Cynthia Cohen: Conflict, Creation & Peacebuilding

Cynthia Cohen

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Let me begin by saying that. With the passing of Bernice Johnson, Reagon, we have lost. A singular voice for making both the good trouble and growing the healing hearts we so desperately need in our troubled world. She will be missed. But through the spirit of her words and music certainly. never forgotten.

Now, before we get into our conversation with activist writer, educator, filmmaker, Cynthia Cohen, let's listen to some of the creative peacebuilders Cynthia has worked with and supported over these many years.

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Mary Ann Hunter: In Australia, it was official government policy to remove Aboriginal children from their parents for a whole range of reasons.

Charles Mulekwa: We were compelled by the Idi Amin to go watch a firing squad, so people could be afraid.

BC: That was Ugandan director, Charles Mulekwa. Theater artist, Marianne Hunter from Australia, and Argentinian director, Roberto Gutiérrez Varea, reflecting on the events that made it impossible for them to avoid making theater to survive in, and make sense of, a world gone mad.

to the stifling quicksand of [: 00:02:00

John O’Neal: I was a co-founder of the Free Southern theater. In 1963, our vision was that we would encourage political organizers to look to the arts to support oppressed people. What we can do as artists? We can let our imagination soar and say, “I can envision the time when we will be able to plant the rice and eat it too.” You know, I can see that.

Dijana Milosevic: [: 00:03:00

BC: Here again is Roberto Gutierrez Varea, and then Palestinian theater artist Iman Aoun, on the powerful impact of their work in the conflict zones percolating outside their front doors.

Roberto Gutiérrez Varea: Every single time, in silence, the audience would stand up. And just that, that very simple... It was an amazing act of resistance in that it was saying “No matter what is going on, this is not affecting the deepest fabric of community. And we're going to overcome.”

Iman Aoun: I cannot hope for a democratic future without giving tools. What we're trying to, to offer through the forum theater is an interactive learning. What is my role? “If this is not what I want in my community, what can I do?”

Roberta Levitow: Theater requires engagement with the fundamental questions of our lives. These questions are crucial, essential. We're endangered by not answering them. All of these theater artists refuse to be in denial.

This last comment came from Roberta Levitow, one of the founders of Theater Without Borders who also worked with our guest Cynthia Cohen on the Acting Together Project. Now, this multi-year initiative explored creative peace-building stories like the ones we just heard excerpted from the film Acting Together on the World Stage, and the extraordinary two volume book, Acting Together on the World Stage: Performance and the Creative Transformation of Conflict, on which it is based.

As is often the case with our guests, these projects are just the tip of the iceberg that constitutes Cynthia's powerful and far-reaching network of colleagues and body of work. We begin by exploring how she defines that work.

Act 1: A Passion for Life

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[00:06:16] CC: What I have been working on in the world for the last 20 years or so, is. where they can be supported and challenged to, to learn and to grow, and we don't have to reinvent the wheel every place that we're starting to do this work. And also, where the ethical dilemmas of this work are acknowledged and where people have a chance consistently to, to think about it and to ask questions and to develop some guidance for ourselves as a field about what constitutes ethical practice. That's been my work.

Lately, I'm really focused on strengthening the contributions of arts and culture to opposing authoritarianism, because authoritarianism is rising all over the world. And democracies as flawed as they have been, and as much work as they need, you know, we're going to be set back so far if we have authoritarian leaders that seem to be coming into power.

So, I don't usually think in terms of street names and handles and all that, I thought, well, maybe my, you know, handle would be like the listener or maybe the street name would be the ear and

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[00:07:33] CC: I will say that I aspire to embodying what I take to be the spirit of Kuan Yin, you know, the Buddhist bodhisattva of compassion, the one who listens. I find that, image inspiring and, humbling.

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[00:08:08] CC: It's true. Yeah.

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And in some ways have provided one of the richest, compendiums of the evidence of that. Just all these amazing stories told to you by the people who have had the lived experience of making a difference, using creative process. So the second question, and you can, you can translate this in whatever way you want is; How did you get this way?

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Coming of age during the antiwar movement, and the women's movement, being around people, my peers, who said, “Of course we're going to be engaged in these big questions of the day. Of course we're going to try to lower the voting age. Of course we're going to oppose the war.” Um, It was really important to me. We were blocking the shipping and receiving gate of a factory that made fuses that were used in anti-personnel bombs, and going through a trial together, and falling in love, and coming out and all. Yeah, all these things and that was all part of like, the work for social justice, and it was the... it's the best, you know, having all that energy, and long time horizon.

