Vital Matters LLC is a collaborative, interdisciplinary, community- and arts-based laboratory for change, based in Baltimore, MD. Motivated by the climate crisis, and related social and environmental forms of injustice, and grounded in performance and somatic practices, it brings together artists, scientists, educators, small business owners, activists and others to heal, build community, and connect diverse groups of creative problem solvers. Events and artistic productions range from very small, intimate exchanges to large scale performances, and from direct engagement with the challenges of everyday reality, to the collaborative creation of fantastic landscapes of the imagination. It is through these, and other lenses that we can envision and create a better future for all.

Vital Matters began as a workshop performance project with students at Kennesaw State University in 2019 (see project: Vital Matters at KSU). Since returning to Baltimore from Georgia in 2020, the project has grown and transformed from a single artistic project to a multifaceted initiative inclusive of various artistic, educational, and producing activities. Over time, Vital Matters will include:

1. Live and Online Events that bring people together through the arts, sciences, literature, social justice, and climate change (see below).
2. Artistic Productions and Collaborations with other artists and groups in Baltimore City.
3. Collaborative Educational programming focused on an arts and somatics-based, intersectional approach to climate change and social justice. This includes: K-12 residencies, College and University guest lectures and residencies, Workshops offered to adults and families, and online programming.
4. The Vital Body: These are group classes and individual sessions in somatic movement education & therapy. They draw on my training and many years' experience as a Certified Movement Analyst, Dynamic Embodiment Practitioner, a Senior Teacher of The Performance Workshop and Rasaboxes, an Ecosomatics practitioner and a student of essential oils and Acupoint therapy with Tiffany Carole. Unlike many somatic practices, The Vital Body is grounded in social and environmental aspects of embodiment, and works with Somatic Abolitionism practices of Resmaa Menakem and others, as well as considering climate change the most global context of the work.

Photos  included here are from Vital Matters' first two Baltimore events, in which my role was primarily as a producer/curator/organizer. For both of these events, I reached out to other organizations and individuals to host and help produce.

Winter Seeds: A Climate Change Theatre Action Event
A collaboration between Vital Matters, Single Carrot Theatre, and Submersive Productions
December 11, 2021 at The Voxel, East 25th Street, Baltimore

This event was part of the biannual, international effort, Climate Change Theatre Action (www.http://www.climatechangetheatreaction.com/about/). It featured readings of six plays by playwrights from Kenya, the U.K., New Zealand, the U.S., and Canada, presented by Baltimore theatre and puppet artists, with original songs by Jamie Gansell and Deletta Gillespie. In the Lobby of The Voxel, The Ivy Bookshop sold books related to climate change, the environment, sustainability, and social justice. Trustina Sabah sold her handmade gourd art.

Press on Winter Seeds: https://www.broadwayworld.com/baltimore/article/Baltimores-TheatreCommun...

Whose Earth (Day)? A Day of Reckoning, Celebration, and Digging in the Dirt
A collaboration between Vital Matters, The Ivy Bookshop, and Baltimore Beyond Plastic (a youth activist group supported by the Baltimore Office of Sustainability), with production support from Visual and Teaching Artist and Organizer, Maura Dwyer.
April 23, 2022, at The Ivy Bookshop, Falls Road, Baltimore
With Members of Baltimore Beyond Plastic: Antonio Dismel, Harry MacGillis, Yasmine Blanchard
Visual Artist Maura Dwyer, who led the decorating of reusable bags
Sound and Musical Artist: Sanahara Ama Chandra
Spoken Word Artist: Afr0delic
Speakers: Dr. Lawrence Brown, equity scientist and author of The Black Butterfly, and Farmer and Educator, Jordan Bethea

The focal point of this event was a conversation about Harriet Washington's book, A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and its Assault on the American Mind, with members of Baltimore Beyond Plastic, Racial Equity Scientist and author of The Black Butterfly, Dr. Lawrence Brown, and the audience. Attendees of all ages also decorated reusable shopping bags using stencils and a cyanotype process, led by Maura Dwyer. Tables were set up with information about recent environmental legislation that had and had not passed the session in Maryland, with postcards for folks to write to their representatives in state and local government thanking them for their support of climate and environment bills.  Finally, Jordan Bethea helped to launch the Ivy's plans to plant a community garden by instructing people on the collection of soil samples from the property.

