Proposal for Boston Chinatown Cultural Planning Creative Engagement

Multi-sensory therapeutic storytelling：

Chinatown SenStory facilitated by Vermilion Theater

Chinatown Cultural Planning Creative Engagement Proposal Vermilion Theater 2023 July

CONTENT

v 01 Into the Chinatown: Background Research v 02 Project Narrative v 03 Stakeholder Map v 04 Intervention Series • Stage Planning • Stage1: Workshop Series v 05 Deliverables(Stage2&3) • Performance • site-specific installation • Multi-sensory archives v 06 Tentative Timeline

Chinatown Cultural Planning Creative Engagement Proposal Vermilion Theater 2023 July

v 07 Expected Impact v 08 Detailed Budget v 09 Why Vermilion & Bios

v01 Background Research Boundary Affordable Housing Public Realm

Where?

Aging

Poverty

Design workshop

Interviews

Who?

Gentrification

How? Hearings

Opportunity Area

Health Concern

Community Organizations

Built Environment

Demographic

Mobility

Green

Immigrants

Past Planning& Community Engagement

v01 Background Research

Where?

Who?

How?

Opportunity Areas& Infrastructures

People at their place

Collaborate with Ongoing initiatives

”SOCIAL COHESION AND MENTAL HEALTH CONCERNS, such as housing, open space, and public safety have also been priorities for urban planning over the past half-century.”

（2020 Chinatown Masterplan Summary）

v02 Project Narrative • Project NAME: Chinatown Senstory Chinatown is beyond a geographical location. It is a cultural identity. It is a place for the in-betweens, memories of the vulnerability and a celebration of diversity.

Carving out a safe space for healing through arts, Project Chinatown Senstory will utilize multilingual and multi-sensory mediums to provide a safe space for identity expression, to encourage cross-cultural dialogues and to elevate minority voices.

• Form of Intervention: Workshop Series The project contains series of 12 workshops themed in Placemaking, Theater therapy and Music Therapy to explore and reimagine the locality of Chinatown through visual storytelling, collect personal stories enacted by listeners through performance, and capture fleeting perception of sounds and finding unity in shared memories with music. All the outcomes co-created with the community will be archived and dedicated to the final performance/showcase.

• Deliverables -Artworks and other creative documentation: collective installation; song; zine; mental mapping; film of the show, etc.

-Scaling up: training manual/toolkit for future community leaders; -A platform embracing artists of other mediums (This is where we start, and where others pick up).

Multi-sensory therapeutic storytelling：

Chinatown SenStory facilitated by Vermilion Theater

v03 Stakeholder Map • • •

Direct Partners for this project Have Connections Already Important Connections to build

City Officials and Government Agencies: • Boston City Council • Boston Planning & Development Agency (BPDA).

• Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture • MAPC

Visitor

Residents

Local Business

Boston Chinatown

Educational Institutions: • Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center (BCNC) • Chinatown Community Education Center Research Institutions& Academy: • Tufts University School of Medicine • Boston University • Emerson College • Berklee College of Music • Mass Department of Mental Health • Massachusetts General Hospital • Harvard University • MIT • Yale University

Community Organizations

Art& Culture Education Academy

City Official

Non-profits

Community Organizations: • Asian Women for health • Chinatown Neighborhood Association (CNA) • Asian American Commission (AAC) • Chinatown Community Land Trust • Chinatown Main Street • Chinese Progressive Association (CPA) • Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA) • Asian American Civic Association (AACA) • Chinese Rainbow Network Nonprofit Organizations and Foundations: • AAPI Commission • Greenway Conservancy • Asian Community Development Corporation (ACDC) • Barr Foundation • The Chinatown Trust Fund • The Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center (BCNC) Foundation

VERMILION THEATER Theater Partners Central Square Theater; BCA; Pao; CHUANG Stage; CHUANG Lab; AATAB; ZERO Theater; Wuming MIT (non-local partners: Yale Vermilion, Think Chinatown NYC, Nvzizhuyi NYC, Cellunova Productions and Nomad Theater in NYC)

Theater Partners

Arts and Culture Organizations: • Pao Arts Center • Taiwan Film Festival of Boston • Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center (BCNC) Art Gallery • Boston Public Library( Chinatown Branch)

v 04 INTERVENTION SERIES • Stage Planning • Stage1: Workshop Series • Introduction to Each Theme

v04 Intervention Stages

Early Oct.