And then realizing through some painful experiences that my path wasn't to be a an activist in the women's movement, but to be kind of an educator and a cultural worker, and finding my way through work with the Cambridge Arts Council to developing the Oral History Centre. And that experience for a decade of listening to a lot of stories and of teaching people to listen, and of working with artists to represent community stories to their own communities, and to each other's communities. That was really formative for me. and, uh, that culminated in that project, A Passion for Life,

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CC: A Passion for Life was an attempt to take the, philosophical basis of the Oral History Center, which was everyone has a story to tell, and it's through our listening that we can elicit the stories that people need to tell, and applying it to the, relationships, nonexistent, existent relationships between Palestinian women who are living in the Boston area was a way of bringing my Jewish self into this process more.

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And using that project as a way of creating context for communication for the sharing of the stories and the sharing of the meaning of those stories and having events that were sharing of music and discussion of folk arts and communities in crisis and dealing with stereotypes. And it was a very, very powerful, project that yes, proved so much more difficult than we thought at the outset. Because we were touching on some, such deep pain, basically, and fear.

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[00:13:27] CC: The Passion for Life Oral History Project taught me a lot, especially because it was shattering, in the sense that it shattered the stories that I had been given as truths in the world that I was constructing my life around. And I think that that experience of shattering is what we do need to be willing to do to act ethically in this world, because we live in this world that's been constructed by harsh colonial impositions. And those of us who grew up in the West have a lot to unlearn. And it goes back to what you said about the possible damage that can be done through arts and cultural work. Especially, that the best of intentions of bringing this great practice into a region of the world that has its own cultural practices that need to be lifted up and not, like, informed by Shakespeare or whatever.

And also, I feel Like one of the big realizations of A Passion for Life and that project that I think holds very true today, is that we need to cultivate within ourselves the capacity to hold two divergent, competing narratives in view at the same time, and to live within that, the complexity of that paradox. I mean, this can't be true if that's true, but they both are true and they're true in different ways. And I think there are a lot of situations in the world where that capacity is so needed.

And I do think that engaging with the arts can be crafted to help people live with that kind of paradox. And also, the languages, or the modes of communication, through the arts can help articulate those paradoxes or express them in ways that can be grasped.

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[00:15:41] CC: I realized that it was as much about asking questions as it was about finding answers. And I feel that this is really an important skill too.

I could add it to my list from other things. The framing of questions. It's like to know what questions that need to be asked can be much more important than trying to answer the ones that are out there Anyway, that was what A Passion for Life was about.

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[00:16:27] CC: That shattering of narratives is very painful. And I think it's important, as we try to do work with communities, wherever they are, like, our colleague Dijana Milosevic talks about theater of the oppressor.

Like, what are the conditions that allow people who are connected to a community that's inflicting harm to question the stories that they are... that they take to be true? And, I think a first step in that is realizing that when one's narratives that are so deeply embedded in us are torn apart, are shattered, it's very painful and very destabilizing and requires really deep and compassionate listening and accompaniment to work through, to construct new narratives that are more consonant with the world.

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And that's not blue or red or even a western thing. It's what humans do... is that when we're scared, and the mysteries get, too heavy, “Give me a God that just gives me right and wrong. Give me a dictator that just, tells me what to do.”

CC: When it comes right down to it, it's so perplexing to be a human being.

BC: Yes.

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[00:18:44] CC: Towards the end of the project, as the Intifada worsened, we came under pressure, especially from the local Palestinian community, to have a project statement. And that forced us into this different kind of language. And it was a very good process for this small group of us who was like on a directions committee.

We felt very close to each other after we wrote the statement. But, as I feared, at least a couple of Jewish women and maybe a Palestinian woman too, like, left the project because the statement couldn't find a way of saying things that could embrace everybody, We joked that we needed a two statement solution to the project..

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[00:19:23] CC: So, in addition to this gathering of stories and presenting them we had many different events of sharing of music, and a discussion on stereotypes, and the role of folk art in communities in crisis.

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CC: Yeah.

BC: ...that it's like learning to use a sextant out in the middle of the ocean, without formal training. You're really trying to navigate in a way that is authentic and respectful. And it seemed to me that the lifeline is that the mediation was this artwork that had this history behind it, that could touch your heart before it grabbed onto some part of your brain, which was oppositional.

