I Got Schooled By the Homeless

So, four years of acting classes and tonight I had my performing ass handed to my by a bunch of homeless men.

Perhaps I should explain. I went to a workshop tonight that brought together homeless and housed people as a first step towards creating an original work for Homeless Awareness Week in November. Now, I have worked with all sorts of different communities throughout my shortish tenure as a theatre artist, and I have worked with homeless people before as well, although not in a theatrical capacity. But tonight, I who am never without words, was literally stunned speechless and thrown completely off my game. As one of the exercises towards the beginning of the evening, we were supposed to inact a "typical" scene of some aid workers trying to persuade some folks living on the street to come to a shelter. Since I was paired up with four homeless or formerly homeless men, I was of course supposed to be the aid worker. So I start to "get into character", trying to think up what I could say to these people to get them to come to my proverbial shelter, and in the back of my mind I'm thinking, why the hell wouldn't you want to come in off the minnesota february streets and into the warmth of the shelter?

Silly, bourgeoisie girl. As I went to work on my schpiel, these guys were ignoring me. Just flat out ignoring me. They were pretending to smoke a crack pipe, hit on me distractedly, drink, get a blow job (from an imaginary other homeless woman), but mostly just ignoring me. In real life they were being encouraging, telling me to keep trying, but they were trying to make a point, that out there is freedom, with no stupid bitch from the shelter telling them when to come and when to go, what they can have in their room and who can't be in their room. It may not be the most comfortable place to sleep, but no one can tell you what to do in the tent city. Even the cops avoid it.

I don't know why it effected me so much, but it was the first time in a long time that I felt truly out of my depth. I just had no frame of reference for this and therefore no tools in my acting toolbox. But mostly, I think it was the question that one of the asked me: "What would you be willing to sacrifice to get our attention." I didn't have an answer for him, for that particular scene or for my feelings about being an actor as a whole, and it totally knocked me on my ass. What was I willing to sacrifice? How far was a willing to go as a performer? I didn't know, but these men challenged me as an actor in a way I hadn't been challenged in a very long time. It wasn't that their performances were great, it was that their reality was so different from mine, and they were so completely willing to embrace the truth of it. There was no artifice, it was "in the tent city there are people shooting up and smoking crack and having sex with everyone around them watching, so if you really want to be heard little missy, you're just going to have to deal with it". They weren't embarrassed and they weren't trying to embarrass me- it was just their lives, and they weren't going to sugarcoat it. It was my responsibility as a participant in their narrative to meet them on their terms.

It had been some years since I had worked with the homeless, actually 10 years, to be exact. I worked in some soup kitchens and community centers on a mission trip to Chicago in the summer before my sophomore year of high school, and it really changed my opinion of the homeless. Before that, by virtue of living in Kansas where there are very few homeless people and a lot of vocal rightwing republicans, I thought that homelessness was a result of laziness and stupidity. I also thought that george bush senior had been a great president at that point, so you see how far we've come, yes? After speaking to many homeless people on the mission trip, mostly at dinners at soup kitchens and while baby sitting in community centers I came to realize that many thousands, if not millions of Americans are one paycheck or less away from homelessness. It's not about laziness, it's about circumstances, although every single homeless person at the event tonight said that remaining homeless is a choice. They believe that getting out of the cycle has to be your own doing, no matter what the situation. They respect that there are a lot of things in life that you can't control and that can contribute to sudden homelessness, but you also have to seek out resources and work at if you want to move on and out of shelters etc. This may have been a particularly optimistic group, but they seemed to have a good handle on why they were where they were, and articulately debated the causes behind homelessness, like chemical dependency, mental illness, and wanting to stay with ones family (a lot of shelters won't except kids under 18, so that splits up families, and many transitional housing facilities don't allow signifigant others or even married couples to live together). I was amazed by the educational and family backgrounds of the people in the group tonight. We had men and women with graduate degrees, 8 children, grandchildren, parents who were doctors and lawyers, recovering addicts and bible thumpers. There was a huge range of experiences in the group, and the saddest part was that most of them had jobs. One guy I talked to had a job and a car, but just couldn't get enough money together for first month and last month rent. Not to mention that even if people have the money, they may not pass the credit or criminal check. And how do you apply for a job when you don't have a phone or an address?

I was impressed with the people I met tonight. They were better informed and more well read than most of the housed people i know, and had a much better grasp of the socio-political situation of the twin cities, not just in regards to their own circumstances, but to the whole scene. They debated about why they were where they were, and how the community could collectively move up. They were funny and joyful, in a way that I don't know that I could be if I found myself without a home. I was grateful for the experience, and hope to work with them all again. And the next time you see a panhandler on the street, instead of pretending they aren't there, if you don't have the money or don't want to give it, just tell them that. Don't ignore them as though they do not exist. According to the folks I met tonight, they would much prefer you just acknowledged them, even if it is to say no. It's better than being invisible.