MEGHAN MILAM

Spontaneous writing on being in Delinquent.

Not that it started there, but it could have.  I was in a bar and just said hi.  So here I am.  Or there I was.  Either way, there I will be.  

Three times a week I am surrounded by a group of people I would otherwise not find in a room together.  

And

My heart is breaking open.  What is it like inside these rehearsals?  It’s a trip from my head down into my heart.  And it’s hard to breathe.  

I have a 17-year old sister living in Los Angeles.  I had an idea of the way teen-aged minds work.  I was wrong.  I was so fucking wrong.  At a time in my life where I can’t seem to find inspiration from anyone (not from the bloated academy or self-important artists), it’s coming from the amazing artists and activists under 18 years of age.  It’s not angsty, it’s not trite - it’s what needs to be heard.  

I feel a bit like my role is to be acted upon.  Or to listen.  To use my privileged ability to feel so deeply that I can’t move.  And then move.  

CONSTANCE CASTILLO

What it’s like to be in this project, Delinquent?

It’s been interesting to mix spoken word with dance, and I am amazed by the possibilities. I am really interested in the idea of living inside the borderland, and I am trying to explore writing through that lens as well. I am searching to find ways that words can be more than narrative. I am so excited by the art of dance in conjunction with words, and the idea of a body being transformed by a word.

One thing I am finding difficult in this process is shaping my writing for the creation of the show. So far we have done many exercises, but I really want to do some talking about what the show will look like, because gaining a bigger picture of our piece will help me to know where to go with my words. I see so much potential in all that we have done together, and I am eager to work in collaboration on pieces that will be worked on for longer periods of time. I am finding it hard to imagine all our ideas and how they will make something that comes together. I think it would be good to all share what we have been imagining.

This show has been important to me in a lot of ways. I have been inspired by a new form of performance, and I am so excited by the mixing of medias. I have gained a new perspective on what meaningful art is. In another way it is important to me because of it’s subject. I am deeply passionate about the subject of this show, and I am excited by our creative approach to the issues of the juvenile justice system. Throughout this process I am discovering how spoken word can be artful, and I am realizing the many ways to approach the act of writing. As we continue to work I will have more opportunities to share more about my connection as well as disconnection to this issue, and as we collaborate I will be able to use my writing in different ways.

NESTOR REYES

Spontaneous writing on the experience of Delinquent
It is like politicians lying
with the constitution framed at every 1000 feet
as they move from different sides of the country, 
like borders that separate the native from their land
and while they breathe and contemplate that
their land is still being segregated
in a discrete way. 
No native Americans,
said the toilet seat cover in that restaurant.
They are not allowed here either,
said the red, white and blue grocery store in the corner.
Like Sarah Palin who has never even sniffed the radioactive dust
of a thousand wars that fertilizes itself in the roots of Russia, 
youth in the city get less than dogs
have never had the chance to speak openly of their isolation, 
ignorant gold that pierces through the blood of the white man’s hands
have placed a wall between what the youth is feeling, 
belittled when they walk by a cop,  
put down by society for they continue to imprison us in their thoughts, 
fuck freud for we do not receive our pleasure by pushing each other down, 
instinctively we are moving rocks, 
avalanched snow and colorodo rocky waters
that flow through the veins of the American land

JORGE RODOLFO DE HOYOS JR.

I saw the call for young performers aged 16-24 for Keith Hennessy’s new project.  I’m a recent college graduate having moved to the city to pursue a life of performance art, and this seemed like an amazing opportunity.  When I saw Keith’s last show I found that I was able to have a conversation with this artist, that I understood what he was trying to do in the Project Artaud space and that I would like to work with him or at least observe him work on some level.

I find myself lost in a sense.  Both the cast as well as the theme of juvenile incarceration seem foreign to me, and I wonder how I can get myself engaged in this piece.  Questions I had initially (and probably still do have) are who am I to be on stage performing juvenile incarceration?  I’m 24, finished college, am working as a starving artist (not working to be a starving artist, but working to be an artist and trying not to starve in the process).  I feel that the term “Juvenile”--as in under 18 years of age or not adult or living with parents at home--is so far away from me that I would be pretending if I were to be on stage having been billed as a “young” performer.  In terms of Incarceration, I have family members who have intimate experience with that, but I feel that I was sheltered from that by my parents who got my sisters and me out of a bad neighborhood when we were young.  In thinking about the project or at least trying to think about the project (as research and to get myself “prepared” for it), I keep thinking of my parents and my family.  In a way, I feel that my sisters and I are the product of lives where jail and gangs and poverty and drivebys and dysfunctional families were a reality and lived and learned from in order for me to have opportunity (education, a not-minority sense of self, whitewashed kinda basically).  It’s like a near escape...a different life that I was sheltered from.  I know it’s there, and my parents are constant reminders (their discipline, their hang ups, my grandparents, their etc). 

It’s like the thing about Mexican Americans...You’re not Mexican enough to be Mexican, but you’re not American enough to be American.  The same here.  I’m not a total suburban white kid, but I’m not from the city or a barrio kid.  It’s as if things have already been spoken for me