Building Trust and Affection

Jan Cohen-Cruz: Episode Four: Building Trust and Affection

In this podcast we intertwine first-person tales of prison theatre workshops across three continents reflecting on the prison system, theatre, collectivity, and love. The frame is a love story from one of the workshops between Finn, who was incarcerated, and me, Jan, who cofacilitated.

Finn K.: It took me like a year or something, I forget. But I’d just sit there in my chair in the back and then I get up there, and I did an improv for about four seconds, and I ran back to my chair. That’s how bad it was, you know. But it got better and better. It’s great because I related to everything that was going on in there. All the scenes. It was great. Fun, you know.

Jan: I felt like I was there to support everyone. Anyone ask me to be in a scene, I can’t think of–

Finn: You were 100 percent, you were 100 percent.… In the workshop I loved everybody in there, everybody in there I loved. To different degrees, you know. And then I’d just accept them for where they were, what they’re doing, where they’re at. Like the drama workshop, you know, made it different, you know?

Jan: In this episode relationships of all kinds are manifested-–romantic, familial, ancestral. With all their joys and complications. Here’s Terry Kinney and Kathryn Erbe stepping in to play Finn and me.

Younger Jan [Played by Kathryn Erbe]: One evening in February of 1972, after the workshop had been meeting weekly for over three months, Richard and I got to the prison and were told that the facility was closed to outsiders “indefinitely.” The guards would only say that there had been a fire. I was enormously agitated, wondering what was happening to people I had come to care about, locked in there. By then we had been visiting some of the guys outside of workshop, in what were called “window visits,” like in old black and white movies: the inmate on one side of a heavy plate glass window, the visitor on the other, speaking to each other through telephone receivers. The abrupt loss of these connections, too, was painful.

Younger Finn [Played by Terry Kinney]: The fire was one of the many outcomes of the new progressive guard at Trenton. I’d been settled into a creative way of life made possible by the extreme conditions enforced by the old guard. They left me alone, making clear I could be myself in any way as long as I didn’t violate rules of conduct—easy for me, and a great deal, Heaven—never before was I left to find out who I am on my own terms, no restrictions, and be fed, housed, and clothed during the process. Under that cruel regime, I had more freedom than ever before in my life. Then in came a new progressive guard that would become my true enemy, seeking to transform me into their image and likeness, and unconsciously to rob me of my radically unique experiences.

Before the arrival of these progressive administrators, the only education the prison provided was basic reading and writing classes. The war against the old establishment began with a new education department, the prison’s new heart and soul. The guards focused on destroying, or at least discrediting, that Alamo, to rob it of its expanding power and influence on politicians to support their mission with an army of educators, social workers, and psychologists. The guards defeated them through the tried-and-true methodology of divide and conquer. 

At this particular moment, the guards had identified all the members of two violent Black factions ideologically at war with one another and shipped one of the factions to another prison to avoid a blood bath. The guards’ first major assault on the Alamo was bringing the transferred faction back to Trenton and giving them an office in the education department, sanctioned by the education director in his eternal quest to be politically correct about racial discrimination. He would not permit this newly arrived Black faction to be discriminated against. But the guards never alerted him to the ongoing war between these factions, so the progressives were stunned when a fire destroyed the faction’s newly-acquired office.

Younger Jan: A few days after the fire, Richard and I each got an identical letter from Finn. The underlying cause of the fire, he explained, was different factions of inmates who the administration set against each other, through the bestowing and withholding of privileges, a divide and conquer strategy to make it easier for them to keep order in the prison. The fire had been set in the office of the group that edited the prison newspaper. Finn suspected that it was set not by an enemy but by someone wanting to bring attention to the favors that led to all the infighting, so it was a good thing. It revealed that any inmate group’s power was actually held by the prison administration. 

Finn wrote that his perspective came from what he had learned about power from an inmate who held ongoing conversations with a circle of men. Finn likened it to Plato’s dialogues with his students, asking and answering questions to develop critical thinking and draw out ideas and underlying biases. 

The letter floored me, providing insight into the workings of prison life. I was surprised that the learning circle Finn described existed in a prison, which I’d always imagined as antithetical to free intellectual exchange. I was moved that Finn saw the fire as a good thing, even though it meant he, too, was locked down in a 5’x7’ cell. I was struck to discover how someone who grew up without books, schooling, or encouragement of any kind could be the deep thinker and articulate writer that Finn was. 

