Before I arrived at the centre in South Melbourne (where both the ‘Studio A’ students and City Voices members will meet every Wednesday evening henceforth), I must confess that I still carried a great deal of discomfort about the kinds of people who I would be working with for the next 11 weeks. I don’t recall having ever met a mentally disadvantaged person in my entire life and the prospect of collaborating with persons like this filled me with overwhelming trepidation. Questions of doubt and anxiety began to race through my mind, such as; “What kind of performance could we create with both untrained and mentally handicapped individuals?” and “what roles could they fulfil?”. Also, pre-evaluations of my own behaviour started to bother me, for instance; “How do I verbally interact to them- like I would a child or like a fellow adult?”.
After the students and our new co-performers arrived (once their apparently incompetent bus driver dropped them off) my levels of unease were heightened because the experience has surpassed speculation and those people I was so concerned about encountering were right in front of me, which was quite confronting. The surreal atmosphere was also elevated after hearing some of our new colleagues speak (such as Con and Debra) which suddenly caused me to feel tremendously depressed because it hit me just how difficult their lives must be when they seemed to struggle with simple things like constructing sentences.
It was then time for of us all to mingle by each student and community member being paired with a person from the opposite category. We were instructed to find out our partner’s “personal hero”, “worst habit” and “favourite food”. My partner was Spiros who is severely schizophrenic and hence heavily medicated. Spiros spoke of his personal hero being Elvis Presley which struck a connection between us seeming that my hero is also a singer- Björk. Spiros clarified my answers to the three questions with me several times which caused me to anticipate that he would make a mistake when reciting them to the class. When it was time for the group to share what we had learned about one another, Spiros enthusiastically raised his hand to speak of what he had learned about me. He recited without any faults “Joshua’s favourite singer is Björk!” which made all the students laugh in familiarity (as it is common knowledge that I am the Pope of all Björk fans). As this happened my heart sank for I felt so ashamed that I had expected him to make many errors, and I also felt like a spoiled and ungrateful brat for having preconceived notions about these new people in the room. Before this night I was completely unacquainted with this section of our society, and quite frankly I wouldn't have minded continuing to ignore people like this if my eyes weren't pried open.
I was so very delighted at observing how everyone treated each other with utmost respect, and that everyone related to each other on the same level regardless of their attributes and disadvantages. I am still somewhat unsure about the project, but I am completely confident that I shall learn more about human dignity by engaging with these new people then I could experience by listening to a lecturer pontificate in the dreary likes of E100.
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