Art for the artist's sake

Mu Performing Arts, as many other arts organizations, is built on the idea that performance is about more than simply entertainment. At some point in our lives, most of us have been affected on an emotional level by a play, a film, a piece of music, or any of the myriad of other arts that accentuate our world. Sitting in an audience, we feel a connection with the characters and the story that draws us into a different world, or even gives us a greater understanding of our own.

But what about the actors on the stage? The playwrights? The other creative artists involved with bringing a production to life?

Throughout Mu’s 18-year history, we’ve heard a common expression of gratefulness from our Asian American artists. Mu gives them a place to call home, a place where they can display their talents in a supportive environment, a place where they can tell their own stories without the added pressure of navigating the ever-present issue of race in casting. On our stage, they are not just creating an experience for the audience, but living it for themselves.

The power of performance is the inspiration behind Mu’s Stories Program, a workshop series for youth that explores personal experiences through creative expression. Over the past year, Mu teaching artists have worked with a variety of schools and Asian American youth organizations to help students develop plays based on events, observations, and their own memories. With the Stories Program, students are given the same opportunity that Mu actors get when they take the stage: the opportunity to share who they are, and communicate their thoughts and feelings on their own terms. More than simply telling a story to an audience, they are empowering themselves.

Recently, Mu’s Artistic Director Rick Shiomi traveled to California to work with students from the Korean Resource Center in Los Angeles. At the end of the weekend-long workshop, students performed their work and held a discussion about their experience in the Stories Program. You can view a video of their performance below. If you don’t have 47 minutes to watch the entire video, try 14:25 for a representative example.

MU Workshop-h264 from Korean Resource Center on Vimeo.