Today they are ordinary citizens. This weekend they’ll become artists telling extraordinary stories.
They are the 18 people tapped to become the Voices of the City – a new Broadway Center for the Performing Arts program designed to bring out stories seldom heard. On Saturday and Sunday, those stories will come alive on the city’s stages and at other venues as part of the Fall Free for All arts event.
Conceived by BCPA executive director David Fischer along with Kevin Joyce and Martha Enson of EnJoy Productions, the program is intended to give a voice to those who don’t normally have the opportunity to speak to the wider community.
These are not dry lectures given in front of podiums. The VOC participants are using a wide variety of artistic forms to tell their stories.
Fischer said the $35,000 program, funded through the Broadway Center, is the evolution of four years of community meetings with various segments of the local population, including African Americans, faith communities, pan-Asian and pan-Latino residents, those who identify as LGBT, and the military.
The 18 participants were chosen from 35 applicants. They range in age from 17 to 70 and span a rainbow of demographics. They include a pastor and football coach, a Tacoma Power executive, a coffee shop employee and a high school student.
“We felt like a bit of a hodge-podge at the beginning and grew into a coherent community,” Joyce said.
THE STORIES
“Some people came with a story, others came with more of a perspective on Tacoma,” Joyce said. “Some people came telling very personal stories.
“They all mean something about Tacoma. It helps create the rich tapestry of our cultural narrative.”
The participants attended workshops led by local artists over six weekends to learn about different artistic mediums. Joyce called it “a creation of a vocabulary, an exposure to a tool box.”
Workshop leaders included spoken word artist Elijah Muied, public art creator Mauricio Robalino, University of Washington Tacoma Art and Social Change faculty members Beverly Naidus and Loraine Leeson, and poet/storyteller Merna Hecht.
“I hope the audience will take away that they have been given a very precious gift of a well-crafted story that someone has decided to share,” Joyce said.
The VOC stories that audiences will see this weekend are told through theater, film, spoken word, movement, painting, sculpture, installation, music and discussion.
Most of the participants are diving into public performance for the first time. Joyce said he saw a strong desire among the participants to connect with each other.
Even before the performances debut, Joyce is calling VOC a success and a template for similar programs elsewhere. “This program could be duplicated in a lot of places that really need it,” he said.
THE VOICES
Roxane Hreha comes from a family with a strong Tacoma presence. Hreha’s parents were the longtime owners of waterfront fixture Harbor Lights restaurant before selling the restaurant in 2000. Hreha’s mother, LaMoyne, had a live TV show in the 1960s, “Penny and Her Pals.” The show featured LaMoyne’s ventriloquist skills and puppets.
Roxane Hreha, 49, is a music teacher at Downing Elementary. The younger Hreha returned to Tacoma in 2004 after living in Toronto. She slowly became her mother’s caregiver until the elder woman’s death in 2008.
She will use spoken word and flute to tell about caring for her mother in the final years of her life.
“I was thinking it was going to be more of a light story (at first),” Hreha said.
“Though it’s personal, I hope it’s useful to anyone being a caregiver.”
Hreha’s music, where she sings while simultaneously playing the flute (a technique she calls flocalizing), sets the scene, she said. One composition, “Wet feet, salty heart,” was composed while living in Toronto when she was homesick.
Hreha said the VOC participants made a strong connection with each other. “There were very powerful bonds between us. The fabric of Tacoma is so rich and interesting, and it reaffirmed why I came back to Tacoma – beyond my mother.”
Hreha will perform at the Pantages and at St. Joseph’s Hospital, where mother and daughter spent a lot of time.
“Caring for my mother brought me back to Tacoma, and now I’m bringing who I am back to Tacoma by doing this creative project,” she said.
Daryl Frost is 17 but he seems to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. He will share some of the burden in his performance.
The home-schooled Tacoma teen is the youngest participant in VOC. “I didn’t think I was actually going to fit in at first,” Frost said. But with the help of the other participants and his mother, Monika, Frost found his place and his story.
Frost feels that too much technology has created an uncaring world. “People prefer iPads over reading a Bible,” he said. People his age will send a text message to a person sitting next to them, he said.
“They are so attracted to the device in their hand that they lose interest with the people they are with,” Frost said. “It proves we lost our sociability to these technological devices. They rob us of our manners and etiquette.”
Frost will perform four compositions on guitar with vocal accompaniment, including John Lennon’s “Imagine.” An original song Frost wrote deals with the corruption of technology.
He’s nervous about performing. “I’ve been taught to go up there and suck it up” (by his mother). But he’s motivated by the message he wants to deliver.
“I want to see the world change. I want to see it get better.”
Steph Farber certainly knows a thing or two about Tacoma. Farber, 63 and a life-long Tacoma resident, is co-owner of LeRoy’s Jewelers. His family’s history in Tacoma stretches back to the early 20th century.
Farber’s story will chronicle the tumultuous highs and lows of Tacoma’s civic history: great achievements followed by crushing disappointments. He cited the terminus of the Northern Pacific Railroad in Tacoma and its subsequent loss to Seattle and the construction of the first Narrows bridge and its quick demise as examples.
“It started as a cynical observation that I shared with friends: looking at the entire history of Tacoma from its earliest days to Russell Company leaving. It seems likes an endless row of successes that get trampled on.
“But when the cynic part of me rested for just a moment, what I came to realize was that this community is rich in people who are willing to keep trying.”
Farber said the movers and shakers in Tacoma are usually the wealthy financiers, but often they are just average citizens like “the seven women who took brooms to this disgusting Roxy Theater in the 1980s and turned it into The Pantages.” Or the citizens who saved Union Station from demolition. “It’s now the anchor for a university and three museums.”
Farber’s piece will be spoken word with visuals – mostly historical photos.
For Farber, the VOC experience was a gift. “I kept thinking there are other people who deserved it (more),” he said. “Each person in that room had incredible stories and incredible talent.”
Melannie Denise Cunningham has used her experience with filmmaking to create a video presentation for her VOC contribution.
Cunningham, 53, is director of multicultural recruitment in the office of admissions at Pacific Lutheran University. The native Tacoman focused her video on the African American community here.
“I think Tacoma needs to get a handle on its race relations,” she said, and that starts within the black community. “First of all, we need to look inward and deal with our relations and then we can look outward.”
She said, “My story is from my perspective. I’ve had challenges. Those challenges have not held me back from what I’ve needed to accomplish. But those accomplishments were the result of collaborations with a many different communities, not just my own.”
Cunningham was the creator/founder of Tacoma’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. celebration and a former EEOC officer for the city. Her 30-minute video, titled “Why Can’t I? The Evolution of a Legacy,” will be followed by a 30-minute discussion. She interviews others in her piece and presents her own story as a mother and entrepreneur. She hopes it will inspire others.
“I’m in my 50s now, but when I was in my 30s, there weren’t many people reaching back to try and help me navigate the system.”
Craig Sailor: 253-597-8541
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