Art Spark Texas’ weekly workshop series designed to guide adults with disabilities towards developing their personal stories, communications, and public-speaking skills, culminating in a community showcase – resulting in skills they can take with them moving forward, to advocates for themselves and their communities and change public perceptions.

Hello, All!

It’s time again for Jerry’s Summer Recap! Each year I have the privilege of hosting a summer art workshop series with Art Spark Texas. For the past 2 years we’ve explored Texas History in a virtual series we called Texas Stories. This summer we wanted to change things up a bit and offer an in-person workshop with a community partner, the Carver Library located nearby us in East Austin. This year’s project was called The Story Behind the Recipe, and it just wrapped up at the end of July. The participants created some amazing video projects over the course of 6 weeks that I’d like to share with you.

The focus of The Story Behind the Recipe was to bring together Seniors with Young Adults. Our senior participants, Pat and Mary, were responsible for bringing in family recipes that hold a special place in their memories. Over the course of two workshops Pat and Mary worked to develop their stories into a script. Pat chose to focus on her passion for the Hamburger, an American comfort classic, while Mary wrote about her Mama’s Apple Dumplings. Their stories were then recorded on camera. After that, they took their scripts and began to visualize them as a visual story by creating storyboard sketches to share with the young adult group.

Once Pat and Mary had established the main ideas for their stories, they passed that information along to the young adult class to begin illustration and animation. Yadira, Charles, and Kamand worked to develop the written stories into pictures. 

The group used the storyboards started by Pat and Mary and developed them further, adding visuals and thinking through the movements and transitions of the animation. Yadira and Charles decided to incorporate their passion for Minecraft into the stories by creating animation from screen recordings. The 3-dimensionality of Minecraft allowed for a greater sense of space in their animations, which all agreed was a benefit.

Finally, the group edited down all the video, audio, and animation content they had created around Pat and Mary’s stories and added some final touches such as sound effects and credits. The final products, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzPM_iH0v7w, speak for themselves, but I would like to congratulate this group of artists on a job well done. They were open to the process of collaboration, which can be filled with many unknowns at times, and were able to build a story together to that shows the strengths of each artist. Bravo!

As an actor and writer, Toby Al-Trabulsi is well acquainted with storytelling–but when it comes to working on a podcast, he’s found himself in new territory. Speaking with him, I got the chance to hear how his time with the True Tales by Disability Advocates podcast team has compared to his work on stage and script, as well as some of the finer points on why True Tales is important to him and his work with sharing stories.

Toby first found his passion for acting in high school, but his love of storytelling goes back to childhood.

“I used to read a lot when I was a kid. My first love was reading. It wasn’t necessarily writing. It was stories.”

Just as Toby’s love of reading came less from its medium than what it represented and offered–a space to experience and share stories–his path to acting was led by a desire for a place to share with others, not just a spotlight.

“I didn’t go into acting with the pursuit of acting. It was just for community making and new experiences and trying something new. It was just by happenstance that I ended up loving it.”

Following high school, Toby was referred by his school’s drama instructor to join an acting company for actors with disabilities, TILT. He’s been a part of the company ever since. After his many years as an actor, Toby is looking for new creative avenues.

“The thing that drew me to podcasting is it was a new medium to explore, and I had never done it. I was interested in what that would entail, and it entailed a lot. . . It’s been great.”

Toby now has a new place for his love of storytelling and community in the True Tales by Disability Advocates working group. But just as with any new territory, he’s had to learn as he goes.

“I think podcasting is one of those things that takes time to build up to like music. . . . The thing that I’ve learned the most is that you’ve got to be in contact with everybody, more so than in theater or film. You’ve got to be constantly in contact with your team. It’s a very accountability-driven kind of thing.”

Podcasting has led Toby into new roles as well. As an actor, Toby is quite familiar with being the one on display, and his work as a host on True Tales has offered him a chance to bring that focus onto someone else.

“It was actually quite refreshing. After going on so much time performing, it was nice to take a step back and just relax into not that passive role, but that role of being there to let someone else take the spotlight a little, or take the mic I should say. . . It wasn’t as hard as you might think. I’ve been listening to people talk my whole life. Talk at me, talk to me, talk down to me. But once I took the choice to let them speak–not to sound controlling or anything–but once I made that decision that I was just going to let them speak and I’d just be there for them and not have to speak because I don’t have to, it took a lot of pressure off. It was really nice.”

Through reflecting on this new role, Toby brings awareness to a broader notion about listening to stories of disability.

