Proposal for Boston Chinatown Cultural Planning Creative Engagement

by Vermilion Theater

Vermilion Theater 2023 July

Chinatown Cultural Planning

Creative Engagement Proposal

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

v 07 Expected Impact

Vermilion Theater 2023 July

v 08 Detailed Budget

v 09 Why Vermilion & Bios

（ 2020 Chinatown Masterplan Summary）

”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.”

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

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 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

Residents City Official

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

Local Business Academy

Community Organizations Education

Art& Culture

Non-profits

• The Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center (BCNC) Foundation

VERMILION THEATER

Theater Partners

Arts and Culture Organizations:

• Pao Arts Center

• Taiwan Film Festival of Boston

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)

• 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

Aug.& Sep. 12 Workshop

Series, Biweekly

May 15-19

Pilot Stage Stage I

Vermilion Five Night Flight

Warm-up Series

Placemaking&Theatre&Music

Therapy workshops

Early Oct. Public Showcase

Nov. Deliverable

Producing

~2024 Partnership Monthly/quart erly events

Stage II

Theatre Showcase

Spatial Intervention

Stage III

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

1.2

1.4

Inspired by the urban scholar Kevin Lynch’s cognitive mapping research of Boston in his book Imageofthe Cityin 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.

Explore the Place: Chinatown Walk+Cognitive Mapping Workshop

Reimagining the Neighborhood:

Back to the Place: Environmental Theatre Workshop

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 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

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.

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).

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.

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

Image: previous performance in development by vermilion theater

v05 Deliverables COLLECTIVE INSTALLATION

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.

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.

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

Image: photo of the Wish Tree project by Yoko Ono

Greenway conservancy

The Chinatown Master Plan Committee identified ”opportunity area”

v05 Deliverables

MULTISENSORY ARCHIVES

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: Susan Philipsz‘s sound archives

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

v05 Deliverables

TOOLKITS FOR TO COME

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.

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

v06 Tentative Timeline

2.1

3.2

Songs:

3.4 Group Songwriting: Write Our Own Song

3.1 Listen to Chinatown: Surrounded, Supported, by Sound

1.1 Explore the Place: Chinatown Walk+Cognitive Mapping Workshop

Finding Power in The Invisible: Recounting Personal Truth in Fictions

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

2.2 Beyond Language: Storytelling with Body Language and movements

1.3 A Monument of Chinatown: Image Theatre Workshop

2.4 Relearning safety: Trust building with Community Members

Time Travel with

Let’s Share Around

2.3 Leaving, Home: Playback Theater Workshop

1.2 Reimagining the Neighborhood: Collage/Zine making Workshop

1.4 Back to the Place: Environmental Theatre Workshop

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.

• 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

Academia Resource

Theater& Performance art Partners

Placemaking & Socially engaged art

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:

Visual art Resource

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:

2023 “Fabrique de Théâtre Insolite” with Les Sages Foul at 33rd National Puppetry Conference

2022-23 Constellationsof 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.

• Music therapy clinical training:

Media Partners Community Partners Business Partners Audience Group

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

Wisteria Deng

Yolanda

Yuanlu Peng

Zilu Wang