THE SEVENTH DREAM
The same year that I was developing A Spring Storm, I acted in a play at Flint Youth Theatre called The 7th Dream
The play, its text drawn exclusively from the writings of Flint ninth graders with the exception of a coroner's report, purported to plunge, layer by layer, into the heart of the impulse to violence.
The play, ultimately performed on Capitol Hill, achieved the far more formidible task of driving a crowd of Flint ninth graders into silence.
The trick here was the process. At our best, we didn't pretend to teach students about violence. Rather, we took materials provided by the students (some of whom were involved in the play) and, within the strict parameters of our own abilities and time constraints, shaped these materials into an object of distinct form. The act of building this form was necessarily holistic, artistically rigorous, and in the end, worth sharing. The uniqueness of the form itself was an outgrowth of our own attempt to learn. The centrality of the act of learning in this production stripped an otherwise presumptive work of pretension.
I was seventeen. I'd already developed an understanding of contradictions in the city of Flint. I would soon develop the faith in intuition that propelled the development of A Spring Storm. A bridge was the emphasis on process over product in The 7th Dream. One cannot tackle paradox with a prescribed formula, and the continuing validation of instict absolutely depends on openness and the willingness to be wrong.
We drove those 9th graders into silence.
