I began the practice of picking an annual keyword as I was leaving music school and starting my artistic career. It’s hard to believe that I am now selecting my 16th one.

For me, keywords take the place of resolutions because they connect to other words and other ideas in both direct and more organic ways. These connections — how they show up and link up — feel a lot like how I improvise. 

Last year’s word was WONDER. I chose it because I hoped to spend the year investigating my artistic ideas and appreciating the beauty of the journey to those discoveries. 

Then in May, I received an invitation to take part in a performing arts fellowship called Naked Stages. Naked Stages is program originated to help emerging artists (2-10 years of creating original generative work) to create a solo piece from conception through on-stage performance. With the support of the fellowship events and activities (workshops, a conference, work in progress sessions etc.), I created a solo show combining my prose, songs and place-making practices. 

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I’ll readily admit to spending a healthy chunk of 2024 wondering how to make a theatrical solo performance.😉 In the final program evaluation, I remarked that I often arrived to work sessions feeling like I hadn’t done my homework. But as each deadline arrived, I discovered I was able to create something. And, in hindsight, I can see that I simply decided that I would decide rather than asking someone else — program staff, my artist cohort — for answers. In fact, even though sometimes I kind of hoped someone would tell me how to create my show, I never asked anyone to tell me how.

Because I knew it needed to be my show.

As an improviser, I practice (and practice) trusting my intuition and this fellowship was all about exploring my own artistic process(es). And since at the heart of the project, I had to create a performance, I realized that I have been developing (and am developing) a multi-disciplinary praxis to do just that for quite some time.

For example, I knew I wanted the piece to include new songs/music so I returned to my 30 Days of Songtaneous Songs project to encourage musical/melodic ideas. September’s 30 Days sparked the gathering songs I incorporated into my show. 

The year before, I’d begun some visual art practices (no one was/is more surprised than I), such as collaging and assembling what my friend LN calls “emotional terrariums” that helped me uncover parts of the my performance piece, including much of my “set design.”  (Note: my stage is not at all naked. 🤷🏽‍♀️😉)

Recently, these visual undertakings have stimulated my curiosity about graphic scores and other approaches to improvised compositions. 

I guess even this blog could be considered part of my artistic praxis.

Hmm … was praxis my word for 2025? 🤔

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As is pretty common, I thought about (and discarded) a number of words for 2025. I usually begin contemplating in December and friends & family share ideas for their words, which inspires a list of words like …

• action (too demanding)
• witness (not active enough)
• momentum (not focused enough)
• praxis (been there, done that?),
• compose (I have some music-making projects planned this year … )
• peace (“what the world needs now … ?”)

And then, as sometimes happens, a word simply … arrives.

Okay, technically, I was reviewing my keywords posts from years past and came upon a list of words I’d included to try to inspire others and ended up inspiring myself.🤷🏽‍♀️😉 In that list was this year’s keyword, and, as my friend M says, when you know, you know. (Ya know?) 

That’s what happened this time.

My keyword for 2025 is …

TRUST.

(Oof.)

Because TRUST feels hard and challenging and maybe even wrong or gullible, but simultaneously important and necessary as I/we approach the coming year and grapple with all the terrors  and consequences of the preceding ones. 

But … (So?)

I need to trust in my art-making and its importance, trust in my collaborators and our collaborations, and most important, trust in the goodwill of others and our ability to find ways forward that serve, care for, and elevate everybody. 

Finally, as I learn from improvising again and again (and again and again and again and again), TRUST that there is a way forward that we can – and might only – find when we listen with our heads and our hearts. 

I began work on Heap Cull Gather Sow in May when I was awarded a fellowship with Pillsbury House + Theater through their program for emerging artists called Naked Stages.

Naked Stages is a 7-month fellowship that “provides performance artists with the time, resources, and mentorship needed to bring distinctive visions to life on stage.” In addition to regular feedback sessions, we’ve participated in workshops with local creators and nationally-renowned artists. (A special part of our fellowship was attending the first Theatrical Jazz Conference. ) We’ve also taken part in production meetings focused on the business side of art, from audience development to technical support, in efforts to assist us in developing a sustainable, artistic careers.

This year the Naked Stages cohort has four artists: hal sansone (Trans Man Gay Club Disco Fantasy), Skye Reddy (The Field of Three Horizons), Atim Opaka (This body is a gift: Messages from the Ancestors) and yours truly (Heap Cull Gather Sow). We will share our pieces in 6 shows across two weekends (Nov 14-16 and Nov 21-23, all at 7pm).

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Getting started

Much of my work since 2020 has been focused on or sourced from my own searching for ways to hold, digest, transmute, and siphon grief. As I began work on this show, I was concluding a year of work on an improvised vocal work, Giving Voice to Grief.

