911 MEDIA ARTS Screening and Workshop

  

  
Kira arrived in Seattle on Monday afternoon, so we were all together for the Tuesday night screening at 911 Media Arts. Sadly, it was our last screening with Kate since we are moving on down the coast to Portland.

We welcomed everyone with a short performative introduction and another warm up. We had an intimate, enthusiastic audience, who, after learning the words from Fight Back- "I said my people work hard, put on your leotard and/push that Bush away/ now fight back! fight back! fight back! fight back!" sang along during the workout.


  

One of the main goals of our Civic Engagement Tour is encouraging and registering people (especially young people!) to vote. We are partnering with Music for America to register voters. At the 911 Media Arts screening, we registered three eighteen year olds. In our talk back we asked the three of them to comment on how the video may or may not have affected their politics. One was inspired to be more active in his daily life about the issues he believed in, since he recognized that he could "go out and do something", another wanted to learn more about the issues we presented in the workout, and the last one told us the video made her think about how each person, inside of ourselves, has the power to make change.

Hooray for the youth!

During the talkback, we also received the comment that it would be fun to have even more audience participation during the screening. Audience members were excited to move their bodies more, to become physically engaged with the messages displayed on screen just as the performers were doing.

;

  
Following this suggestion, we modified our workshop plan for the evening and instead held an audience participation screening of the instructional yoga video in the DVD extras, from our original December 2004 version. A little release felt good to everyone. We finished the screening, ate some veggie crub at Teapot, and got into bed to be ready to leave for Portland fresh in the morning.


  

In the morning, Kira and Julia did an interview for Oregon's Jefferson Daily, at Jefferson Public Radio . Our segment will be aired tomorrow at 4:30 and 5:30 pacific time. We were on the road by 10:30 (1 hour and a half later than planned) and headed out to Portland. The Beat Back Bush Civic Engagement Tour has begun!!

Now we are in Portland, bellies full, off to wine country to sleep...

Ashland here we come!