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[00:21:00] BC: It sounds like you came to know through these creative relationships that these weren’t stateless people who were somehow lost in the desert, and then asking too much of the world, to, to pay attention to their culture and their history.

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So anyway. I feel so much anguish at what's happening today. And when there's this much violence and this much suffering, it makes having the space to really try to understand so much more difficult.

Act 2: How Does Peacebuilding Work?

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[00:22:34] CC: Yes.

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CC: I think when you say right time-right place I think that one of the, one of the factors to consider is when is the right time for work in separate communities, and when is the right time for work for people to come together.

a team go to the Olympics in: 2028

I don't know what to say about the trauma that is just unfolding. It has its tentacles around the Jewish community of Israel. Arts can help with that trauma, but, honestly, I don't, I feel like I just don't know. I'm not there. And I worry about it a lot, but I don't know what I would do.

BC: I want to, circle back to the fact that, at the root of much of your work is what I would call is the sacred nature of story. But stories can put up barriers to penetration, and stories can invite. And that it seems to me that one of the skills that you have been honing is listening. But you're not just listening to get the story right. You're listening for what's going on here. “How can I support this story coming to its fruition.” and, how to provide a gentle, respectful, safe refuge for the flourishing of a story that needs to be told.

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When I was interviewing, I found that I asked less and less. I do want to acknowledge that there's a problem when people who come from societies that really value the telling of story go into other communities where people are having some kind of trauma, assuming that everyone needs to tell their story, because sometimes people don't need to. Sometimes they need to act in other ways. It doesn't mean they don't need to deal with something, but story isn't always the right way.

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[00:26:25] CC: Yes.

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[00:26:49] CC: The thing that comes to mind is this, in the aftermath of the tsunami in Sri Lanka, there was a theater group that went into these villages where displaced people were, and just were present there. And they lifted up whatever life was happening. So, the first manifestation of something alive was a marble game. So, they went out, and they just watched the marble game and made it marble theater. But then they gradually, though, um, procession, gradually brought this community of people back to the ocean. And it was actually in ritual. that people reentered the ocean for the first time after the tsunami.

And I thought, God, what brilliance, you know, it's just incredible.

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[00:27:45] CC: Mm,

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[00:28:27] CC: It... just your speaking there reminded me very much of, um, of John Paul Lederach, who I'm assuming you're aware of, the peace builder. One of the things I learned from him, his work was, um, the elicitive approach. It's like, the training doesn't involve going into a place and teaching these principles of peace building. It's eliciting from people, what are the peace building approaches that, that derive from this culture.

BC: Here is John Paul Lederach talking about the need for proximate wisdom and leadership to make real change.

We need an honest conversation about the source and the sustainability of change. In the past, we have tended to view the source of change as coming from external to situations of conflict. That has been the mainstay of a lot of peacebuilding.

I think, uh, if we took the words of the famous poet Seamus Heaney, from Northern Ireland, who wrote, um, that “a farther shore is reachable from here”, when he was referencing this notion of the ability to believe in healing wells in times when they do not seem apparent. What are the farther shores that we need to reach?

We have typically thought about that farther shore in reference to people traveling to locations, and I certainly have been a part of that, where suffering is happening. Which subtly sends the message that the resource for healing and for change comes from outside. That, I think, needs to be reconsidered. Deeply so.

And I've been saying that for decades. The second and most difficult shore to reach, the one that I think we're least able to face in our field, is the shore of our own responsibilities, self-reflection, and how much we ourselves are a part of the very systems that we're trying to change.

This, in large part, comes with a view that suggests one of the core keys that we need to be thinking about, that open the door to the threshold of something that is transformative in a long-term understanding, is that outside answers need to diminish in order to give leadership to those who are closest and most proximate to the suffering and the points of suffering in their expression. We need to put local peacebuilding in the lead.

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[00:29:44] CC: I've made a point of clarifying that the problem isn't conflict. The problem is violence. The problem is conflict that's played out in injurious ways. And that's actually one of the big problems that we have is we're not that good at engaging with conflicts in the generative, constructive ways that they need to be engaged with.

Act Three: Acting Together

So, you asked me this question, and I started to think about a project that I worked on that was at this meta level. So, it was like the whole Acting Together Project.

