As a volunteer editor I have come to know many Street Sense writers. We meet weekly to work on the paper they then sell on DC’s street corners. Sometimes they go home to continue writing their articles. Well, they don’t exactly go home, because many in the group are homeless.
On April 4 at 8 p.m., the Washington DC Jewish Community Center’s Theater J will host “Homeless Lives: Unforgettable Personal Stories.”* This program of true stories — from the lives of both Street Sense and Miriam’s Kitchen writers — will be performed by professional actors.
Hear how Street Sense helped one man rise above years of addiction and homelessness.
And maybe you have been following Gerald Anderson’s survival series, “My Katrina,” in Street Sense. The performance on April 4 will include that drama, as well as Anderson’s memory of the more than 10 years he spent in a state penitentiary before a judge reversed his sentence and set him free.
Similarly, the storytellers in my weekly writing group at Miriam’s Kitchen open up unflinchingly with recollections of painful pasts, but also with tales of redemption.
We gather in a church basement where I’ll say, “Tell us a story about heartbreak,” and someone breaks all of our hearts with his tender memory of a never-forgotten love, lost to racism in the ‘70s.
I’ll ask, “What’s the hardest thing you ever experienced?” Someone else bares himself raw about the joy of finding the first thing that ever mattered to him during his dysfunctional adolescence, only to have it torn away one month later when his father placed him in foster care.
There are lighter moments too, like one homeless man’s struggle with the awareness at age six that Santa wasn’t real.
Each week, for 90 riveting minutes, we learn about one another and we learn about ourselves. This was unmistakable when one participant told me in an email:
“Writing at Miriam’s Kitchen the past few years and now working on the monologues have opened up avenues of my life I never thought possible.”
Another storyteller remarks, toward the end of his monologue about his history of homophobia, “We are all human beings.” The writers are the ones exposing their vulnerabilities, but we all can bond over our shared humanity.
Indeed, the humanity of these homeless and formerly homeless storytellers has changed me and just might change you.
*The monologue performance will take place April 4 at 8 p.m. at Theater J (enter from grand staircase at 1529 16th St. NW). Admission is free.
The production is a labor of love and would not have been possible without the support and enthusiasm of our host, Theater J, as well as of the openheartedness of the actors, of our director, NJ Mitchell, and of the dedicated staffs of Street Sense and Miriam’s Kitchen.
Share this with friends and co-workers, so they may join us for this unforgettable performance and for a post-show reception, provided by Miriam’s Kitchen.