I wrote back, thanking him. I commented that the prison power dynamics with its trading of favors for certain kinds of behavior reminded me of gender relationships, like women who get privileges by cozying up to powerful men, arrangements that were being challenged at that time. 

Every thought I wrote him went towards making two chairs alongside each other, a room where we could sit, a little house where we could live. 

I sent him The Dialectics of Sex by Shulamith Firestone. He wrote back immediately, pulling out lines from the book that especially spoke to him, like “But what is natural is not necessarily human.” He sent a check to pay for it. I wrote him that the check was unnecessary; it was a gift. He thanked me, writing, “The check doesn’t negate how beautiful it was of you to share it with me. I believe you are thirtieth century enough to dig that money is just a practical matter so the really important things can run smoothly.” And so began a deluge of letters.

We wrote to each other about books, movies, politics, and philosophy. We wrote how we felt moment by moment; we wrote. We took apart our childhoods. He never trivialized the relative ease of my childhood in relation to the harshness of his own, taking my formative years as seriously as his. We wrote about our everyday lives. We shared our takes on the workshop and the participants. 

We fell in love. 

We wrote outpourings of our love to each other. As anyone who has had a long-distance love affair before the existence of the internet knows, letters become a space to be together. I focused on him, and my consciousness curled into a place inside me for just the two of us. Every thought I wrote him went towards making two chairs alongside each other, a room where we could sit, a little house where we could live. 

Time slowed down, so careful were we both to find fitting words to carry our feelings and thoughts to the other. I didn’t know how to take time in a romance before, but now time was what we had most.

Younger Finn: When I saw Jan on that first day of workshop, I felt in the core of my being she was part of my destiny, what would be the greatest adventure of my life if we could somehow find our way to each other. In that light, along with a singular desire birthed in my mind from my body at age seventeen—to coalesce as one with a woman into eternity—it’s clear why she was the first woman I ever fell in love with. Never again did it go that deep. It became one of the many great blessings bestowed on me in being true to my destiny.

Younger Jan: It was wonderful for me, in the beginning, to be romantically involved with someone where sex was off the table. Plenty of people in prison found ways to have sex, but Finn and I were engrossed in the slow pace of our courtship. I had left home at fifteen, which was unusual in a middle-class Jewish household. It was ostensibly to go to a theatre high school in another state but equally because I found my hometown so toxic—antisemitic, racist, the school valuing basketball players and cheerleaders above all else. 

When I left, I was already plotting to never live at home again, for one thing to propel me into another. I feared that if I became sexually active, I would get pregnant and have to go home. Sexual abstinence for me was a condition of personal liberation. Every touch, every look with Finn was full and deeply satisfying for us both. 

We became a family in drama. It was a healing place.

Kathy Randels: Mama Glo, I got to know you through the drama club in Louisiana. You became my mama, along with so many women on the compound. And even some of the guards! I think you were the first woman in drama that I trusted that deeply. Your giving spirit and ability to love unconditionally is astonishing. Your manifestation of the Christ you love and serve is humbling to behold and receive. One of the greatest gifts of your love, faith, good works, and deep relationships is that we, your children, strive to emulate you and follow your footsteps.

You always called me your angel. Words have power. You brought out the best in me. You were certainly my angel. Encouraging me, asking me to share the stories of my life and work. You would always say, “When you tell us a story, it takes us outside of these walls. Carry us with you. If my body can’t leave, I can leave with my spirit.” 

Gloria “Mama Glo” Williams: We became a family in drama. It was a healing place. I protected drama with my life. One thing I know: If I spilled my guts about the ugliest thing that happened in my life, if you told somebody they’d say, “Mama Glo gonna get you!” What went on in drama stayed in drama. That was the place we could come and talk about the ugliest things that happen in life. Jackie Williams said, “I walked into drama and found the strongest woman on the compound crying and sharing. I knew that’s where I belong!” I’ll never forget those words.

Ausett, when you first came to Drama Club, you said you didn’t intend to stay. What happened?

Ausettua Amor Amenkum: It was an ancestral connection. I felt connected to all of you. I didn’t expect that at all. I was just coming for one Saturday. It was a pure example of how love just sprouts. Especially after going to the prison training where everything was “don’t, don’t, don’t”—"don’t touch them,” “don’t this,” “don’t that.” And I got to the drama club, and there were all these Black women, some my daughter’s age, some my mother’s age. It was love.