And with daily additions to the list of things hurting my heart via world events and social media, I realized that I have been improvising practices to help my head and my heart.

So when asked to bring “up to 5 minutes” of my “show” to prepare for our works in progress session, I started by revisiting a post I wrote here about making my “jar of broken pieces.” I outlined (and then abstracted) some of the steps of the ceremonial praxis I improvised while assembling the jar. That text became the prose I workshopped in our first session.

Then during our 3-day retreat (also in July), I did some staging and movement work with the “ceremony text” and began gathering (pun intended) bits of writing and ideas for songs/lyrics.

Of course, I knew I wanted to have songs/singing in my show so last month I moved my annual November improv project – 30 Days of Songtaneous Songs project – to September to help me find sonic seeds for my show. (I also figured I was gonna be a little too busy next month to post a song a day. 😉) Posting a song each day helped me create and collect a lot of ideas, including the frames of two gathering songs that have become scenes in Heap Cull Gather Sow.

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Working with a director

In spite of all those years I worked as the vocal coach for Northeast’s musical theater program, I actually don’t know a lot about making theater. Fortunately, Naked Stages provides funding for each artist to work with a director.

I have the privilege and pleasure of working with Dipankar Muhkerjee, as the director for my piece.

I first worked with Pangea World Theater and really began getting to know Dipankar and Meena (Pangea’s founders and artistic directors) in the summer of 2020 when I was part of The Burning Truth Project.

(It’s worth noting that I’d been hearing about Pangea for a number of years prior. Given all the time I spend improvising, I don’t know why I continue to be surprised at how consistently people and places arrive “right on time”?)

In fact, Dipankar deserves credit for planting the seed which resulted in my applying to the Naked Stages fellowship program in the first place. After a rehearsal or a gathering (I can’t quite recall), he said, “We should do something together? Maybe a show with your music?” This memory of this conversation surfaced when I saw the posting for the fellowship. So while I had no idea how I might create a theatrical work, I thought to myself “Dipankar thinks there’s a show there” so I applied.

I’ve spent some (okay, a lot?) of this fellowship feeling like I don’t know what I’m doing. I have to keep reminding myself that that’s the point. I also remind myself regularly that I actually know what I’m doing, even if I’m still figure out what I’m making.

So the Dipankar and I have been meeting regularly and the show is arriving in pieces, mostly through (surprise, surprise) improvisations.

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Lastly, I can’t help but notice the amount of tactile processes and crafted items that have been part of my evolving griefwork praxis – collages, gathering and interacting with broken things, mending/hand sewing, placemaking, etc. Less surprising is the fact that many of these practices – and items – are finding their way into my show.

See the show!

Heap Cull Gather Sow – November 15, 21 and 23rd – 7pm
Pillsbury House + Theatre
3501 Chicago Avenue South, Mpls
Get tix (pay what you can pricing)

Last month (September), I revisited my 30 Days of Songtaneous Songs project. 

It’s becoming an annual tradition to use this improv practice to find musical flow, generate new ideas, and explore/enjoy my instrument. 

I did my first 30 Days right here on the Songtaneous blog while I was taking a year-long vocal improv course. I was looking for a way to work on my improvising skills so I created the following practice: Each day for a month, I record an improvised 3-minute solo with no edits and share it. When I started that meant recording and writing a daily blog post here; these days it means posting to social media (and then sharing here on the blog 😉).

I get to record as many 3-minute songs in a day as I want and I allow myself two takes of any idea — in case something really is trying to come through, and I can’t quite find it or there’s an interruption of some kind (car alarms, planes, people, etc.). The last step is to choose an improvisation I like and post online.

This is the third year I’ve shared this project via social media, but, as some of you know, I usually do it in November. However, I did 30 Days in September this year because I have been writing and developing a solo show as part of a theater/performance fellowship called Naked Stages alongside three other artists at Pillsbury House + Theater in South Minneapolis. 

Over a 7-month period of mentorship, workshops, and one-on-one work with our chosen directors, I and my fellow artists (see what I did there? 😉) are creating 30- to 40-minute solo works that we’ll perform on stage over two weekends in November.

I’ll share more about the work I’ve been doing to find and create my show, but I can tell you that I used the September 30 Days project to help inspire some new songs for it.🙂🎶

For now, please SAVE THE DATES! Our shows run six nights – November 14-16 and 21-23. You can learn more about all of the shows on the Pillsbury House + Theater web site. It’s also where you can buy tickets and Pillsbury is again offering, pay what you can pricing.

Listen to 30 Days of Songtaneous 2024