Vital Matters at KSU
 
What does "home" mean to you?
What is vital to you?
What is sacred to you?

These and many other questions are at the heart of various Vital Matters projects. They had their beginning in an eight-week devised process I led with students at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, while there as a Visiting Artist and Professor of Performance Studies in 2019-2020.

The problem:
Discussions of climate change in the political arena tend to be disembodied, reductive, and frought with party politics. In personal relationships it can be difficult to talk about climate change and what to do about it because we feel we don’t know enough, we don’t know what to do, or how to start, or simply because even addressing the climate crisis fills us with fear, dread or despair. And so, in relationship to a topic that should concern and unite us all, we often end up feeling alone, isolated and powerless. Many people of Earth have already been dealing with the devastating effects of climate change, largely poor, black and brown people. Histories of the fossil fuel industry and other forms of extractivism, the anihilation of native peoples and cultures, slavery, capitalism, misogyny and other forms of violence are inextricably linked, and so environmental and social justice are an essential part of addressing the climate crisis, and telling new stories of our relationship to the home we share.
 
At KSU, I led an extensive workshop process, using environmental and immersive theatre techniques, ecosomatics practices, research on climate change and related issues to juxtapose our own personal stories with experiences of the audience, and the larger questions we face. We explored experiences of connecting to earth and nature, the idea of home, how spirituality, religion and the sacred intersect with our relationship to the natural world. This small project was the starting point for much of what I am investigating now in Baltimore, as a climate activist, artist, and educator.

Out of the Shadows (and other Team Holler Joy events)
 
During the pandemic, I have focused my creative and community-building energies on my most immediate, physically available community: my neighbors in the Sabina-Mattfeldt area of Mt. Washington, affectionately known by its event organizers as “the Holler”. With housemate and co-instigator, Juanita Rockwell, I have organized two events: Joy in the Holler, an offering on the evening of election day, to provide stress relief and a sense of community in a time that has led to many bitter resentments and divisions between people, and Out of the Shadows, a Team Holler Joy Solstice Celebration, pictured in the images included here. For both events, we gathered a team of neighbors, some with artistic and other skills to contribute, others who wanted to help by building fires and providing warm beverages. Both events used current Covid guidelines, all participants were masked and we maintained distances of six feet or more with anyone not from our immediate pod or household. Our next event will likely be in April, on Earth Day, and other events to follow. These productions offer us an opportunity to build community with our neighbors, and also to experiment with new forms, skills and technology.
 
For Joy in the Holler, which we planned with co-conspirators Jean Grae and Gavin (Quelle) Tenille for the evening of election day as an invitation to unglue from the results coming in, and from political conversation altogether. There were three Fire pits, distributed in three places in the neighborhood, with adult drinks, a silly hat parade with noisemakers, led by a resident flugel horn player, and a singalong of “The Times They Are a Changing” with the extended Scally family. One mom from the neighborhood rallied the kids for some sidewalk chalk drawing and other activities. We erected a community drawing board for people to write or draw their dreams for the future, which people continued to contribute to and enjoy over several days after the event. Jean and Quelle shared some Old Timey Music, and socially distanced dancing that Jean Dj’d from her porch. 
 
For Out of the Shadows, a guided audio tour of the neighborhood, and festival of lights with video-recorded musical contributions from the Team Holler Joy Jazz ensemble, we provided an event that was both virtual and live, and followed the safety protocols put in place in mid-December. In the process of creating the event, we discovered hidden talents of some of our neighbors. Our Visual Design Committee created an array of decorations for our neighborhood field, where the spiral back into and out of 2020 took place. We invited colleague Ursula Marcum to make a shadow puppet show, Glenn Ricci to provide additional music, which we ended up recording. At the center of the spiral there was a fire for people to burn their “shadows,” – difficulties from 2020. Upon emerging from the spiral, they met a wish tree where people whispered their wishes People made cookies that were available for the taking Our festival of light was an opportunity both to embrace the darkness, literal and metaphorical, and to welcome the coming light of spring. We were graced with an unusually long lasting snowfall a few days before, the convergence of Jupiter and Saturn and a bright sliver of moon in the sky, so the elements conspired to make it a wintery and beautiful evening.