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[00:30:22] CC: Acting Together began in a conversation in my office at Brandeis with Roberta Levitow, who is one of the founders of Theatre Without Borders. They were trying to understand better about performance in places of violent conflict, and they wanted to know if we could collaborate in some way with that project.

Acting Together, was an inquiry into the contributions of performance to the constructive generative creative engagement with conflict. It took the form of case studies being developed by artists and documenters from different parts of the world, writing about their work. And we ended up producing two books and a film and a toolkit.

It followed what I see now is the paradigm of the way of working that I'm most comfortable with --- which is research or inquiry, relationship building, and resource generation. And that combination is really powerful in my view within Acting Together.

There were so many wonderful stories, and I'll say, that one of the artists artworks that stands out for me is the work of Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani (spanish) (English)) from Peru, which, is this incredible artist collective that has in its repertoire, the performative practices of the indigenous people of the region, plus, you know, European Western style, uh, theater training, and a very sophisticated political analysis. And also, a lot of, spiritual integrity. Like, they came to Brandeis, and I worked with them, and I saw that in every moment, of their interactions with us and with students they were so respectful, so generous, so humble, so clear in their beings at such a deep level.

And for many years they were supporting human rights activists in Peru and at the end of the Civil War there, when it came time for there to be a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the head of this, the Peru's TRC, reached out to Yuyachkani and asked this theater company to accompany the Truth Commission into different villages.

And, not to become part of the TRC, but, Yuyachkani performed different kinds of rituals, drawing on indigenous cosmologies and helping people address the losses that they had experienced and, prepare themselves to testify before the TRC, and to dignify the stories of the people who had suffered in that civil war, especially the indigenous communities that were most targeted.

BC: Here is Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani, actress Ana Correa, describing the delicate and intimate space she inhabits in her work with some of Peru’s most fragile communities.

Ana Correa: I started to do theater within a very oppressed society where many poor people exist. And throughout these years I had to lend my body to many women, and to a lot of pain.

At times, I feel and say to myself, "I am going to die, and I have not achieved any social transformation. Thus, when I act, I give strength to myself at the same time.

And then I realize that what I do is simple, but very important for those few people who watch me.

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So, I feel like Yuyachkani’s example teaches a lot. Like, a long-term commitment over time to a place, cultivating capacities to reflect the performative traditions of the different communities that are present, and then collaboration with non-arts organizations like the Truth Commission that extended their impact hugely. I am really so inspired by them, and in awe of what they were able to do. So that's like one of probably 30 or 40 examples. within the Acting Together project.

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[00:35:30] CC: I think you're right. It's not that there can't be really powerful and strong work when artists are working outside of their own communities, but I mean, you and I have both studied and worked and admired the work of Diana Milosevic and Dah Teatar, and that's another example of that. the cultural knowledge is so deep. And the deep commitment and knowledge of the dynamics of the community, um, her work over so many years, and so many struggles really just to keep going really impressive and really effective.

And another, example that was stimulated in me when you were talking was, of course, my deep relationship with Jane Sapp.

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[00:36:18] CC: Jane, describes herself as a cultural worker and her practice arises from the knowledge that she gained by growing up in, in the black community, Augusta, Georgia under Jim Crow, and the musics that she learned, and the commitments that she felt to, to liberation, and to freedom.

BC: Here is Jane Sapp and some of her students in Springfield Massachusetts, from Someone Sang for Me, a documentary by Julie Akeret chronicling Janes transformational work.

Jane Sapp: If you think of music as having the power to transform the way people live, I, think the way people feel, the way people know, and it is a very powerful tool. And it's also an awesome responsibility.

So, to me, creativity, the creative arts is about more than just developing how you play an instrument. But it is how you paint a picture. But it's also about developing how you think.

CC: And also, the music itself, I think, deepened her appreciation of the humanity of all people. So, her work has resonated very strongly with people of different communities. Jane has been an important mentor to me and friend. And I admire her talent and creativity so much.

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It's interesting, and I'm sure Jane would say the same thing. Dijana from Dah, and Jo Eagan who is a theater director in Northern Ireland who worked on cross community plays during the Troubles, both told me straight out’ “Look I'm a member of this community like everyone else you see in the streets.

The guy down the way who is a plumber, who was protesting, he's just, doing what he has to do, right? We're all just trying to survive here. We happen to be artists, we're applying what we know how to do along with everybody else, applying what they know how to do in order to make sense and try and make change here. We're not anything special”

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[00:37:54] BC: In fact, Diana once said, “There were times when we needed to be very un-special because we didn't want to draw attention to ourselves.” Which as performers is really an interesting dilemma.

