Come for the Art, Stay for the Healing

Co-Creating Spaces Where Relational Art Paves the Way for Personal Growth

My first summer at Theatre Camp, I was not there for the healing. I was there for the boys. Realistically, I was there because my mom had picked up on my obsession with old movie musicals, and paid for the camp. So, my first summer at Theatre Camp, I was there because my mom was sick of me using the kitchen table as the set of Bye Bye Birdie, and also for the boys.

It wasn’t long before I realized that meeting the Love of My Life at a theater camp for agoraphobic tweens was somewhat of a long shot. However, by the time we took the stage—feather boas draped, drugstore mascara gooping our eyes together as we scream-sang the final notes of “Luck be a Lady”—goosebumps covered my arms, and I knew I’d found something good.

There’s healing in the co-creation of art—when personal stories blend and transform through collective experience.

Whatever this electric current was, binding us together, it was life-giving. And it was bigger than the adrenaline rush of being onstage; it was the camaraderie, the experience of arriving to the same space each day, sharing god awful trail mix and stories of our dreams and desires, of building something together, that did it.

It was walking in a self-conscious 13-year-old and walking out feeling seen and heard for my unique brand of weird. It was the first time I realized that art, when co-created in community space, was more than just expression. It was magic, and that magic was medicinal.

Coming-of-Age in the Arts

Over time, my interests expanded outside of Rodgers and Hammerstein; by the time I graduated from Scripps College, where we were encouraged to study the humanities as intersectional, I had myriad opportunities—ballroom dancing, flash mob, flash prose, oh my!—to consider the way personal and collective growth were magnified through other artistic mediums. I completed my thesis research on women’s trauma recovery through memoir and improvisational dance, and developed a robust practice of Contact Improvisation, which I identified as singularly effective in the kind of collaborative, inclusive, and transformational experience that had rocked my world so many years before.

Magic happens when we dare to tell our stories and invite others into the telling.

I began teaching Contact Improv in the San Francisco bay area, as well as dancing professionally in other capacities; and time and time again, noticed it wasn’t just the act of DANCING, or making art, that made me feel whole. When I trusted others to engage in the experience with me, to bring their own stories to the surface, something shifted. I discovered that—at least for me—art is most therapeutic when it is relational. When I leaned on someone else during the dance, and let them lean on me. When I not only shared my story, but took in someone else’s, too. When the lines between us disappeared, and it all became movement.

Rules for Relational Art

In 2016, I moved back to my hometown of Santa Barbara, California, and grew even more determined to participate—and forge—artistic spaces that had that certain mystery juice: the ability to not only create beauty but also connect people in a REAL way. Experiences where I felt invited to bring my fears/anxieties/desires to the center, and trust them to not only be held, but transformed. In addition to Contact Improv classes, I began hosting storytelling nights and open mics, and noticed that their success—or the quality of the attention in the space—depended on a few key factors. Over time, I identified several:

1. Lack of spectators. Everyone has probably been to an open mic night where some dude with a guitar shows up, plays for an undetermined amount of time, and then leaves. No desire to see or hear anyone other than himself. Likewise, we know what it is like to be an audience member, subject to the physical distinction of a proscenium stage or house lights to let us know where to pay attention. But what if every single person has to participate, even if only to stand in front of the group—say their name—and be seen? What if everyone sits at the same level, no elevated stage, and in a circle? For years, I hosted an open mic night where every single person got five minutes to share—and every single person had to. Without fail, we left not only feeling less alone, we left having fallen in love. That’s the magic of unanimous participation.

2. Touch. Whether it is physical doesn’t matter. When participants are invited to actively connect with every person in the space—even through a moment of intentional eye contact—they are brought outside of themselves, and whatever personal stories are running the show. They may become curious: who am I drawn to, who am I repelled by? What informs these snap judgments? It is all the more satisfying to then watch each person take the stage, or partner in a dance, because we get to be surprised by who they actually are—not our story of who they are.

3. Ritual opening and closing. Without fail, the simple act of having an intentional opening and closing—circling up, sharing something personal, lighting a candle, humming a single note—makes a huge difference. When I have skipped these steps in favor of moving quickly, I notice the level of engagement and vulnerability is always lower; participants may stay guarded to what really wants to be revealed or transformed through the artistic process.

4. Normalizing the Influence of Others. We are not bubbled, and we are not static. Even when we are still, we are moving. Surrendering our idea of what role we will play—or how we will sound, or look—means we are more open to being influenced by our surroundings. Even when we are reciting lines, we can allow ourselves to meet the gaze of another, respond to the energy of a space…and in opening to that relationship, we are acknowledging the truth: we are relational beings, and no two times of telling the same story will ever be exactly the same.

The experience I had onstage as a teen was the first clue in a lifetime of getting curious about what makes me want to make art. As it turns out, it is way less about product, and way more about process—specifically, the interactions that inform the expression.

Relational art invites us to be influenced by our surroundings, acknowledging our interconnectedness.

Today, in a world that seems increasingly divided and hijacked by perfectionism and posturing, I am more passionate than ever about creating spaces where the fullness of our beings can take center stage, whether it is a work of theater, writing, dance, or simply a community experience where we are invited to acknowledge the OTHERS in the room—and to invite them into our expression. Especially when we dare to tell our stories in our own words, they cease to have power over us—and in my experience, the healing increases tenfold when we choose to invite others into the telling.

This can be as simple as breaking the fourth wall, meeting the gaze of a stranger, or as far as physically leaning all our weight on another body. In any case, it’s all a relationship. It’s all a dance.