Figures of Speech Theatre

We made a final trip to College of the Holy Cross last week as part of our Arts Transcending Borders residency.

Holy Cross students and staff members accompanied FST Director of Education Ian Bannon on a field trip to the St. Francis Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Worcester, where Ian conducted a TimeSlips storytelling session for a dozen residents with Alzheimer’s and dementia.

The staff at St. Francis marveled at how two particular St. Francis residents—individuals who rarely speak in group settings—joined in the TimeSlips process and opened up to those around them. After the session, the Holy Cross community members and representatives from St. Francis joined Ian in conversation to explore the benefits of creative aging programs, sharing thoughts on the TimeSlips process and ways to implement its lessons in their own lives and careers.

During FST’s Arts Transcending Borders residency, we participated in:

• two sold-out performances of David Lang’s Pulitzer prize-winning the little match girl passion with the Holy Cross Chamber Singers, each followed by an in-depth conversation with audience members

• a recitation from memory of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets attended by 130 people

• a bunraku puppetry workshop for Holy Cross students and faculty

• two classroom lectures for courses on Contemporary Asiaand Narratives of Illness

• three TimeSlips storytelling sessions with post-session Q&As

• a pop-up devised theater workshop offered as part of the ENGAGE Summit, fostering dialogue and a process of change in response to a recent hate crime on the Holy Cross campus

• on-going conversations between Arts Transcending Borders and Worcester Public Schools about arts education, the development of a solid relationship between these two organizations, and future in-school residencies with FST artists