Month: December 2019

Why We Believe in the Power of Words!

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Some of the members of the TLA Network Council, our governing body, share with you why they believe in our organization, the power of words, and why they just contributed to our fundraising campaign. 

Liz with Lisa Chu, Vanita Leatherwood & Rachel Gabriel

I believe in the TLA Network because it supports a diverse membership of practitioners doing important social justice and community healing work in a time that so desperately needs it. As creative change makers, having such a community is vital to our own practice – it inspires, nourishes, and grows us. It keeps us connected and offers opportunities for us to lift our voices up to make meaningful change in the world. ~ Liz Burke-Cravens

Liz with Power of Words keynoters Gregg Levoy and Noa Baum

I believe in the Power of Words because I have both witnessed and experienced the impact of sharing one’s story, as written or spoken word, and being truly “heard.” This is the action that breaks down barriers and builds and supports community. I believe in the TLA Network because it’s an informed and diverse community that welcomes and honors everyone’s stories. ~ Lyn Ford

I believe in the Power of Words because when we name it, we can tame it. And for many who struggle to be heard or to speak their truth, this commitment to putting our passion into words is not simple or easy. When we are finally able to put our anger or anxiety into words, we create power over what makes us feel powerless. It is through this transformation that we find strength and honor and courage to live our truth. ~ Brenda Mangetti

Joe with his wife Jennifer at the Power of Words conference

I believe in the Power of Words because I have seen their effect on countless occasions. Whether by sparking a fire in one’s heart or calming an inferno in one’s mind, the right words, at the right time, can lead to an undeniable change in a person’s life. ~ Joe Maldonaldo

 

Caleb with a friend at the Power of Words conference

I believe in the Power of Words because good words are like good food: they nourish us, warm our hearts, and prepare us for what lies ahead.I believe in the TLA Network because the work of transformation is not something we can do alone. The Network offers so much value to my artistry — to learn, to connect with others, and to discern where my voice is most needed. ~ Caleb Winebrenner

You believe in the power of words to change lives, build communities, and transform our world. With a few clicks, you can help us grow TLA in the world. Thank you so much for contributing whatever you can!

End-of-Season Sale on classes & Power of Words Conference

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The TLA Network wishes you great peace and harmony as we head toward the end of the year – may you find quiet moments to connect with your voice and your vision during these long winter nights!

There is still time to take advantage of our end-of-season sales on upcoming online classes, as well as time to catch the limited Super Early Bird rate for the 2020 Power of Words Conference – see below for details.

Online Classes Holiday Sale – ends December 25:
Your Memoir as Monologue: Writing Monologues for Healing and Transformation// with Kelly DuMar
January 15 – February 25, 2020
Members – $198.00 – 10% off regular rate
Non-member – $216.00 – 10% off regular rate

The Art of Facilitation: Roots and Blossoms of Facilitation // with Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg & Joy Roulier Sawyer
January 15 – February 25, 2020
Members – $225.00 – 10% off regular rate
Non-member – $243.00 – 10% off regular rate

The Art of Facilitation, Pt 2: Facilitating for Change & Community // with Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg & Joy Roulier Sawyer
June 10 – July 21, 2020
Members – $225.00 – 10% off regular rate
Non-member – $243.00 – 10% off regular rate

Truth to Power: Poets for Our Times with Poets Laureate // with Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg
Through January 31, 2021
Members – $117.00 – 10% off regular rate
Non-member – $135.00 – 10% off regular rate

Narratives of Self & Society: Writing Life Stories for Change // with Dr. Liz Burke-Cravens
Through January 31, 2021
Members – $117.00 – 10% off regular rate
Non-member – $135.00 – 10% off regular rate

Power of Words 2020 – Super Early Bird Rate
$45 off regular rate for conference fee & meals, available through January 31, 2020:
$430 for members
$450 for non-members
Conference registration fee includes all meals, refreshments, and facilities fees throughout the conference.

When Someone Truly “Gets” Us: A Letter From One of Our Founders

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Dear TLAers,

I fell in love with poetry when I was 14, and it saved my life. It wasn’t just filling up journals that gave me meaning, vitality, and sometimes even joy in a traumatic time, but what happened when good witnesses found me and my writing. Having someone truly “get us” — who we are, what we have to say, and what we’re capable of — is at the heart of Transformative Language Arts and this emerging field, profession, and practice.

Like you, I’ve witnessed the continual miracles TLA brings to our lives. That’s why I’m writing you to ask for your support for the TLA Network today, an organization I helped found with others who resonate with writing, storytelling, theater, and other arts for social and personal transformation. Since we launched in 2005, we’ve become a thriving gathering place for people called to teach, heal, advocate, facilitate, organize, and guide people in our ailing world. 

