I chose to read chapter 13: Beauty Born From Ugliness, about Teya Sepinuck's work in Northern Ireland. The first thing that jumped out at me about this chapter was how much the narration centered on Sepinuck's feelings and journey with the work as compared to those of the participants. Within the context of Theater of Witness, this could be a manifestation of "Becoming the Vessel", but it feels more as a personal reflection than an offering of guidance for others trying to emulate her process. Other principles that are prominently evident in Sepinuck's account are "Finding the Gold" and "Taking the Problem and Make it the Solution." Finding the gold in one participant's use of drumming as emotional release helps invite the audience into his healing process. Making a problem a solution affected the piece in multiple ways, both where one participant's desire for a nonspeaking role helped create a better closing to the piece and another participant's safety concerns leading to a film/projection element of the piece that later expanded to include other participant's stories.
While reading some of the monuments pieces I felt as if each of them had something that they needed to prove. For example, for the Tate piece felt the need to expose what history has done to people. Each level exposed how much each person was taken advantage of in service of someone else. For the rumors of war piece exposed the whole idealism of the past resurrecting a past historical leader to make sure that the event does not happen again. The Bracero monument exposed all of the work that the people of that time had done in order to make sure that not another person is taken advantage of again. But truth be told, all of these monuments have come with some sort of backlash. The bracero monument had gotten criticism for stating that the braceros were free to do what they wished. From what the article had stated that was not the truth. It was merely one persons interpretation of what a bracero was, b...
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