Jan: Jess Thorpe and warden George Ferguson in Scotland.

Jess Thorpe: It’s all about value, isn’t it? It’s about sending a clear message: You are worth this. You have value. 

George Ferguson: It was really quite moving for me because my son was the same age. I kept thinking if he was ever in a similar position where he was incarcerated, how would he be treated? I would want him to be valued.

Jess: It’s useful to think about it in that way. How is this child my child? What is our responsibility to each other as human beings? It reminds me of another of my favorite moments from that project. Before one of the shows we had an audio desk set up, and the guys were allowed to play music. It was an informal attempt to give them a little freedom, just being able to DJ and “be” in the space. Then one of them put on a Grease Mega mix and we all started to dance. They danced. You danced. Other staff danced. Everyone in the room danced. It was such an abstract moment of being in a high security prison in a room with disco lights on. It was just a beautiful slice of normality, and they were all really joyful and content, and I found it probably of all the things, one of the most moving. That and when I was doing a speech on the last day and the group did not tell me I had lipstick on my face when on the first day they would have made a laughingstock out of me.

George: Ha! In moments like that I noticed that the young people had started to see you as part of their gang, if you know what I mean. Is that ok to say? I just mean that they cared about you.

Jess: I get it. We were part of their community. That was something we wanted and hoped for. But there is also something interesting that I want to dig into about that idea. I remember when I did a similar project in a different prison, and a similar thing happened where the group was really emotionally connected to the work. At the end of that show, they did a big emotional speech about how much they cared about me and the project and each other and what they had achieved. A complaint was made that the display of emotion was inappropriate, and I found it hard to understand. I just kept thinking… how can the arts communicate their worth properly without it seeming like we’re crossing a line? 

The thing about drama is that we’re dealing with emotions, right? Although I have clear boundaries about what material is and isn’t for the performance. I recognize it’s not therapy; we don’t want to open boxes that we can’t close. But at the same time, groups are offering themselves and trusting themselves so we need to respect that. Because of course there are important emotional boundaries, and we are professionals, so we have ways of working with safety and care. You can’t share all your personal information. You have to keep yourself and others safe. You have to be respectful and trauma-informed, and you have to think about what might be triggering. But where is the place for love and care in the work? This is the practice of the social. It is about being human. Feelings are involved. And that’s ok, right?

George: Absolutely. Of course.

Jess: For me it's always been about creating opportunities for individuals to build a more positive version of themselves and to care… like care as a radical act…. because I think it's super dangerous in our society when people don't care. If they don't care about themselves or each other or the society we live in, then that's when we start to have a problem. What’s really good about performing arts projects is that we have to work together as a group; it's not competitive. We have to be a community. I always work with devised theatre, making a performance together from scratch, so there is always a dialogue involved. You get to share your ideas and test your opinions in a supportive environment. And it is not just about doing a show—it is about being human.

Jan: Kevin Bott, who led theatre workshops in prison, and Alexander Anderson, who first participated in and now co-leads workshops with Kevin.

Kevin Bott: When I think about my healing journey, which was very uncomfortable, I know that it only happened because you and I came into this space together and built a relationship over many years. So when the shit hit the fan, there were stakes for me. Potentially losing your friendship meant something. Having you reflect back to me something that was painful to see—I took that seriously. In the same way I had to take my wife’s feedback seriously. That’s what forced me to do the actual work on myself. I stood to lose things I cared about—including the respect and friendship of a person I respected and cared about.

It’s rare for white people to have stakes that involve people not like them. And those stakes existed for me because you and I were in a space together, over time. This theatre space is amazing because it brings people like me and you together, and if we care about the work, then we have to work through these painful issues. So, whereas in regular American life, I think you’d agree that Black and Brown people have to deal with white people, with white culture, on some level–white people really don’t have to ever deal with non-white people and non-white culture. It is 100 percent possible for white people to exist in worlds that do not include non-white people except as busboys and landscapers and cleaning ladies. And if that’s true, how can this country ever heal from the dynamics that we’ve been talking about?

I want to say to white people: Figure out how to be in non-white spaces. Or non-hetero or non-male spaces. People in dominant, privileged positions need to put themselves in spaces with non-dominant, non-privileged people. And build relationships. And listen. And not be in charge. And be willing to take feedback, painful though it may be. And eventually, you might be lucky enough to find a friend who can help you grow and heal. So Alex, I thank you for your friendship, man. And I thank you for being willing to be in this conversation with me over time, even when I know it’s been hard to stick with me. I’m a better person for knowing you. Thank you.