Public Showcase

Nov.

Deliverable Producing

Partnership Monthly/quart erly events

Aug.& Sep.

May 15-19

~2024

12 Workshop Series, Biweekly

Pilot Stage

Vermilion Five Night Flight Warm-up Series

Stage I

Stage II

Stage III

Placemaking&Theatre&Music Therapy workshops

Theatre Showcase Spatial Intervention

Archive & Toolkit Community Training

Long Term

v04 Intervention Themes Workshop Series Theme

1.PLACEMAKING

Explore the locality of “Chinatown”

Sensible City| Mental Map|Visual Storytelling| Urban Choreography| Environmental Theatre| 1.1 Explore the Place: Chinatown Walk+Cognitive Mapping Workshop 1.2 Reimagining the Neighborhood: Collage/Zine making Workshop 1.3 A Monument of Chinatown: Image Theatre Workshop 1.4 Back to the Place: Environmental Theatre Workshop This workshop series takes the built environment as an entry point while exploring the concept of locality through uncovering the social, economic and mental layers behind during the process, with final deliverables including visual storytelling artworks, site-specific interventions and art installations.

v04 Introduction to Each Theme

Workshop Series Theme

1.PLACEMAKING

Explore the locality of “Chinatown”

1.1 Explore the Place: Chinatown Walk+Cognitive Mapping Workshop

1.2 Reimagining the Neighborhood: Collage/Zine making Workshop

1.3 A Monument of Chinatown: Image Theatre Workshop

1.4 Back to the Place: Environmental Theatre Workshop

Inspired by the urban scholar Kevin Lynch’s cognitive mapping research of Boston in his book Image of the City in 1960s, this workshop focuses on the psychogeography of “Chinatown” through a relaxing hop on-hop off city walk into the place and invites participants to sketch their mental maps of Chinatown during the process. This workshop explores the alternatives and diversity of the perception of Chinatown other than a single dominate narrative. The collection of these maps will be sent to deeper interpretations and analyses and likely serve the final performance and art installation.

Collage/zine making as an easily accessible and participatory medium for community engagement and pedagogy is commonly used in art and activism, e.g. UndocuNation, CultureStrike. This workshop features neighborhood story sharing through simple and fun visual art making techniques.

Participants are encouraged to make their own image collage/zines both of their memories from the past and a reimagination of the neighborhood in the future and share within the group and a broader public later.

Image Theatre is a technique from Theatre of the Oppressed raised by Augusto Boal, featuring a group of participants to build a series of physical image or statue about a certain social theme. Through this iterative process of discussion, action, adjustments and documentation, trust are built with deeper conversations are touched on. Besides, this ephemeral “counter-monument” provokes reflections on the stereotypical image of the Chinatown and encourages further exploration on the cultural identity of this place of complexity and ambiguity.

Developed from the theories and practices of Environmental Theatre by Richard Schechner, this workshop will build on a deeper understanding of the built environment after the previous observations and discussions and bring back these products of thoughts to community-selected sites in the Chinatown for a short and tactical intervention. By exposing to the real urban context, we rethink the relationship between local and global, and expand the impact to the whole neighborhood and city.

v04 Intervention Themes Workshop Series Theme

2.THEATRE THERAPY Healing through storytelling, reflecting and expressing identity

Minority Stress Model| Sharing in a Safe Space| Authentic Narrative|Collective Healing 2.1 Finding Power in The Invisible: Recounting Personal Truth in Fictions 2.2 Beyond Language: Storytelling with Body Language and movements 2.3 Leaving, Home: Playback Theater Workshop 2.4 Relearning safety: Trust building with Community Members Built upon Meyer’s Minority Stress Model, this workshop series recognize the weight of being a minority and owning intersecting identities in the space of Chinatown.

