Proud to be an aberration

“I consider myself part of an aberration on the planet.  A new, mobile, essentially rootless culture the likes of which the Earth has never seen before.  I live in a culture where community expression through artistic events is not normal; culture comes from “above” –from LosAngeles or New York or, if we are lucky Toronto.  It is very rare that non-artists in Canadian society get together and use art forms to express their own concerns or celebrate their own lives.  And yet that is what theatre, dance, music, etc. used to be –local people singing, painting, dancing, and telling stories. As an artist in this new mobile culture, I have a great hunger for the kind of rootedness that many Aboriginal people have through their cultures.  But I can’t have what they have.  I am who I am and I must take on the task of inventing my own culture–putting down my cultural roots and using artisitic toos to investigate, change and celebrate my community.  I must also face the certainty that this process will take many, many generations to bear fruit.”

–David Diamond,  from Out of the Silence: Headlines Theatre and Power Plays, in Playing Boal Theatre Therapy, Activism.