Performing Wellness ™  is a text based writing process for a small group of individuals with a common illness or trauma they are ready to explore and share. The 3-4 months process culminates in a public theatre performance by professional performers. Guided imagery, art and music support and facilitate the writer-artists’ growth and play. Each individual writer finds their own form, the group ‘games’ and exercises offered as tools for the artist.

Background      What I Offer     What is Performing Wellness     Touchstones

BACKGROUND

In 2000 Kate Hawkes, then Artistic Associate and Education/Outreach Director at Portland, Oregon’s Artists Repertory Theatre, created an arts process called Performing Wellness. First introduced as a community outreach program around a production of the play WIT by Margaret Edson, Kate guided a group of individuals living after a cancer diagnosis through a writing process, then paired them with professional actors and in the 4th month, 3 public performances were produced.

Following the success of this project Kate co-founded The Well Arts Institute (WAI) with writers, actors and others involved in the first Performing Wellness.  Performing Wellness (PW) productions have been produced with writers sharing their stories of cancer, Multiple Sclerosis, HIV/AIDS, and war-related PTSD. Through each of these Kate facilitated the writing process, paired the actors and writers, directed and produced the show. She took the lead in evaluation, has taught numerous workshops using the PW writing exercises, and coordinated performances of stories created through the PW process in a variety of venues.

Kate has recently developed and offers a 1-woman performance with selections from 10 writers, that can tour to your site. This can be paired with workshop(s) or as a stand alone performance.

Since its founding WAI has been a key player and in some ways essential part of the PW production aspects, along with partners in healthcare from a variety of fields and a range of theatre companies. Two individuals have shadowed the process and there are numerous requests for training in the Performing Wellness process.

Over the last five years Kate has honed and clarified her philosophy and the steps in this remarkable process, and is now ready to offer training to others willing and able to facilitate a Performing Wellness in their community.

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PERFORMING WELLNESS™

Part One  - Wild Child Writing - from the heart, the gut, with the wild child at the helm. This means learning to trust that we each have a voice and letting that voice speak, employing all the senses, without reference to adult logic, fairness, or hindsight. And gradually beginning to read work out loud to each other.  We don’t  necessarily write about the shared experience

Part Two  - Writing with reference to the shared experience (eg. cancer). A series of exercises for each individual to use as jumping off point, tools for their own writing. Each writer shares their writing as an artist isharing their story. We learn to listen as artists, to respond as an empathetic audience.

Part Three  - The Actors join us, reading out loud the writers’ work - the first time someone apart from the writer reads their words. Somehow partnerships are made. Each writer/actor team work together and with the Facilitators input, apply the theatrical medium to the writing. Each team discovers  how to best put that unique voice on stage. Music, props, images begin to fill out the words. Always the writer’s intention and the words at the heart of the piece.

Part Four  - In the Theatre -  with brief technical rehearsal, experts in their field assist the translation of words and actors onto the stage. There is no set form – some are dialogue, some poetry or monologues – or a blend of a variety of forms. Each writer has a unique story, a unique voice and put all together create an complete evening of theatre. It becomes a journey for us all.

Grounded in the belief that every person is an artist and has a story to tell, and that the process of artistic discovery and expression facilitates wellness, Performing Wellness operates on the principal of artistic collaboration, rather than the therapeutic relationship.

The Performing Wellness process includes:

• • bringing together a group
• • facilitating a writing process
• • evaluation
• • pairing actors and other artists with writers
• • mounting and producing a public performance(which includes Budgeting)

After bringing the group together, it requires 3-4 months concluding with usually 4-5 performances over 2 weeks. The kind of public performance is flexible within the philosophical intentions of including that component as balanced with the price of mounting a production.

The Process  is defined in two parts
a) an arts based form of expression that follows a series of steps designed to open the individual into an awareness of him/herself as an artist and which creates individual personal stories
b) the public performance of those stories.

The Model is:
1) regular meetings built around intuitive, wild child arts activities
2) focused arts activities about the shared group issue
3) pairing with professional actors/performers (or the performer may be the writer him/herself.)
4) public performance
5) some kind of record (book, film or recording) of the performed work is made for participants.

Workshops and shorter versions of PW are designed along this model.
Ms Hawkes holds the trademark to the name and has written and copyrighted the Performing Wellness manual. She is the sole authorized qualified person to facilitate a Performing Wellness, train others and offer workshops at this time.

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TOUCHSTONES

In essence these three touchstones guide and are at the heart of the PW process.

• • The creative process provides a venue to find meaning in experiences of illness or trauma. (see a list of studies and references - coming soon)
• • The individual exploring that experience is the Primary Artist. This artist accesses his/her intuitive knowledge, expresses it in some artistic form, and shares that story in some way.
• • An Artist and Healer reside within each individual.

In very simple terms and in its most articulated form to date:
Performing Wellness (PW) ™ is text-based creations by the primary artists, performed for the public by professional actors, dancers and musicians. (These are often accompanied by post-performance questionnaires completed by all participants as well as the audience. The primary artists may also fill out a pre-test in certain situations.)

As I explore and offer Performing Wellness I come from a core philosophy. A philosophy is an underlying understanding and/or belief and in many ways it is the place from where we can draw our answers when faced with unsettling or awkward questions and dilemmas. This is the core philosophy of PW and much of the work I do:

• • the primary artist is the person creating the art
• • the art is process based and not outcome orientated (therefore the work is artist driven and not counseling or therapy.)

The Process is for the wellbeing of the Primary Artist and the basic premise is ‘first do no harm’. (ie: If the work has the power to do good we must equally acknowledge it can do harm.) With this in mind, it important that each Primary Artist (particularly in the full PW process) has a good support person or group and that the facilitator have full access to that support.

This translates to an Artistic set of standards.

• • The Primary Artist (regardless of the circumstances, a full PW or workshop) chooses to participate and is not coerced in any way and may also choose to leave the activity.
• • Artists working in a facilitative, leadership or mentoring capacity must fully understand and adhere to the core philosophy as stated above. This will involve some training process in order to work as a Facilitator and perhaps some as Supporting Artist. (ie: the one who puts that work before the public.)
• • The quality of the work put before the public has high production values in order to honor both the deeply personal nature of Primary Artists’ creation, and the professionalism of the Supporting and Facilitating artists. • This standard of quality pertains to technical areas such as lighting and sound, as well as performance standards; PR; reproduction and other means by which the art is made public.
• • All materials created by each Primary Artist belongs to that artist. That Primary Artist may grant to right to use their story and is always informed in advance of its use. This permission may be withdrawn by the artist. Thus, records of the work on dvd, video, in books or other forms cannot be sold or randomly distributed without express permission of each artist thus represented and reproduced.

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