Alex Anderson: Well, listen, brother, I’m very happy that we are reconnecting and going forward to do more reentry work together. I hope our conversation will help others deal with the impact of racial trauma and how it shows up in our lives. This is my last word: Doing reentry work is sometimes very difficult and frustrating. I wanted to quit many times. I learned that healing is always a very painful and uncomfortable feeling, especially dealing with our own history. But our healing comes when we honestly start seeing, hearing, helping, and creating space for ourselves and others to improve and obtain better prospects, especially those who are made to feel like outcasts.

Younger Jan: After a few weeks the prison reopened to outsiders and the drama workshop resumed. Finn and I were energized in each other’s presence, inspiring us to go further in the workshop than we had before. Having a context meant so much. The guys in the workshop picked up pretty soon that something had shifted between us. Finn was known as Red; the guys took to calling me J. Red. My hair was never as red as his, but I loved the connection. Richard chose a new name for himself, too—Jack. It was more easy-going than Richard, maybe a personality he hoped to grow into.

I had long fantasized a partner who passionately shared my work and intimate life and amazingly found that in Finn, who cared as much about the workshop and the street theatre as I did. The prison workshop was a natural extension of the street theatre, both reaching more people as performers and audiences than was the norm. Our letters intensified, energized by our weekly collaboration, and a way to be together between workshop sessions.

Younger Finn: With Jan during the many hours of preparing our first showcase inside ever-deepening affection, I fell all the way in; and the irony is that through it, something beautiful, even magical began to unfold, that I could have never imagined. One night at workshop, Jan and I took an extended personal break together off in a corner, sitting in school chairs with attached little tabletops. We traveled all the way in, classroom disappearing, and at one point either Jan or I placed the tip of an index finger on top of the tip of the other’s index finger, and as those fingers rested there, a magnificent flow of libido energy began to flow at rapid speed throughout my body, yet never finding a concentration at the genitals, no conquering, no proving anything, no providing needs fulfillment, sexual and otherwise, and thus no hell of reciprocity present in the Fair Exchange Act of consumer culture. It was an unrehearsed, unprepared gifting of one to the other in a constant flow, totally open in love and trust, united inside a libido out of control, a roller-coaster ride: relentless sexual energy equally distributed through every molecule of my body, an experience I would never trade for an orgasm. For in that rabid, directionless energy I experienced Jan and I becoming the biblical One Flesh.

I learned through experience the body will adapt to the decision not to live in lust, deepening one’s bond with the other through deepening the affectional life, with the assistance of libido freed from the primary focus on genitals. Then when genital orgasms occur, they will be an outgrowth of an affectional life, a gestalt union, not confined within a sadomasochistic factory where the man and woman work on an assembly line providing sexual titillations, always leading to disappointment, and usually to divorce.

Younger Jan: The workshop, the letters, my daydreams of a future with Finn, street theatre planning, the visits—those were the parameters of my life. They all bespoke the possibility of living in a beloved community, ever expanding, with a loving mate and meaningful work. Finn and I lived together in the alternative universe that we little by little constructed, grounded in the dynamic space of the workshop and extended through our letters and visits, practicing being the selves we aspired to be in the world. 

We were also doing prison workshops in Rahway and Clinton. One day Richard said to me, “Now that we’re offering so many workshops in New Jersey, I want to get a house on the Jersey shore. It’ll make our commuting easier. As the people who are most committed to the work get out, they can come live with us.”

“And become part of the street theatre.”

“Exactly.”

As Richard assumed, I wanted to live in the house and was happy to pay rent towards his mortgage instead of to the landlord of my studio apartment in Manhattan. At the time I didn’t catch the contradiction of calling the house a collective when he alone was responsible for it and, without ever questioning it, making all the decisions about it, beginning with choosing the particular house. I found the house rather unattractive, but on the plus side, it had a bunch of bedrooms, a good size kitchen, and was walking distance to the beach. One of the other actors from the street theatre, a sweetheart of a guy, a Vietnam vet named Billy, who facilitated the workshop with Richard at Rahway and sometimes came with us to Trenton, moved in, too. My friend Kate, who was beginning to facilitate workshops with me at the New Jersey women’s prison in Clinton, was considering moving in as well.

