One thing that stood out to me from this week's reading came from the "One-Third of a Nation" play. I noticed how the Landlord would repeatedly say "But you can't do without a place to live!" (33). I thought it was cruel for the landlord to use the basic human necessity of needing a roof over your head against those who were looking for a place to live. There is no empathy or understanding coming from this landlord. The conditions in which his tenants live in are inhumane. For the landlord to make these people choose to pay him for a place on his plot with subpar living conditions or to have no place to live in a city that is having a population boom is more than evil. To further demonstrate the cruelness of this landlord, he had in the first act been telling a man, Rosen, who had lost his wife and children in fire which could have been prevented that he cannot be blamed for what had occurred. The landlord explains to Rosen. "But if you can only afford to pay $24 a month you'll have to live in my house or one just like it" (23).
Video Link: <iframe title="vimeo-player" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/681026294?h=245a523477" width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Embedded above is a link to the digital trailer for "The Most Beautiful Home...Maybe" which is an immersive and interactive performance done around the country both in person and virtually. As described on their website, their "participatory pastiche performance juxtaposes housing data, Lyndon Johnson, torch songs, and stories of Americans facing home insecurity" and "invite you to collectively create housing policies and envision a future where everyone has a home." Their main goal is to allow us to imagine a better housing situation through deep listening, community building and collaboration.
Miriam, your focus on empathy and understanding as fundamentals of social change is great. Thank you, too, for bringing the project "The Most Beautiful Home...Maybe" to my attention--what a fascinating project! It connects so well to the concept of "Hope as a Discipline," encouraging us to think bigger and imagine the world differently--if we cannot even imagine a world in which housing is a human right, how could we possibly build it? What do you think might be the challenges inherent in a performance that asks the audience to imagine the world differently? What are the benefits?
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