Act Four: Listening to Learn

So, you have taught, you have studied, you've created a pedagogy, for the field to learn from. You've also, operated inside an educational institution. For your students, for people you meet who are serious about doing this kind of work, what do you say is core to making a difference.in communities in upheaval.

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And I guess one other thing I would say is, To find someone or some group's work that resonates with you, that you admire, that you think is ethical and has integrity, and if they're open to having you hang around with them or intern with them or study with them or work with them. Like for me, having one person who is on my dissertation committee take my questions seriously, and was committed enough to me that she was supporting me, but also really challenging me, finding that kind of a teacher or mentor with that combination of support and challenge that's necessary for growth. I think that's a way to go.

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And the real question is, Have you thought about and how, this gets to be like reading, writing, and arithmetic, where humans communicating well, cooperating, and finding common ground is regarded as a learned skill rather than just something that happens to happen based on self-interest. And often falls apart based on our incapacity to really do it well. How do we get this to be an everyday thing?

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The changes that need to happen are very profound, and they have to do with these questions that you and I have been discussing about what counts as knowledge, and how do we draw on knowledge from different sources. And I think what you're asking is, How do we make the capacities that we see are needed become, “Of course, these are the things that people would be learning.

I wish I felt more hopeful about it than I do. I mean, I don't feel without hope You know, people are amazing, as we've said, but I feel that the task is so big and so deep and so challenging and the path is so uncertain, really is unknown. It's, we, it, it requires experimentation and a lot of delicateness,

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The place of hope that I have... there's two of them.

One of them is, I believe that. That little humans come ready for this. It's not like there's a six year old kid going, “I don't want to get along with my friends, I don't want to play.” And there's a lot of good wiring in there that we can call upon. So that's there. So, education, I always think about, these amazing teachers who are really under the gun these days and, there's probably a lot of them that would go, “Yeah, I think that would be a good idea. let's work on how to be together” And a lot of them try to do that in their own work.

The other one is people like you, taking this seriously enough, spend your life doing it and being sensitive and, I think, smart enough to ask a lot of the right questions. and just keep watching it.

I think what your journey has been to shine a light on a thing that is right in front of us. Every day we can watch the ties that bind us break, you can watch our cooperative muscles fail. But you and I have had the privilege of seeing the opposite. Of people finding new stories together and forging new common ground. And it’s not fun and games. The people that are in this podcast, the people that we've written about there's an amazing skillset there. and I think it's translatable and transferable. I truly do. And I think you've proved that in, in many ways.

So, I'd like to close by asking if there are some books that you would recommend to the audience.

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Yeah, the other book that I thought of was, and you might know this poet, um, OceanVuong.

BC: Oh, yes.

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he grew up as a Vietnamese American kid outside of Hartford. A few decades after me, but, I find his ,um, honoring of language and his understanding how language can dignify people is really impressive to me and really not just impressive. It's really uplifting and nourishing. I love hearing him.

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[00:46:48] CC: I love how erudite he is and simultaneously has so much reverence for the actually illiterate older members of his family. It's like really valuing things in the right place, in the right way.

BC: Really valuing things, could be a subtitle that reflects the gratitude I have for this conversation. Cindy, thank you so much for sharing your stories and the incredible body of work that has produced them.

CC: Thank you for that.

BC: Absolutely, this whole thing. Actually. It was really a pleasure.

CC: For me too. Bill.

BC: Take care, bye.

And Bye to you our listeners for taking the time to listen and hopefully learn a bit. I certainly know I have this week, and the many others that have preceeded it. And One of the things i have learned is the incredible power of simply passing it on. Which, because we are a bare bones closet studio operation here at the Center, makes all the difference in world for the connections we have made through tis podcast. So, if you have a minute, just take a minute to send the link Change the Story Change the World to people out there who you think might appreciate it.

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Change the Story / Change the World is a production of the Center for the Study of Art and Community, our theme and soundscape spring forth from the head heart and hands of the Maestro. Judy Munsen, our text editing is by Andre Nnbbe. Our effects come from freesound.org and our inspiration comes from the ever present spirit of UKE235. So, until next time, stay well, do good and spread the good word. And once again, please know that this episode has been 100% human.