine riding your bike or walking your dog down the LA Riverfront and seeing a sandwich sign that says “ALL-DAY ELECTRIC SLIDE,” or “WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SANG WITH STRANGERS” or “DURATIONAL READING OF ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE, YES, THE WHOLE BOOK, ALL DAY (AND NIGHT).” Imagine being interrupted by an appeal to your imagination – an invitation to be present, to sing, to read a great text out loud to people who might live next door to you but who you’ve nonetheless never met. “Public Practice” will make being outside together – irresistible. This is what LA will look like; people without headphones listening instead to each other, people enjoying the pleasure of each other’s company relieved momentarily of the loneliness of transactional relation.

“Public Practices” is an experiment rooted in theater making processes, it is an endless open rehearsal for the shared future we’d like to create. Evidence of the impact of art is difficult to document and quantify. Think of your favorite piece of music – one that comforted you through loss, or motivated you through change – it changed your life; in some mysterious way you were cared for by art. Perhaps you were compelled to keep going, keep living with just a bit more tenderness. We have an archive of testimonials from people who have been changed by the artworks we’ve made together, but the proof we have that our work is profoundly meaningful is in the relationships we’ve built across 38 years of making theater, 38 years of rehearsing the world we imagine and then for a moment – living within it. The ever expansive, concentric circles of investment in Cornerstone, and the proliferation of our process and methodology across the country and the globe are a measure of our impact.