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One of the exercises in CLP is about identifying and clarifying our own personal values. We each identify our top 5 values, writing one each on 5 index cards. Then we have to drop one… and another… until we are forced to choose our number 1, top value. What is your current One right now and why?

Joy. This is not the one I landed on last year in CLP. Right now it feels the most necessary for me. About halfway through CLP, a colleague in my cohort asked me “What brings you joy?” I didn’t know how to answer. It was right during a difficult time for me – and I had completely lost sight of it as a value. I was lost.

I have been thinking about that question ever since. I realize now how important it is for me to both seek and spread joy whenever I am able. It can be the most powerful form of resistance and strength. In her book, Hope in the Dark, Rebecca Solnit said:

Joy doesn’t betray but sustains activism. And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated and isolated, joy is a fine act of insurrection.

What is one big, burning leadership question you are wrestling with these days?

Given the privileges I was born with, how can I best help lead in the fight for racial equity and justice?

What inspires you, gives you hope these days?

Collaboration. I’m working on a devised play at Long Wharf Theatre called The American Unicorn. It is a collaboration that I’ve been working on for years now. It began as an idea I had two and a half years ago. I reached out to IRIS (Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services) with the thought that we could make a play collaboratively with refugees on the Long Wharf stage. Since that initial phone call, we’ve asked a lot of questions and worked to build a process that is flexible for the people whose stories are being told. Our group of writers and performers are working to tell stories to build understanding, empathy, and compassion for what it means to be a refugee in America. I’m working with a brilliant co-director Aurelia Clunie. She and I brought our experience in play making, and the ensemble brought their lived experience. We have artists from Syria, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, and South Africa. They have lived in worlds beyond my imagining when I began this process. In the last nine months working together they have told stories of hope, exile, love, fear, magic, and humanity. The play written as a result of this journey is a play more complex and intricate than any of us expected on that first day. Together we are making a production unlike any other I’ve been a part of.

Something that started as a lone spark has grown into a collection of collaborators who have made this exceedingly beautiful play with real stories, magic, music, and hope. I’m in the midst of our final week of rehearsals and I cannot wait for us to share it this Friday (June 8). I am sure it will bring others some of the hope it has brought me.

This work of transformational change is hard. Stepping in, stepping up, over time, can be draining – physically, intellectually, emotionally, psychically, spiritually. How do you recharge, restore, take care of yourself, rekindle your fire?

I find hope in other people. When I have lost joy or faith in myself, I look for it in the people around me. This is one of the many reasons I love New Haven. There are so many inspiring people around each and every corner. I think about the work of organizations like Unidad Latinas en Accion, Connecticut Bail Fund, and People Against Police Brutality. The artistry of people like Aaron Jafferis, Paul Bryant Hudson, Hanifa Washington, and so so many more. I’ve been doing an interview series for the Arts Paper called “Arts at Work” where I’ve talked to some amazing people about what they do everyday – that has been another way for me to step out of my usual rhythms. And sometimes I’ll just watch a Travis Carbonella video and think – “wow, I LIVE here.”

That being said, sometimes I just have to let the hard stuff be hard. The past two years have brought me personal challenges I could never have foreseen. There were days when I did not have the courage to get out of bed, face the world, and find people that inspire me. I know now that without those days, those challenges, I wouldn’t be centering joy the way I am trying to now.

Introduce us to someone you are/were close with personally (e.g., family, teacher, friend, mentor), who shaped (or shapes) you and how you view leadership and possibility for a better community/world?

I briefly had a directing teacher named Mladen Kiselov. I only knew him for a brief six months, and we barely had any time together. There are a few things he said that I think about all the time. He told us “The director’s job is to infect everyone with the disease of the play.” Our role is to find the thing in the play, the story, that we love. And then get everybody else to love it, too.

Mladen also told us that every story needs hope to survive. No matter how sad – if you give the audience an ounce of hope, they’ll come back to the theater.

I think storytelling has the capacity to be infectious and change making. Mladen planted some of the seeds that have led to the way I create work in a rehearsal hall and beyond.

What do you recommend to us, in each of these categories:
  • Reading – Elizabeth Alexander’s Light of the World, Lindy West’s Shrill, Rebecca Solnit’s Hope in the Dark, Robin Coste Lewis’ Voyage of the Sable Venus
  • Listening – Chance the Rapper & The Social Experiment’s “Wonderful Everyday: Arthur
  • Eating – Sushi Salaam at Miya’s
  • Watching – Jane the Virgin and Parks and Recreation. All the time.
  • Laughing – A Kanye Place Sketch from SNL and “french bulldog can’t roll over
  • Wildcard – Favorite New Haven spots to ride my bike: Duck Pond in Edgewood Park and top of East Rock (when I’m feeling strong)

Learn more about Elizabeth via: LinkedIn and Storytellers New Haven

Learn more about The American Unicorn (being performed at Long Wharf Theatre Friday, June 8)

To get in touch with Elizabeth directly: elizabeth.nearing@gmail.com

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