With Grace Paley at the 2006 Power of Words conference

That’s why I’m writing you to ask for your support for theTLA Network today, an organization I helped found with others who resonate with writing, storytelling, theater, and other arts for social and personal transformation. Since we launched in 2005, we’ve become a thriving gathering place for people called to teach, heal, advocate, facilitate, organize, and guide people in our ailing world. 

  • We offer classes to help us amplify our voices and clarify our visions through writing, storytelling, theater, and other arts. 
  • Our 17th annual Power of Words conference, featuring Joy Harjo, will bring us together to learn from each other and find greater ways to sustain our work and ourselves. 
  • The TLA Foundations certification is a deep immersion into TLA theory and practice. 
  • Your Right Livelihood, an intensive training, helps people in the arts, healing arts and social change arts find ways to make a living and a difference. 
  • Our blog and creative, professional journal, Chrysalis, give us a forum to share our experiences, art, and scholarship. 

In the last year, we’ve leapt forward with a wonderful half-time managing director, Hanne Weedon. We’ve strengthened our council, the governing body for TLAN, through the leadership of Liz Burke-Cravens. Many of us feel like we’re on the cusp of significant growth at a time when it’s even more important for people to use their voices for positive change, including how the arts can bridge polarized communities.

Your contribution can bolster scholarships for our conference, classes, trainings, and provide general support for us to grow our capacity to do good in the world. Please also consider, if you haven’t already, renewing your membership or joining us. You can contribute easily and quickly right here.

Wishing us all the power of words for a better world,

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

P.S. If you have a birthday coming up and you’re on Facebook, how about birthday fundraiser for TLAN (we’re part of the Network for Good organizations)? 

The Power of Words Next Fall With Joy Harjo: Register Now!

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Please join us October 30 – November 1, 2020, in Santa Fe, New Mexico for the 17th annual Power of Words Conference: Transformation, Liberation and Celebration Through the Spoken, Written, and Sung Word.  

We are thrilled to have U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo as conference keynoter for our 17th annual conference. We’re also delighted to be going to the Eldorado Hotel & Spa, in the heart of Santa Fe.

Jump in now to catch our Super early bird registration ($45 off the regular conference fee!), which runs through January 31, 2020. The Eldorado, a beautiful hotel and spa in the heart of Santa Fe, is offering us a rate of $139/night is both for singles and doubles, so if you wish to share a room, your lodging costs would be half that amount. Please note that we’ll soon have a roommate-matching site to help facilitate finding a roommate too.

Our conference fee is a modest increase over the 2019 registration fee, but it will look to be higher because it includes all meals, refreshments, and facilities fees (which were previously part of the meals and lodging package).

Discover and share more of your voice with workshops, performances, talking circles, celebration and more, featuring writers, storytellers, performers, musicians, community leaders, activists, educators, and health professionals. 

Learn more about the conference here!

The TLA Network depends on the generosity of you and others like you – consider supporting our work by making an end-of-the-year donation to the Transformative Language Arts Network!  

Please Help the TLA Network Grow! – A Letter From Liz and Hanne

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Dear TLA friends and members,

Thank you for being part of the Transformative Language Arts Network. Our network continues to grow, and we are delighted to be building community with you – one of the powerhouse poets, writers, word-smiths, spoken word artists, storytellers, and deeply engaged community activists, health professionals, educators and others who make up our incredible network!

We write to ask you to consider making a contribution to support the work of the TLA Network, a not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) organization.

Your contribution will go far in helping us expand our reach, and build on our Power of Words conference, online classes, Chrysalis: A Journal of TLA, and blog to offer all kinds of communities ways to amplify voices and visions for a better world.

The TLA Network serves as a supportive community of thoughtful and engaged practitioners, activists, health professionals, educators, and community leaders dedicated to making the world a better place. In these times, finding our voice, sharing our words, and pulling people together to effect change through the power of words is especially essential. With the rise of corporate-controlled media and the increasingly fractured world of social media, it is crucial that our work and our voices find solid purchase, that we develop new audiences, and that our words continue to serve as invaluable calls to action.

TLAN is also on the cusp of greater reach and effectiveness than ever before with a renewed vision, a new director, and our delight in featuring U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo as our keynoter at our next Power of Words conference, October 30 – November 1, 2020, in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

At our recent Power of Words conference this past September, in Phoenix, Arizona, we met many amazing TLA Network members who eagerly shared what a difference the TLA Network and our conference make in their lives. In the short time since we started our roles as TLA Network Chair and Managing Director, we have witnessed how many dozens of people find greater meaning, vitality, and connection through our vibrant online classes, the Your Right Livelihood training, and our TLA Foundations certification.

We imagine you’ve experienced your own stories: friendships forged, collaborations created, and enormous good work enacted. People leave our conference, classes, and trainings feeling reconnected, rejuvenated, energized — inspired to continue doing powerful work that changes the world.