Such diversity is also a unique source of strength – we will encourage sharing in a safe space and find collective healing in performing arts.

v04 Introduction to Each Theme

Workshop Series Theme

2.THEATRE THERAPY Healing through storytelling, reflecting and expressing identity

2.1 1.1 Finding Explore Power the Place: in The Chinatown Invisible: Recounting Walk+Cognitive Personal Mapping Truth inWorkshop Fictions

2.2 Beyond Language: Storytelling with Body Language and movements

2.3 Leaving, Home: Playback Theater Workshop

2.4 Relearning safety: Trust building with Community Members

Creating a fictional persona, giving this person the wildest dreams and trying out the deepest fears. Example exercise: Introduction of the alternate persona. How does this person react to the environment of Chinatown?

Language is often a barrier across generations and in certain spaces, especially Chinatown. Theater allows connection beyond language. We will experiment with improvisation exercises that utilize movement in character relationship building and storytelling. Example exercise: using only nonsensical sounds (e.g., hmm, uh-huh) to weave a story on stage and present a relationship between two characters.

A story consists of an action and a place. We take LEAVING as the action word, and HOME as the location, loosely defined. Example exercise: Free-sharing of moments that capture one’s last separation from home.

Actors enacting these snippets on the spot.

Discuss Minority Stress Theory and Reclaim Social Safety. Example exercise: Trust fall in groups. Blind-folded and being led by groupmates through an unfamiliar space.

v04 Intervention Themes Workshop Series Theme

3.MUSIC THERAPY

Listen and Create a Harmony of Chinatown

Audible Experience | Community Music Sharing | Sound Collection and Creation|Self-Expression 3.1 Listen to Chinatown: Surrounded, Supported, by Sound 3.2 Time Travel with Songs: Let’s Share Around 3.3 Sound in a Circle: Creative Instrument Playing and Community Building 3.4 Group Songwriting: Write Our Own Song Sounds, one of the most powerful communicators between everything in the world, can affect, empower, and soothe us; bring us to a place or a memory; and be part of our emotional expression. During the workshop series, I want to share a supportive space to express ourselves and feel connected in the Chinatown community through sounds.

v04 Introduction to Each Theme

Workshop Series Theme

3.MUSIC THERAPY

Listen and Create a Harmony of Chinatown

3.1 Listen to Chinatown: Surrounded, Supported, by Sound

3.2 Time Travel with Songs: Let’s Share Around

3.3 Sound in a Circle: Creative Instrument Playing and Community Building

3.4 Group Songwriting: Write Our Own Song

Listen to the surrounding sounds…Sound can indicate us where we are and affect our emotions and daily routine. We can take 15 minutes listening to the Chinatown and write down 5 sounds that we detect are interesting, no matter loud or quiet, sharp or gentle. Then, we will share what we notice and discuss our experience.

Music from our memory can bring us back to those stories. And various people might have the same song as their background music. In this workshop, we invite every participant to bring one song to the group, while the group can sing, hum, or play along the song.

Everyone sitting in the circle will have an instrument or their voice itself. The instrument can be anything, professional/nameable instruments or anything that can make a sound. We will join each other one by one and keep listening each other’s improv to build connections.

When people have their stories, they are already lyrics writers. In this workshop, we will ask for a theme. Then, participants can share one word or one sentence with the group as an inspiration or a lyric. And we will spend another hour to add some chords and rearrange the song. This will be presented in the final showcase.

v 05 DELIVERABLES • Theatre Performance • Collective Installation • Multi-sensory Archives • Toolkits

Image: previous performance in development by vermilion theater

v05 Deliverables

THEATRE PERFORMANCE

This showcase will be a co-created multisensory performance piece entirely generated from the community input collected from the previous workshop series, with lines, characters, set, choreography, music and soundtracks, all generated during the workshop series (from improv pieces and creative exercises).

