Girl Power: Notes from the field

By Luray Gross and Maria LoBiondo - Storytellers for Girl Power! held during the KidsBridge to the Arts Camp 2013



One of the Girl's collage's exploring themes in “Tipingee”

The girls slouched on couches in a half-circle near the end of a very busy day packed with theater, dance, choir, songwriting, and visual art. It was day two of Kids Bridge to the Arts Summer Camp, and energy was low. 

            Then one of our nine middle schoolers asked, “Why is this called ‘Girl Power’?”

            “Where is your power?” we countered.

The girls perked up.  Once the conversation on respect and self-empowerment started, their ideas flowed. Physical power was mentioned first, but then came the power of our words, the ability to take control of a situation, being thoughtful. This was the perfect lead in to writing personal poems that reflected what each girl thought about themselves.

 
            Describing herself as the element of water, one girl wrote: “I would be snow so that I can cover bad things. Then I melt and they are carried away.” Another wrote, “My body is a temple…. Even when it is insulted, it stands strong always.”

The discussion about power also related to the story we would work on for the rest of the week: the folktale “Tipingee.” This story, published by Diane Wolkstein in her classic collection of Haitian folktales, The Magic Orange Tree, revolves around how spunky, savvy Tipingee, along the help of her friends, saves herself from being taken away by a stranger to be his servant. 

            It had quickly come to mind when we were choosing a story for a group of middle-school girls to hear, explore, play around with, internalize, and – ultimately – present for an audience of fellow campers (ages 6 – 13), teen counselors, and an assorted crowd of parents, grandparents, and other supportive adults.

             We wanted a story in which a girl, facing difficulty, takes charge of her fate, and a story that emphasized the role of young people helping each other. Our time would be quite limited, so we needed a story with mnemonic devices and a plot that would not be difficult to learn. Like many Haitian tales, “Tipingee” includes three nearly identical mini-episodes and a chant which listeners are encouraged to repeat. Overall, we wanted a story the girls could have fun with. We were, after all, planning for summer camp, not the heart of an academic program.

             We explored “Tipingee” through collage and journal writing as well as discussion. The girls keyed in to the emotions and examples of power in the story through both art forms.

            On Thursday, we decided how to divide the story for telling, and one of the girls suggested that her role would be to come up with an introduction. There was just time to try it out and be sure everyone knew where to begin and end. 

             As the hall filled on Friday afternoon, one of our very capable, but also self-conscious girls, came up and announced, “I’m not telling my part.  I can’t, I’m too nervous.”

    “But, Kyara,” we said. “We need you. We need all the parts of the story.”

     “Is everyone else going to do it?”

     “Yes,” we said, counting on no more attempted defections.

     “Okay.”

            Of course, Kyara did not leave her friends in the lurch.

 
        “I’m Tipingee, she’s Tipingee, we’re Tipingee too,” the girls chanted together from their places on the stage at the afternoon showcase, the culmination of the Trenton, NJ, Kids’ Bridge to the Arts Camp 2013. In a week, “our” girls had become a cohesive and powerful group of storytellers. Proud as any parent might be, we watched and listened from the back of the crowded hall.

Hidden

by Jack McKeon

 

Yesterday (8/16)  Julie DellaTorre and I attended a performance of a play written and acted by Girls Surviving, the program in Morristown that Paula Davidoff has been a guiding part of for years.  It was my second time to watch these girls perform  in the summer program and both times I have been impressed by the cohesion, cooperation and even acting abilities of the girls, who must, at first, show up with all the baggage of  “girls at risk”, and by the sophistication of the ideas explored in the play itself, written through a process of self-exploration and mutual discussion focused on issues of immediate consequence to the girls.

The play was titled “Hidden”.  The concept paired the girls, one as the socialized persona trying to keep to the right path and the other the hidden shadow urging them on to some sort of self-destructive, if immediately pleasurable, behavior.  A second theme was dreams, what they are like, what they can give us or unleash in us, and how we can try to make them real.  The lovely opening put the girls onstage, the hidden self behind the open one.  They began to speak of dreams while performing slow dance movements, hidden interweaving with open.  If these kids got that concept, as they must have, what a wonderful thing for them to experience.

As the play went on, I was struck by the fairy tale concept in it.  It was, in fact, a good representation of the princess/waiting maid conflict in “The Goose Girl”.   I spend much of my storytelling time with this kind of analysis so I was happy to see it open up on stage and, I would think, in the imaginations of the girls.  At one point, one of the girls becomes her Dad’s “princess” and her mother tells her that she will always be close to her daughter’s heart.  It was an impressive parallel to the Grimms’ tale, even after (Duh!) one of the girls during the post performance Q and A mentioned that Paula had told them a story which had influenced the shape of the play.  Of course this was “The Goose Girl”.  Paula, I now remembered, had introduced her wonderful analysis by saying she was going to use it in a situation involving “alter egos”.

What a vivid example of the power of story.  These girls were able to see the patterns of their own lives revealed in the pattern of the story.  They could take that notion, work with it to make it their own and see in it some hope, some indication of the power they have over their own lives.  At the end of the play, the two halves embraced or, hand in hand, opened the door to the future.  In ”The Goose Girl”, the maid and the princess don’t quite make that accommodation, though I believe that the maid’s self-imposed punishment is carried out, perhaps according to her desire, for the good of the whole.  In the Q and A, it became even more clear how these girls, strangers at the beginning, had been drawn together by the experience into a unified, supportive group, a “troupe” as the playbill has it. Even the youngest, an 8^th grader, felt accepted and protected by the older girls.  They were sharp, articulate and clearly pleased with what they had accomplished.  The success of the program in general was evident by the number of alumnae there were in the audience.

Having taught high school for many years and worked at the juvenile facilities in Morristown for the past year and a half. I am always curious about what effect we have on the kids we work with.  Sometimes we know, usually we don’t.  However, Julie Pasqual (who also worked this summer in the Girls Surviving program), at the Sussex County fair ran into a boy who was at the detention center when I started with the program.  He recognized her (big surprise there!), was delighted to see her, proud to be out, going for a GED and working.  Julie said he looked like just a kid.  It would be nice to think that his joy at seeing her reflects a little of what we all might be accomplishing, of what storytelling can do.  Maybe you all have many reports of a similar nature. 

Anyway, “Hidden” was a wonderful demonstration of how empowering it can be to tell your story – even if your audience is just a stove. 

Not to put you on the spot, JP, but it would be interesting to know about your experience with the girls.  The joy seems apparent.  What were the difficulties, if any?  And, Paula, if I have misrepresented anything, please comment.