Sofia Rahaniotis - Choose Your Own Adventure - Week 4 Assignment

I read chapters two (“Growing Old is About the Growing”), five (“These Hands”), and ten (“Sucking Water from Mud”) from Teya Sepunick’s Theater of Witness: Finding the Medicine in Stories of Suffering, Transformation, and Peace, and after experiencing these sections of the work, I am most definitely going to go back and read the rest soon. From chapter two, on “aging”, I was reminded about the vitality of engaging all ages, not only in the art-experiencing process, but especially in the art-making and creating processes. I resonated with Sepunick’s comment about knowing “...very few old people…”, particularly because at this time and place in my life, I am surrounded by young adults in a college environment almost always. The powerful example of then 83-year-old Abby Enders using body memory to wield an ax at her age then as she once did as a younger individual is a necessary display of breaking age-related stereotypes. So often, I realize I neglect to consider this demographic of individuals in my own art-making practices, simply because I am immersed in an environment where most individuals are closer in age to myself. This chapter has inspired me to think beyond the confines and constructs of age when thinking not only about my audience, but about my performers and my collaborators. I was very inspired in chapter five, on “women and girls”, by the concept of “finding the medicine”, which is one of the guiding principles for the Theater of Witness. The idea that catharsis, connection, and discovery can occur in a myriad of ways is quite beautiful, and is displayed so eloquently in the example of the relationship between Sepunick’s nose surgery and her grandmother leaving her homeland at age 16. In chapter ten, on “domestic abuse”, the concept of “humanizing the perceived enemy”, after Sepunick’s first time working with a perpetrator, is a testament to the fact that as artists, we cannot possibly know where our art will lead us, and that instead of attempting to control its direction, we must surrender to the impulse and spiritual pull of whatever calls to us and reaches out to us in the moment, even if this takes us by surprise. For it is in these unexpected artistic callings, ones that require fear, courage, and risk, that the most important work is often done.