Image: Performance photo of Geli Island Playback Theatre project directed by Zhao, Chuan at A4 Art museum,Yolanda Peng as a program assistant

We plan to showcase the final performance in a mainstream theater (e.g., Boston Center for the Arts) while making the event free and open to all – as a manifesto of bridging the gap between fine arts and the working class of Chinatown, involving in the next generation of art-makers through the power of performance.

v05 Deliverables To leave a substantial and longlasting impact, Project Senstory will involve one or a group of installations revitalizing the “left-over” and passive space within the current Chinatown landscape, as site-specific interventions. Through research of the previous planning documents, site visits, and visual storytelling workshops, we have identified multiple “opportunity sites” (to be discussed with participants). Through local installations, we hope to create visible changes and lasting reminders both with and for the community.

COLLECTIVE INSTALLATION Image: photo of the Wish Tree project by Yoko Ono

Image: photo of Red is not AAAAAAA Color collective installation at Harvard GSD,Yolanda Peng as the curator& designer

The installation will be a collective piece weaving personal memories, stories, wishes, proposals for the selected site from all passers-by. The possible forms of installations may involve murals, pavilions, street furniture, etc… Designed and built by and for the community and exist as a symbol of solidarity, diversity and collective creativity.

Greenway conservancy

The Chinatown Master Plan Committee identified ”opportunity area”

v05 Deliverables

MULTISENSORY ARCHIVES

Image: Susan Philipsz‘s sound archives

Image: An online library of the Agassiz Baldwin community facilitating the name change action

Given the multisensory and multiplatform nature of this project, we will inherently create artworks that last – music therapy workshops will put together a song collectively written by the participants; theatre therapy workshops will generate the final showcase of individual stories which will be recorded and kept; place-making initiatives will be commemorated through local installations.

Image: a map and itinenaryof local business by Big Fish

v05 Deliverables

TOOLKITS FOR TO COME

Image: a info manual developed and designed by CUP(Centre of Urban Pedagogie)

We expect a sustainable and long-term impact of the project and want to think beyond the months or the year. Project Senstory will continue on as we share our knowledge, insight and experience from this inaugural series through recorded manuals and toolkits. These resources will be made available to all other community leaders, event organizers, individual artists, educators and more.

These record will provide guidance on the basic understanding of minority stress, also on how to initiate art-based interventions, to empower community members in taking ownership of the creative process, inviting collaboration and recognizing the power in individual storytelling.

v06 Tentative Timeline Explore oneself and each other

To be seen/heard/felt

1.1 Explore the Place: Chinatown Walk+Cognitive Mapping Workshop

2.2 Beyond Language: Storytelling with Body Language and movements

1.2 Reimagining the Neighborhood: Collage/Zine making Workshop

2.4 Relearning safety: Trust building with Community Members

3.1 Listen to Chinatown: Surrounded, Supported, by Sound

3.3 Sound in a Circle: Creative Instrument Playing and Community Building

2.3 Leaving, Home: Playback Theater Workshop

1.3 A Monument of Chinatown: Image Theatre Workshop

W2

W3

August

Theater Therapy

W1

2.1 Finding Power in The Invisible: Recounting Personal Truth in Fictions

Music Therapy

Placemaking

Co-hosting workshops

Explore the place

3.2 Time Travel with Songs: Let’s Share Around

W4

W5

W1

W2

September

W3

W4 1.4 Back to the Place: Environmental Theatre Workshop

3.4 Group Songwriting: Write Our Own Song

v06 Tentative Timeline Make it Public

To Continue

Public showcase

Installation Making &Opening

Preparation

W1

W2

October

W3

Continue on Performance Development &Rehearsal

Theatre Showcase

W4

Training Series

W5

Monthly Training

W1

November

Documentation &Toolkit Development

W2

W3

W4

December

v07 Expected Impact • Drawing large audience We expect to draw a large audience with the showcase that culminates our workshop series (to be performed in a theatre that accommodates hundreds, with at least a week-long run of shows) This is an act to raise awareness and elevate minority voices

• Inspiring other community leaders This may be one of the first attempts to design multi-sensory storytelling and healing through arts – our experience and knowledge will be passed on and hopefully inspire other community leaders and artists working with even more mediums

