Scott Goldfarb Week 7

Assignment: Roberta Uno- Blog Post (due October 29th, 8pm)

In preparation for Roberta Uno's visit next week, read her "Steps Towards A New World."  

In it she includes 11 precepts. In a blog post, address each of the following prompts:

- What are the most important/significant ideas or elements outlined by Roberta and why?

- What are the implications or resonances of Uno's precepts in your own practice?

- What could be a metaphor or analogy for the kind of theater that Roberta Uno describes in this text?

- What questions came up as you were reading this piece?

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I found that the most important concept in the text was how the organization is not simply chained to a building. The theatre is wherever it is necessary to be, and is defined by the community it envelopes, not the brick and mortar it houses. Community and working together collectively to create art is more important than finding a roadhouse or a nice stage. Interestingly to me, this is the same principle of contemporary American Christianity, that a church is the community not the chapel.

One of the things that resonated with me and my own work is Taking Small Steps. It is something I struggle with in my work, where I have grand ideas for something but no knowhow of any way to achieve it. One way I have found that helps me in my process for creating something is done by starting with the idea of it in my head, and taking smaller actions to get to that, and then rolling with the changes. I find that the small actions help to push towards discovery, and the discovery leads to bigger and bigger actions, leading to the final product. Things take time, but must begin by taking one small step

As mentioned before, contemporary religion is an analogy for the theater the Roberta Uno practices. Both share the same style of outreach, through community engagement. Both share the same perceptions of the collective, that the collective defines the performance or the religion itself. And both are in the business to teach and shape communities, collectively. 

Some questions that I had when reading this are:

1. Should New World have been institutionalized? It seems like the fact that it wasn't institutionalized led to the amount of community outreach and engagement that Roberta Uno talks about.

2. Are there any plans to bring it back?