HomeMy WebLinkAbout10/23/2019 Item 2, Johnson
Wilbanks, Megan
From:MJ Johnson <artist.mjjohnson@gmail.com>
Sent:Wednesday, October 23, 2019 11:51 AM
To:Advisory Bodies
Subject:Help SLO thrive: please approve SLO REP Theatre project
Dearest planning commission,
I’m adding my support for the SLO Rep Theater Project and ask you to please approve it. This theater is
an incredible asset to our community and has provided so many opportunities that don’t exist
elsewhere.
I especially support their children’s educational programs and the deeply valuable skills they teach.
Because the arts are continuing to be cut from school curriculums in favor of high stakes testing, our
students are deprived of crucial problem-solving, confidence-building, and collaborative experiences.
Nowhere else does a single project teach tight-knit teamwork, spatial awareness, group responsibility,
clear communication, developing empathy and understanding beyond one’s own experience, knowing
when to speak up and when to listen, studying context and historical clues, time and resource
management, working with a budget, safety awareness, and understanding how a choice that seems
isolated actually has far-reaching consequences and can directly impact other parts of the production.
They’re not sitting at a desk filling out bubbles on a form. Our kids (and adults!) need these kinds of
experiences to be fully-rounded individuals.
My husband works at Cal Poly and laments that the incoming students have been trained to regurgitate
memorized directions They freeze at the slightest bit of unregulated uncertainty. They’ve been taught
not to think for themselves and have lost the individuality and creativity needed for real-world work and
problem-solving.
Theater is the ultimate Learn By Doing experience. The most talented people I have ever worked with
were theater actors and technicians, because they had so many practical opportunities to learn specific
skills from a wide variety of sources. A single person can have direct experience with management,
construction, budgeting, sewing, presenting, conflict management, and hospitality, because theater
naturally includes all of those areas and cast/crew are expected to take on multiple roles.
Economically, theater is good for SLO’s downtown. High-quality shows draw large crowds from wide
areas, and patrons always need food to eat, wine and ice cream to finish off the night, cards and flowers
to buy for the cast. Actors also buy costumes from downtown (for months at a time during the 3 months
of nightly rehearsals and 2 months of 5-a-week shows).
Local artists are paid for their expertise in set design, consuming, makeup, lighting, and more— and
because those same techs can afford to make a living using their craft, they’re more available to work
with traveling entertainment and film groups, who bring in additional resources and revenue through
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permits, hotel stays, equiment rentals, craft services, and hiring local actors. The cost of living in SLO is
so high, and we can not afford to lose the citizens that help promote humanity.
It’s crucial in our turbulent political climate to produce shows that make people think— to question
assumptions, biases and stereotypes, and to actively explore issues of discrimination, poverty, sexism,
corruption, mental health, abuse, and more. There is no better vehicle to teach empathy than theater.
Our community NEEDS that, desperately.
This theater supported me in producing a performance piece to raise awareness about domestic abuse.
Everyone who participated was changed— including the packed house (people were standing and sitting
on the floor) and the 600+ people who have seen the recording from that night on YouTube. The most
common response I got were people coming up afterward to say “That was my experience. You just
described me. I had no idea so many other people went through the same thing.”
It also reached men who suddenly realized they had the same traits as the abuser character, but had no
idea they were being abusive. It was just how they were raised. THAT is the power of theater.
I would not have been able to produce that piece without SLO Rep. Imagine how many more people
could have been reached with a bigger floor plan? How many men could have realized they were
unknowingly perpetuating a horrific problem?
This new theater would help us do that.
Please help us make SLO not just a place to live, but to thrive.
Many thanks,
MJ Johnson
805-704-4070
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