“I think that there’s this feeling within the disabled community that disabled folks don’t listen to each other. There’s lots of micro-communities. I think that we as disabled folks need to just get better at hearing each other, hearing our stories. Even though we’re all in different micro-groups and different communities, I think we can just hear what each other’s experiences are like, even within the disability community. Because I have multiple disabilities myself, and if I really thought about it that would split me between multiple disabled groups. But that’s not the important part. I am a person with disabilities, and all of me is important, just like the rest of my fellow podcasters are important and their stories.”

This horizontal separation within the disability community is often ignored in the face of the oppressive, top-down marginalization that disabled people as a whole face. But for a community that already faces so much prejudice and injustice, internal solidarity is crucial.

For more to consider, Listen to Toby host the episode of True Tales, “Life on Wheels,” with guests John Beer and Kristen Gooch. Keep an eye out for his performance in the upcoming short film, Sign Here, a story on time, barriers, and second chances, as well as his ongoing work with the TILT performance group.

I became a poet so I wouldn’t kill myself. Or live at the bottom of a bottle or chase the dragon into an overdose.

My reintegration from military culture to civilian culture was difficult and unnecessarily painful. The first VA (Veteran Administration Medical Center) I went to they tried to commit me into the psych ward because it was 3:30 pm and they didn’t have anyone that could just talk to me, and explain the symptoms of PTSD, and how that connected with my panic, anxiety and depression.

I feel lucky every day that I am alive. I lived through a war that included experiencing small arms fire attacks, improvised explosive devices, and a rocket propelled grenade launched at the convoy I was in. I have lived through truck accidents in combat, and avoided crashing my car into a tree or a human when driving drunk. I have lived through shooting drugs into my arm. Each time I dodged the bullet of overdose or insanity.

I am lucky, and I believe it’s because the world needs to understand the cost of war. The veterans I mentor and teach need to know that the end doesn’t have to be suicide. It can be writing, performance, being part of a community or trying all new therapy modalities. Most importantly, they need to know that war and military service don’t have to lead to the end, but can instead lead to a new beginning.

I went to many writing workshops for vets starting in 2007. I was hooked, but resistant to being sober. In 2011, I moved to Ithaca, New York, joined a veteran organization and started facilitating writing workshops for vets.

By 2013, I joined The Veteran’s Project: Impact Theatre in New York City, and started performing in a play. I embraced my poetic side by performing with Poetic Theater Productions. This led to multiple opportunities such as Decruit, which uses the performing of Shakespeare’s monologues connected with personal monologues to heal.

I also started exploring Greek works with Aquila Theatre, utilizing the works to discuss the current wars and veterans’ experiences. With Aquila’s support I wrote “Dionysus in America” adapting “The Bacchae,” a tragedy written by the Athenian playwright Euripides. As I was reading the Greek works, I realized that they were written from a very masculine perspective, so I started rewriting them from a woman’s perspective—well, a woman combat veteran’s perspective. I also adapted some of “The Odyssey” in the goddess Circe’s voice instead of Odysseus’.

I decided to start my own nonprofit Women Veterans Empowered & Thriving with the skills I learned in NYC, and also brought NYC resources and programming to Pennsylvania. We have had many successful collaborations and continue to grow to serve the often ignored population of women veterans and family members of vets. Many opportunities along the way have pushed me into the public eye. I have been able to provide a face and connection to veterans’ struggles and issues, and address why we as a community, as a country are responsible to reintegrate veterans home.

The opportunities I’ve had through public speaking, writing articles and being interviewed by a variety of news and television outlets, including ‘The Chew,’ the New York Times, the Washington Post and Turner Classic Movies, I’m building a better future for veterans and helping the community be part of the solution.

To learn more about Jenny Pacanowski and her organization please visit https://www.womenveteransempowered.org/

We invite you to a showcase of stories that run the gamut of life experiences – from work and family to advocacy, immigration, forays into the theatre, and more. Together these presentations will shatter misconceptions about what it means to live with a disability and remind us that everyone, regardless of ability and background, shares a common humanity. RSVP, invite your friends, and follow our Facebook event page for updates.

Doors open at 1:45 PM // Show starts at 2:00 PM

Join us in the theatre lobby after the showcase for our “Paws and Claws” Art Pop-Up and “Pet Love” Reception!

Directions to the Ground Floor Theatre: The theatre is located where Springdale and Airport meet, behind Austin Bouldering Project and Daily Greens, tucked between Austin East Ciders and Friends and Allies Brewery. Park in our parking lot, which is accessible off Springdale, just past Daily Greens, and around the back of the building. You can also find a map at www.groundfloortheatre.org and a helpful video at https://vimeo.com/286364861