Here is a link to our audio tour (you may need to copy and paste into your browser): https://youraudiotour.com/tours/1185/
Here is a link to Ursula Marcum's shadow puppet piece, The Return: https://youtu.be/xU0AcwLbwUQ
Here are links to the videos of the songs: 
La Vie: https://youtu.be/ofsez-pvnnw
Frosty: https://youtu.be/SQKrfV-XJK0 
 
After a contemplative walk through the neighborhood, participants were instructed to leave words or phrases based on their experiences in a box, which we constructed as a kind of poem: Messages from the Salt Box.
 
The Out of the Shadows Team:
 
Visual Design Committee: Elaine Champion, Nicole Lamont, Ruth Scally
Cookie Committee: Peggy Israel
Wassail/Whiskey Committee: Ruth Scally, Alden Caldwell-Gaines, Natalie Novak 
Fires provided by: Alden Caldwell-Gaines, Ruth Scally, and Juanita Rockwell
 
Music Videos (coming soon!): Team Holler Joy Jazz Ensemble: 
Daniel Zaltz (horn & keys), Linda Bucay (bass), Matt O’Conke (drums) Owen Lang (Omnichord)
Vocals: “La Vie en Rose” Jean Grae & Juanita Rockwell
“Frosty the Snowman”: Jean and the gremlins of her mind
Special Thanks to David Reich for helping get the music off the ground!
Grand Poobah of video editing, audio mixing, and puppets: Jean Grae
 
Reading: of “Joy and Sorrow” from The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran: Alonzo LaMont
 
Glenn Ricci on Guitar, recording & editing for “Sound of Silence”
Vocals: Juanita and Michele 
 
Guest Artists Ursula Marcum (Shadow Puppetry) and Glenn Ricci (Music and Video) for The Return
 
Documentation: Aaron Levin
 
Your Audio Tour Makers and Co-Instigators: Michele and Juanita
 
Solstice brought to you by Earth, Sun, and The Real Space Force

BATS!, a solo work which premiered at the Marquee Lounge, Creative Alliance, in Baltimore in 2018, is a multimedia performative contemplation of fear and madness in American culture, structured by personal experiences of psychosis, anxiety and depression. The piece was produced by Submersive Productions (of which Michele is an associate artist), and features sound and video projection by Glenn Ricci, puppets, object and environment design, and puppetry by Ursula Marcum, original drawings by Chelsea Demitras and original text and songs for accordion and voice by Michele Minnick. The piece was performed for audiences of 20-28 people in the intimate space of a small bar. Michele's performance persona, Dr. M., (who, like Michele, is a doctor of philosophy), engaged audience members directly throughout the show about their experiences, moods, and sense of what is real.

ReDress is a solo work commissioned by Vertice Brasil, a Florianopolis-based branch of the Magdalena Project, an international network of women theatre and performance artists (https://themagdalenaproject.org/). It was first performed at the Vertice Brasil festival in 2012, under the title "Mulher, Sem Titulo," (Woman, Untitled). I have since performed it in Ecuador, Uruguay, and Natal, Brazil.

Born of my personal frustration with gendered street harrassment, and my pedagogical urge to address my undergraduate students', particularly my female students' cynicism and dismissal of feminism as a thing of the past, I created ReDress as a way to bring attention to connections between verbal sometimes seemingly "harmless" harrassment on the street and the continuum of violence against women. 

The performance always takes place in a public square or other public place of foot traffic and meeting. It begins with an image, of myself, in a red dress, red heels, white sweater and hat, sometimes coat, and a suitcase, walking onto the scene and setting up my space. Once I have made a circle around myself with corn meal or a similar substance, and set up my things, I gather a crowd around the circle and explain to them with written signs what I'm doing there. I've come to make visible the everyday violence of street harrassment, and do so by inviting the women in the crowd to step inside the circle and write things that have been said to them in public places that made them feel violated, lesser, afraid.

I end the piece by having the audience (men and women) write hopes for the future, which I pack up in my suitcase. Before I leave the scene, I tell them that this is a performance I do not want to do, but that I will keep doing until it is no longer necessary. I leave them with my calling card, and invite them to take some for their own use, to inspire their own resistance. With each iteration I have also become interested in how this figure, the woman dressed elegantly with nasty comments written all over her body, then interacts with the local landscape. I have enlisted photographers to document me in different parts of the city.