• Radiating impacts along the east coast Chinatown is everywhere. The need to recognize and express the identity of Chinatown also exists everywhere. We hope to be a model for other Chinatown regions in neighboring places (e.g., NYC) and multiply our impacts by disseminating manuals and creative documentations

v08 Detailed Budget

For the complete sheet, please refer to: Detailed budget of vermilion theater

v Why Vermilion • Uniting power in Theater • The prosperity of the adjacent ”theater district“ used to be one of the factors of the gentrification of Chinatown, therefore, using theater as the intervention approach makes an introspective experiment • Promises of healing in ART; liberation/catharsis for individuals to process their original stories

• Unique strength in Intersectionality • Organic integration of placemaking, music, theater art and clinical science • Multiple minority status provides unique perspectives • Seamless integration into existing initiatives in Chinatown

• Bringing in the Next Generation • Targeting first-generation immigrants, international students (the often-overlooked inhabitants of Chinatown, Quincy, Malden and beyond) • vermilion has established an active and stable audience group and community partnership through previous shows

Vermilion Theater is an independent and professional non-profit theatre company based in Boston. We aim to facilitate cross-cultural conversations and foster a sense of belonging among the Chinese diaspora and the broader non-Mandarin-speaking audience along the East Coast through producing multilingual theater plays and communityoriented performing art series.

Leading Artists

Institutional Partners

Psychology & Theatre Therapy Wisteria Deng (she/her) is the founding managing director of Vermilion Theater and a Clinical Psychology PhD Candidate at Yale University.

Placemaking & Socially engaged art Academia Resource

Theater& Performance art Partners

Visual art Resource

• Rich cross-cultural experience in theater: Trained in Singapore (Theatre Practice, 20132015); Ann Arbor (University of Michigan, 2016-2018); and Boston (MIT Chinese Theatre Troupe “Wuming Drama Club”, 2019-2021 • Daring leadership in community-building: Founded Yale Vermilion in 2021 and Vermilion Theater INC in 2022 • Clinical practitioner with an eye towards diversity Therapist at Yale Gender Program and Yale School of Public Health (NYC Office) Specialized in trauma-informed care and minority stress interventions.

• Researcher disseminating empirical science across multiple platforms: Published numerous articles on scientific journals; advocate on mainstream news outlets

Yolanda(she/her) is a recent graduate of Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Director of visual art& media at Vermilion Theater, whose interest and practice focus on intervention of art, design, curation and performance in public domain and urban context. • Curation and Public Programming: 2021 Shichahai Urban regeneration project at Beijing International Design week (co-curator& exhibition designer) 2021 Chengdu Biennale Home co-habitating section (curator assistant) 2021 Chengdu A4 art museum International artists in residency( assistant) 2022 Working Condition: Interrogating the Gund Desk (Harvard GSD, cocurator& exhibition designer) 2022 Alternative Atlas: A Counter-map of Boston Land-Forming project 2023 Lunar New Year Series-Red is not AAAAAAA color (Harvard GSD, cocurator, installation designer) 2023 Harvard GSD Thesis: Naming Expeditor, reimagining Institutional Naming of Harvard socially engaged art project • Theater and performance design: Yolanda 2023 “Fabrique de Théâtre Insolite” with Les Sages Foul at 33rd National Yuanlu Peng Puppetry Conference 2022-23 Constellations of 3 versions (vermilion theater, set& projection& puppetry designer)

Sound Artist & Music Therapy Zilu Wang (she/they) is a ninth-semester student at Berklee College of Music, double-majoring in Music Therapy and Professional Music.

Wisteria Deng Media Partners Audience Group

Business Partners

Community Partners

Zilu Wang

• Music therapy clinical training: Have clinical experience in Goddard House (Brookline, MA), MedRhythms (telehealth), McLean Hospital (Belmont, MA), and Sherrill House (Roxbury, MA) • Sound exploration and Composition Project: Sound design for The Bold Soprano (MIT Chinese Theatre Troupe “Wuming Drama Club” 2022 Spring Production); Compose for Sputnik, Laika (Emerson College Chuang Lab Student Original Production); Live piano playing for Constellations (Vermilion Theater Production) • Communication and Coordination: Volunteered in various local festivals and concerts; been a translator (Chinese-English) for film online sharing and cultural events