We ask you to contribute toward any of the following:

  • Scholarships for the Power of Words conference so that we can widen the circle to include more folks who are economically disadvantaged, more young people and people of color, those living with disabilities, and others on the margins who have something vital to say and share,
  • Scholarships for our online classes and to support people immersing themselves in right livelihood training,
  • Helping underwrite some of our keynoters, including Joy Harjo, for the 2020 Power of Words conference,
  • Website re-design to better communicate the scope of our work and depth of our vision, or
  • General operating expenses so that we can expand our capacity to reach more who would benefit from the power of words in their lives and communities.

To the power of words,

Hanne Weedon, Managing Director                                     Liz Burke-Cravens, Council Chair

“What Do You Love About Facilitation?” – A Conversation with Joy Roulier Sawyer & Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

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Listen to Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg and Joy Roulier Sawyer talk about how they came to love what can happen when we discover and share our truth in workshops, meetings, and other sessions. For Joy, it started with leading workshops for students at Columbine High School in Colorado after the 1999 shooting, and Caryn found her facilitation legs leading large meetings for people of many backgrounds fighting against a highway that would have impacted the environment, history, and even native American burial mounds.

You can see their upcoming class at www.tlanetwork.org/event-3567618 for more details.

Your Casting Call: A Comic Monologue — By Kelly Dumar

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I’ve written for the stage, and held auditions as a playwright or director, and made difficult casting choices. But I’ve never experienced the thrill, the risk, the humiliation or the anxiety of an audition from inside the actor’s skin. When my youngest daughter discovered a talent and passion for acting in elementary school, I began to understand the actor’s experience of prepping for and going through with an audition. As a stage mom, I witnessed the emotional roller coaster, the hopes, wishes, dreams of success and inevitable failures. I waited on the sidelines, or, if the audition was a play for school, I waited at home, anxiously, for news of whether she had been cast–or not, for a much hoped for part. And, many times she was cast. And, just as many, she wasn’t.

When I began writing the series of monologues for my character, ENVIA! A One-Woman Show, the first scene I imagined was ENVIA! taking charge of an audition after a series of frustrating failures to be cast. It’s a comic monologue I’ll share with you now for the fun of it. I’m teaching “Your Memoir As Monologue” online in January for the Transformative Language Arts Network, and just want to share the fun of writing a comic monologue, inspired by life. ENVIA!, and her many monologues, have been performed and produced by many talented actresses, and all of them have put their own unique spin on this monologue–inspired by their own trials and joys of handling auditions over the years.

My daughter Franci, has, also had the opportunity to perform “Your Casting Call,” and I felt a great sense of satisfaction watching her on stage having the last word.

YOUR CASTING CALL
A monologue by Kelly DuMar

SETUP: An actress ENTERS, as if preparing for an audition, on a bare stage, dressed as The Goddess of Illusion

ENVIA!
(CLEARING HER THROAT, ADJUSTING HER COSTUME, CLOSING HER EYES, PUTTING HER TWO HANDS UP WITH PINKY &  POINTER FINGER TOUCHING AND TAKING A BEAT OR TWO IN THIS POSE. DEEP CLEANSING BREATH, OPENING HER EYES)

Hello! My agent may have led you to believe I’m here to audition, but I’m not here to meet your casting requirements – I’m here to shatter them!  My intention is to inspire your deepest, most authentic, creative response to me.  Oh! By the way, my monologue doesn’t require nudity, but it may inspire it, so, you’re free to remove as much clothing as you choose. . . my name? E-N-V-I-A! That’s all caps – My last name is the exclamation point! Aries is my star sign and Spontaneity and Creativity leapt into alignment the moment I was conceived!  Wherever I go – whomever I meet – here I am! And I am always evolving.  You will love me or loathe me but you will not beat my innate talent into compliance with your incomprehensible expectations and then reject me for my lack of originality!  I’m sorry – I didn’t mean for that to sound jaded.  I may be receptive to having an experience with you – if we are able to co-create a medium of mutual expression that sustains our integrity as artists and human beings.
(Her stomach growls)
I may also be receptive to an offer of a protein shake. Do you mind if I ask if you got enough sleep last night?  Are you open to feedback?  It’s just that you would have made a better impression on me today if you had gotten a good night’s sleep. Perhaps you were dreaming of me – And, if that’s the case, well, whatever you do – don’t stop!
(She gets ready to leave)
I don’t do call backs. If I’m interested, I’ll follow up.  No worries – I’ve got your number

END OF SCENE

Here are some links to my published plays and monologues where you can learn more about my writing for the stage.


All text and photos ©KelllyDuMar. Do not use or reproduce without permission. For permission to perform the monologue, contact Kelly DuMar at kellydumar@kellydumar.com.