This was Submersive Productions' inaugural show (First run in spring of 2015, second run with a second cast in fall of 2015, performed at the historic Enoch Pratt House in Mt. Vernon), for which I provided the ensemble training, choreography, and co-direction. Glenn Ricci had won a Ruby grant to develop his concept of an immersive show that would be populated by both real and fictional figures from Edgar Allan Poe's life and works. I was invited onto the core team. Although we worked with some text, much of the piece was to be movement based. I conducted a two week intensive workshop based in The Performance Workshop and Rasaboxes, as well as elements from Viewpoints, Body Mind Centering and other psychophysical and somatic practices, to ground the ensemble's work in a common language, to begin to establish ways of working in intimate proximity with audience and in response to actual artitecture, and to plant seeds for the devising process that would take place over the next several months. My more notable contributions to the show included: developing the character of the Barkeep together with the three different actors who played this strange character -- Barkeep was somewhere between dead and living, between genders, and had quirky movement patterns and strange ways of moving around the space; and conceiving of and choreographing the Ballroom scene, which included a "Mesmeric Waltz." 

Mesmeric won a Baltimore City Paper Best of Baltimore "Best Theatrical Experience" award.

Here is a link to a preview of the show that captures some of its flavor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUzlWcShssI&feature=emb_logo

I directed and choreographed this project with students in the theatre and dance department of James Madison University in 2019. I worked closely with Japanese theatre artist Naoko Maeshiba to understand the subtleties of Mishima's text, simultaneously working closely with designers to develop a vision for the show. I cast the ensemble before casting roles, and then conducted a weeklong workshop together with  composer/sound designer Nathan Leigh, in which the actors were introduced to the Rasaboxes, elements of Butoh, the waltz, hiphop, and other movement elements that would be crucial in devising the opening for the show, the building of character and scene work, and the waltz sequences. Sophomore Caroline Buddendorf choreographed a hip hop sequence that was the centerpiece of "the park scene," a prologue to Mishima's play, for which the actors developed their own characters. The show was framed by the presence of four actor/percussionists, whose live soundscape and movement accompanied the scenes between Poet, Old Woman, and other characters, and accentuated elements of the recorded sound design. The Poet's death was choreographed with an additional character, Morita, who had figured prominently in the playwright's life and suicide. The result was a layering of contemporary music and movement idioms with historical images and themes surrounding the writing of the play in the 1950s, and an oblique reference to traditional Japanese theatre forms that make use of percussion as an integral part of the dramaturgy.

Lungs, by Duncan Macmillan, directed by Michele Minnick at The Kitchen Theatre, Ithaca, NY (where I have also directed four other plays under the artistic direction of Rachel Lampert: Julie Johnson by Wendy Hammond, Cloud Tectonics by José Rivera, The Gene Pool by Christi Stewart-Brown, and A Body of Water by Lee Blessing, which also played at Geva Theatre in Rochester). This play follows the life of a couple (She and He) from the moment they first start discussing the possibility of having a child to the end of Her life, when He is already gone. It is clear that environmental degradation and climate catastrophe are the backdrop of the lovestory. For this play, which is written without any indication of time or setting, and which involves radical shifts from one life moment to the next-for example from a heartwrenching breakup to their first reunion several years later-the Rasaboxes served as an essential framework for making quick transitions between emotional states and moments in time. There was no set for the production other than a platform. The staging was breath and movement-based, a choreography of intimacy over many years.

Lamatown, a new play written by Clotilde Tavares, with music by Gabriel Souto, was co-directed by Henrique Fontes and Michele Minnick as part of NatalEmCena, a municipal grant for the production of plays in multiple outdoor locations in Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil in 2014. Michele led the cast through a 2-week Rasaboxes workshop at the beginning of rehearsal, developing a vocabulary for the creation of the larger-than-life characters, and tools for shaping scenes which had to project in outdoor spaces. 

Kid-Simple: A Radio Play in the Flesh by Jordan Harrison, Directed by Michele Minnick at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), 2013. Set by Greggory Schraven. Lights, sound and projections by Adam Mendelson . Costumes by Rebecca Eastman. Kid-Simple tells the story of Moll, a girl inventor who wins the school science contest with her noise machine, only to have her invention stolen by an evil shape-shifting mercenary. What follows is the fable of her adventures to save sound as we know it. The play requires over 1,000 live Foley sounds, and all actors except those playing Moll and the Narrator, to play multiple roles. We used the first week of rehearsal to do a Rasaboxes workshop, which gave us tools for creating each character, and shaping the mood of each part of the play.