Doc, Richard’s boyfriend, joined us next. I don’t know when I realized that Richard was bisexual and Doc was his paramour. More surprising was the particular person that Doc was. It was hard for me to see the attraction. Doc had a job that he was in no way passionate about, in medical technology. He had no interest in theatre or social justice so far as I could tell, and although he called himself a musician, never heard him practicing, albeit he occasionally came to the prison workshop to accompany scenes with his electric guitar. 

Doc was Black, which meant a lot to Richard, like some sort of badge of good politics. And he was much younger, so Richard was very comfortable always teaching him about political writers and thinkers. The conversations did not generally last long before Doc put on his headphones and zoned out on his portable cassette recorder. 

Amadi, a new guy in the workshop, put his girlfriend Amina in touch with us. Amina tricked for a living and had gone through a slow patch and lost her apartment. Amina, Richard, and I went for coffee before the workshop one day, when Amina was visiting Amadi, to see if she might move in with us.

Richard began: “The first thing to know is that the house is a collective, Amina.”

“Do we each get our own room?” she asked skeptically.

“Of course,” he said. “It’s up to you who you share your room with. A collective means that we all contribute to and share what we have and support each other. It’s like socialism but instead of the state owning everything, we do, together.”

Amina: “That’s what socialism means? And here I thought it was some terrible thing! Yeah, I’m down for some collectivity.” And she moved in.

I liked getting to know Amina the way you do when you see each other bleary eyed before coffee, hear each other’s music seeping under their bedroom door, cook together, and get into impromptu conversations over the dinner table.

One day Amina asked me, “What’s the deal with Doc? Is Richard his sugar daddy?”

I knew Doc liked Richard’s money, but I assumed he liked Richard, too. Amina gave me pause for thought. “I honestly don’t know,” I said. 

Younger Finn: A major event occurred not long into the workshop. Richard decided to buy a house with lots of bedrooms close to all the prisons where they led workshops and walking distance to the beach, with the intention of forming a permanent commune that prisoners upon release could join. Right away I had a vision of Jan and me being part of a true creative community, what I viewed as a permanent adventure. It was a utopian vision I latched onto, and was my singular focus for the future, the only one I had ever entertained after understanding the chances were that I would end up in prison the rest of my life.

Younger Jan: As soon as the prison reopened to civilians after the fire, my visits with Finn intensified. We began to have contact visits, too, an hour to be physically together twice a month in a doorless cell in what used to house inmates with death sentences. We embraced, kissed, and held hands. Though guards patrolled the corridor surveilling us, we reveled in our relative privacy and physical contact.

But one day when we were sitting close together on a contact visit, Finn said it was time to tell me why he was in prison: that he had killed a man. The floor beneath me sunk into the earth. I went cold and hot at once. And I despaired that it meant he must have a terribly long sentence—two, actually, I was to learn: one imposed by the state and one by himself.

Younger Finn: I’d been involved with a criminal network that included a woman named Judy who I’d known since we were both teens. Back then when she was homeless, I let her stay where I was living until she found somewhere of her own. I never took advantage of her, even when she offered sex, which I saw as her falling into self-deprecation, even though in her conscious mind it was no doubt an expression of gratitude. She paid me back in spades, being the only person to ever bail me out from a reformatory. 

When I was twenty years old, I decided to go whole hog, master bank robbing and truck hijackings, and with a new identity move to Scotland, never to return to America. In the meantime, she and her boyfriend Danny gave me an apartment to use, money for food and clothes, and the use of a car until I found employment. They told me I could use their business as a job reference. In those days, employers freely exchanged all information about prospective employees. What I didn’t know was Danny and Judy would give horrible references, telling employers they caught me stealing, had to fire me. I was in a strange, dark place, and I couldn’t even get jobs on manufacturing lines or doing janitorial work—never a return call. All of it was a set up to get my empathic mind drowning in a rabid sense of indebtedness with my staple, ensured honor as my guide, for Judy knew better than anyone my empathic nature. 

Just then a member of the criminal network that Judy, Danny, and I were involved with got arrested and, although out on bail, everyone was certain he would turn state’s evidence on all of us to escape a jail sentence. The gang wanted him dead. Because I was leaving the country, Judy begged me to be the one to do it, saying he was an absolute obstacle to her and Danny’s happiness. How could I do otherwise? I was 100 percent opposed to it in every fiber of my nervous system, but agreed to it, out of an endless sense of indebtedness to Judy.

