Divas Girls Group - Sharing the Mic - Team Piece Writing: Part I

Divas Program Session 17:

“Sharing the Mic... Team Piece Writing: Part I”

This week’s Diva’s Program centered on exposing the young ladies to

build on their creative foundation, but doing with the help of another person.

What stood out to me most was that the whole session had an undercurrent

of teamwork and collaboration. Writing can be a solitary activity when

gathering thoughts and ideas, but what makes a piece richer and fuller to me

is working with another person. Sometimes, the other person may be on the

same tangent as you, or on a one but it is the saying of art imitating life.

What stood out to me was the Picasso in Pairs game, most of all. I observed

and assisted but I also played it. It was something that I remembered vividly

because the game itself was a game that forced connections to be built. You

had to focus on capturing the person’s face, as you drew but to me, Picasso

in Pairs was more about building a sense of trust.

There was a spoken word piece shown next that I loved because not

only was it about something young people go through – infidelity, lack of

trust, living in a generation where relationships are built and broken on

technology – therefore, making it relatable, but it was a collaboration where

the subject was spoken in an erratic kind of flow to make the audience feel

the ups and downs of this relationship. I felt like I was watching this

relationship slowly fall apart and then come together, before breaking the

fourth wall in what a healthy relationship should be between two people.

I liked that because now the Divas had to split into groups and I loved

that because they had been in this program together so long, they were

easily able to do so. By that, I mean that they were able to go off into groups

and talk about facets of their lives they couldn’t tell anyone else. One groups

talked about living with siblings in the home when I was an only child. I have

no idea how that feels so it was illuminating to hear and I gained some

perspective I will never experience. I also liked that some groups came

together to write about social issues like one of the topics being about a

bombing in Yemen that will be in the paper, but ignored because society lives

in a space where things happen so quickly.

For a look at how writing makes expression of life richer when more

than one idea comes together on stage, please take a look at Darius Simpson

& Scout Bostley, “Lost Voices”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=lpPASWlnZIA

By: Erika Kakrah

Date: January 30, 2018