A Celebration of Work to Make a Better World - published on SantaFe.com

A Celebration of Work to Make a Better World

Wise Fool New Mexico’s “Ignite!: Raising Truth in the Streets”

The official New Mexico State question—“Red or green?”—refers to one’s preference for red or green chile.  However, the very same question might be applied to one’s preference for the type of May Day (May 1st) celebration one embraces—red for the day’s connection to the international labor movement or green for the day’s pagan fertility roots.  From its Roman beginnings in praising Flora, the goddess of flowers, through pagan festivals such as the Celtic Beltane and the Germanic Walpurgis Night down to the current neo-pagan Samhain, May 1 has celebrated the end of the wintry months and the beginnings of a more fruitful, green season.  I had my own brush with this sort of May Day as a guest lecturer at the University of St. Andrews  (Scotland) where students party on the village’s beach on the evening of April 30 with the hardiest among them running naked into the ocean at dawn on May 1.  I also participated in the tamer half-Christian, half-secular Dance around the Maypole and the Crowning of the Queen of the May at my Roman Catholic elementary school.

However, for most of my life, May 1st has been a red day for me.  My Irish immigrant grandfather who was a union shop steward would celebrate the working man on International Workers Day.  The designation of May 1 as a national holiday in over seventy-five countries is somewhat ironic for Americans:  Though the date is based on an American event—The Haymarket Bombing and subsequent political trials in Chicago in 1886—and the Knights of Labor and AFL adopted the date in 1889 in its pursuit of the eight-hour work day, the US government wished to disassociate itself from the radical leftists of the Second International in Paris (1889) who while celebrating the centennial of the French Revolution also championed workers’ rights.  As a result, America honors its workers in September and has officially designated May 1 (during the gray days of the Eisenhower administration in1958) as “Loyalty Day” and “Law Day.”   What Wise Fool New Mexico is planning for May 1, 2010, is to combine these two traditions of May Day—the pagan and the protest elements--into a joyous but politically necessary community celebration.

I

Wise Fool New Mexico is a “non-profit theatre arts project created and staffed by local women artists with a passion for creating the world we envision through the arts.”  Now in its tenth year of residency in Santa Fe, WFNM’s mission is “to ignite imagination, build community, and promote social justice through performances and hands on experiences in the arts of circus, puppetry, and theatre” (www.wisefoolnewmexico.org).

WFNM has worked in over thirty New Mexican schools, produced eighteen original theatre and circus shows, performed throughout the state’s library system, and offered nine years of circus camps and afterschool programs.  The organization has won many awards for excellence and community service, including the Mayor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts.

WFNM’s “Ignite!” event will take place on May 1, 2010, in solidarity with the millions throughout the world who celebrate this date as International Workers Day.  In this time of economic uncertainty and struggle, there is an opportunity to redefine “work” and how to evaluate these definitions.  A March, 2010, press release from WFNM articulates the scope and purpose of this community event: “On May 1, 2010, we join together in Santa Fe to inspire our local community and honor the many kinds of work that are done here in Northern New Mexico—to celebrate community efforts, social and environmental justice struggles, cultural creation, harvesting from and healing the land, the work of everyday survival and of immigrant rights, and the struggle for workers’ rights.”

II

In a telephone interview on April 5, 2010, with co-artistic director of WFNM Amy Christian, we discussed how a decision was reached to create a May Day event here in Santa Fe:  “We [WFNM] wanted to celebrate our tenth year anniversary in Northern New Mexico and the twenty-one years of our ‘amazing journey’ by going back to our street theatre roots (San Francisco, 1989) with a puppet pageant.  The May Day event celebrates the social justice milestone of International Workers Day, and offers a community-wide opportunity for those who wish to participate and make their voices heard.”  Groups that have committed to participate reflect the wide diversity of Santa Fe, including the Tibetan Association of Santa Fe, Home School Coop, El Centro Comunitario, Capital High School’s Gear Up Project, Wild Earth Guardians, Warehouse 21, Teatro Paraguas, and 350.org.

WFNM has been inspired in their puppetry and community focus by the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre (Minneapolis) whose founder Sandy Spieler was a personal inspiration to the group and whose organization has since 1974 annually held the largest May Day event in the United States with crowds approaching 40,000 people in recent years.  WFNM is honoring those who have fought the good fight and won by creating images of such as individuals as Rosa Parks and such groups as Cochabamba in the Bolivian-Bechtel water rights case.

Among the many people who have helped with “Ignite!” in its formative stages, Amy Christian especially praised the organizing skills and work of Carolyn Cooley and the Northern New Mexico contingent led by Rebekah Tarin and Alessandra Ogren who are working with such groups as Tewa Women United, Penasco Youth, Roots and Wings School, and United World College.

III

“Ignite!: Raising Truth in the Streets” will take place from 11 A.M. to 3 P.M. on Saturday, May 1, 2010, with a procession that will be begin from the Department of Labor Parking Lot across the street from DeVargas Park and process to the Santa Fe Railyard Park where a puppet pageant will be performed at approximately 12:30 P.M.  Amy Christian revealed that the structure of the performance will stand the traditional storyline of activist puppet theatre on its head:  “Instead of starting at a place of conflict or chaos, the pageant will start from how awesome the world is and can be.  Then a corporate monster is born that changes and devours everything.  A period of grieving and mourning will follow. The power of our shared sadness will inspire actions that will disarm the corporate monster and bring the focus back to the collective and positive power of the people united.  The audience will be asked to contribute their words and poetry at the conclusion of the piece and, in the spirit of change, be asked to come up to add to a huge community effort—probably a puppet with many faces—which will be raised as the finale.”

For those individuals and groups that wish to participate in the actual creation of the pageant, there will be a series of FREE community workshops at Wise Fool Studio (2778 Agua Fria, Unit D, Santa Fe, in the Agua Fria Business Park near Siler Road) at the following dates and times:

Saturdays from 12-4 P.M. on April 10, 17, & 24.
Thursdays from 4-8 P.M. on April 15, 22, & 29.
Sunday from 12-4 P.M. on April 25.
Rehearsal of procession and pageant: Thursday at 6 P.M. on April 29.

(The first two hours of the Saturday classes will have structured teaching on the stages of giant puppet building.  There will be experienced puppet–builders on hand and free materials to use in the creation of puppets, banners, signs, props, and masks.

Participants may attend as many of the workshops as they wish.)