Killing the man was definitely a cowardly act of suicide, for I did die totally inside. I did seek to die in the electric chair, a lot like what Judas went through. I eventually found out that the man I killed was innocent, and he came from a solid nuclear family where he was loved, and was entering adulthood, about to get married and have children. I destroyed him, the same time destroying his entire family, all because a member of our gang used to be in business with him and was scared he might report something to the police after he left the business on ethical grounds. It had nothing to do with a threat to our network of thieves. And that gang member had a $50,000 business-partner insurance policy on him. The man I murdered face-to-face, hearing his voice, making him real in every sense, his death thereby infusing into every molecule of my being a strangeness of having removed myself from any possibility for life in any fulfilling way for the rest of my days. That space became a ground to my constitution. 

Younger Jan: What I remember next is going to a close friend’s apartment and dropping acid. In that state, I walked through the crime as Finn had described it to me and had the distinct impression that on one level his crime was about killing his father. The guy Finn killed was keeping a woman down the way his father had always suppressed his mother. His mother was the only one in the family who looked after him; the woman, Judy, was the only one who ever got Finn bail. He could not say no to anything she asked of him for she had never said no to him. What had the state ever done for him? And his father and brother had often broken the law. The important thing, they’d said, was not to get caught. 

I don’t remember feeling any differently about him, knowing what he’d done. I had slipped into another world that now made more sense to me than the one I was from. All the guys in the workshop had done terrible things to end up at Trenton, but they had had terrible things done to them, too, and they were my life at that time. I wanted to embrace their norms; the norms from my world seemed hypocritical and stacked against anyone born without money.

Younger Finn: I had imposed a sentence on myself after killing an innocent man. The collective house was a sign, the possibility of some kind of glorious reprieve, bestowed from the unknown. Certainly it wasn’t chance. It was like how my death sentence in the electric chair was mysteriously revoked after I had discerned, in depth, why my electrocution was important for all involved, myself included, and I stopped fighting it, doing all I could to ensure it. Then on the day of jury selection, a miracle happened, and I ended up with thirty years instead of death.

I had never expected to get out. I never even expected to want to get out. But then the collective house appeared on my horizon, the universe offering me one chance to return to the land of the living. I thought the house, with Jan, could be a place to begin a new life.

The only realm of lasting joy is community grounded in love, not ambition. A love-bonded unity is at the heart of a true community, whereas the postmodern man-woman makes the first priority getting their endless needs met. Then, if it is one’s penchant, but not as an ethical requirement, one can attend to the needs of others. Community, once the universal ideal, had been replaced with the ideal of radical autonomy, the two in a permanent adversarial relationship.

Younger Jan: Finn could only allow himself to live if his life could manifest values antithetical to the act that now defined him. He found it in the vision of the collective house—a hunger for community, for a meaningful and good altruistic life—which I shared with him. We nonetheless diverged in what we saw as the obstacles to attaining communion. Finn saw nearly everyone as only out to get their “endless needs” met. I’ve known many people who were at the same time committed to community and caught up with personal ambition and fulfilling individual desires.

Why, to Finn, was it so absolute, one or the other? I believed that cultural conditioning glorifying individual ambition was an obstacle to community but that the two impulses could and often did exist together in the same person, including me.

Younger Finn: I was lying on my cot one late evening soon after, totally absorbed in thinking about Jan and our life together on the commune once released. Then, a vision appeared of us walking down the beach, relaxed in the presence of each other, a relaxation in love I had never known—not permitted in the coil position that I usually adopted. There was nothing to say, just relaxing in love. It turned out Jan was walking down the beach near the house during the exact time I had my vision.

Younger Jan Around this time he wrote me a letter that said, 

Younger Finn: “My mind fell into a stereotype today—I wanted to marry you. Don’t panic. Papers are not necessary for us to prove anything. It was just a cultural thought because I love you so much.”

Jan: So there it was–my dream of having a partner in life and in work, making theatre together. Tune in for episode five to hear more about that and about performances created in all the workshops.

The theme music you are hearing was composed by Sasha Paris-Carter, the musicians are Daniel Knapp on cello, Dionisio Cruz on percussion, Joanna Lu on viola, Mary Knapp on accordion, and Rene Ferrer on bass guitar. The song Intercession, also composed by Paris-Carter, featured Kenny Butler on piano, Dionisio Cruz on percussion, and vocalist Haja Worley.

This is Jan Cohen-Cruz, signing off.