TRAVELOGUE

PEACE
by Artistic Director, Sandy Spieler, In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre
(Minneapolis, MN www.hotb.org)

In the fall of 2001, we were invited to attend two International Theatre Festivals and so we traveled to Kwacheon, South Korea in September, and to the Dominican Republic in October. It was an extraordinary experience to represent the USA during this time in United States history.

We were commissioned by the Kwacheon Theater Festival to create a ceremony/pageant titled "PEACE" based on our annual MayDay Tree-of-Life Ceremony. This turned out to be a bit prophetic. Three days after our arrival, as we began work with the 120 local participants, the September 11 tragedy occurred. The next day, we were surrounded by representatives of the Kwacheon City Council and all the other theater companies who came to bring us their condolences.

In the following days as we continued to work with our Korean participants, we began crafting a "Declaration of Peace" that would rise out of the rubble of our staged destruction. We used many words from Meridel LeSueur's poem "Let the Bird of Earth Fly". These words were shouted in English and in Korean, and they provided the impetus for raising the huge "Bird of Earth" puppet that we had brought along for the Ceremony.

Each night, the Declaration of Peace was interrupted several times by applause from the audience. Our experience in the Dominican Republic was both completely different, and yet very much the same. Rehearsals were challenging in the intense heat, and because of the emergency embargo on cargo, our puppets arrived only two days before the scheduled performance.

By some miracle, the actual performance was great - filled with energy and purpose - and the Peace Declaration also received much applause from the audience. In both Korea and the Dominican Republic, the ability to create work with local participants was a gift. It was an honor and a responsibility to be Americans with a perspective of global peace during these two months.

The news that surrounded us was so filled with fear and war. This was a stark contrast from the active daily work we experienced in both Korea and the Dominican Republic - - people working together to build a prayer of peace through meals shared, songs sung together, and long crazy rehearsals of two languages trying to come together. The work was engrossing and exhilarating. In both countries, our good-byes were tearful and heartfelt.