World Communities

Birth of a Spirit

The play took place in the context of a cultural exchange which has gone on for more than twenty-five years between the towns of Konu and Americus, in Sumter County, Georgia, Carter’s home county. The play was a first ever event in history of the exchange, causing what the Japanese hosts heralded as, “the best exchange ever.” Rehearsing and making familiar an original drama that showcased their talents gave students a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to perform in a foreign land.

Following Our Fannie

The first stage of this process took place when student Robin Bates began researching the local paper’s archive for articles and ads about the acts that performed at the theater. The opening show was the play, “Lightnin” about a man named Bill Jones, who is, “The champion liar of the county. A shiftless ne’er-do-well; a tippler, philosopher and friend.” Ads for this play appeared alongside ads about the amazing healing powers of “Cardui”; along with Dr.

Home Again

I was commissioned to write the play by a non-profit group who were largely descendants of the Oregon pioneers. For years, they had told their story on stage at a theater they created on the grounds of the interpretive center. However, because the story of the pioneers’ victory of spirit was also the story of the defeat of the native people who were already settled in the area, the earlier productions had sometimes met with protests from various tribes.

Jimmy and Billy

How formative was the social turmoil of his life in Plains in defining the world view of a President and thus shaping events of the world between 1976 and 1980? As Director of World Communities at Georgia Southwestern State University in nearby Americus –the county seat for Sumter County that includes Plains—I had spent seven years living among the people who could provide the answer to that question.

Prayer of America

The statue of the woman standing alone, her responsibilities still clinging to her, inspired a greater opportunity for the stage than seemed apparent from a description of the event. This could not simply be a play about the mine disaster. The woman calls out to have her inner story told. Surrounding her empty gaze are the crumbling remains of what had once been a thriving coal town, inflaming an urgency to tell it.

Streets of Gold

When I undertook this project, I was living in the Appalachian Mountains, producing “The Reach of Song,” drama. In the ten-hour drive between western North Carolina and Southwestern Pennsylvania, I was to undergo a complete cultural adjustment. People in the mountains tend to be more reticent, saying only the exact amount of words that need to be said on any given point. This is a particularly disarming form of communication, and I have seen people absolutely unraveled by it.

The American POW Drama

It is somewhat of a daunting task to consider how in the world to make a play about a stockade where a lot of people died over time. Unlike many of the other depictions of the POW experience, there wasn’t really any interaction between prisoner and guards that could help to build the drama. At Andersonville, prisoners were just thrown into a huge stockade and left to fend for themselves.

The Reach of Song

I came to the mountains shortly after I returned from hitchhiking across the United States. One of my first jobs was as a reporter for the Cherokee Scout Newspaper in Murphy, North Carolina, where I began to fall into the world of shape-note singing and dinner on the grounds. A later job as editor of the North Georgia News in Blairsville, Georgia, brought the whole of the culture across my desk—good, bad, and even worse.

Searching for Innocence: Phnom Penn 1996

I visited the country several times during this transitional period in 1996, and once lived with an NGO called CANDO, which was comprised mostly of Cambodian-Americans who had come back to help their country. I remember in particular, evenings drinking on the porch at the Foreign Correspondence Club, the noise of the city filtering below and the cooler breezes from the Mekong River somehow making their way through all of it.

Stalinka

The path that led to the creation of “Stalinka” began with the few steps a friend and I had taken into a new theater we happened to pass on the street, “Theater Alternative.” Recognizing that we spoke English, the artistic director, Madelyn Tcholakova—who had also studied acting in London- stopped us to talk. Thus began a relationship that has continued to this day and which inspired the writing of the play, “Stalinka.

Transcendence

How formative was the social turmoil of his life in Plains in defining the world view of a President and thus shaping events of the world between 1976 and 1980? As Director of World Communities at Georgia Southwestern State University in nearby Americus –the county seat for Sumter County that includes Plains—I had spent seven years living among the people who could provide the answer to that question.

Darkness Lifting

When Habitat for Humanity was thinking of ways to celebrate their 25th Anniversary, I offered them the idea of showcasing the lives of the people who Habitat served throughout the world. Having been associated with the organization for several years, I had seen firsthand how lives were changed through the process of owning a house. Even more compelling, however, were the variety of circumstances and needs that people from different countries brought to the organization in pursuing home ownership.

How to Beat Diabetes

Philip Szmedra, had been a professor at the University of South Pacific in Suva, Fiji. While there, he saw firsthand how the dramatic change in diet that signaled the shift away from home grown to store-bought foods, created an epidemic of diabetes in the country. He came to understand that type-two diabetes could be managed effectively through changes in lifestyle and diet. Knowing that much of the population could not be effectively reached through written communication of that message, he decided that street theater would be the best means available for demonstrating effectively and dramatically all that diabetic patients needed to do to help themselves.