Leaning into MLI...

The night before the opening of Multicultural Leadership Institute, I was in a black box studio on the third floor of the Plays and Players theater for a showcase of performances of work by playwrights who had taken part in the Philadelphia Theater Workshop's year-long residency.  Two of resident fellows presented outtakes from their plays-in-progress;  the third wanted us to share in his creative process by engaging in a group activity that started with us sitting in a circle, holding up objects that we had with us that had great personal significance, and ended with groups of audience members giving three minute performances in which we were supposed to use our objects as the only props, and for which we could only use words that were from random pages of a script that the playwright had worked on throughout the year. Oh, and we had seven minutes to get our act together.

I am someone who as, an audience member, absolutely hates having the fourth wall broken, and found myself oscillating between fear and resentment at being coerced into having to take part in the activity, even as I discovered that the process created a good sense of community in an audience of complete strangers, and that the performances themselves had many moments of humor, pathos, and grace.  Still, I had to complain to someone about it during the reception afterwards, and I told one of my new friends that I was hoping to have a spot of time to unwind after several weeks of preparation for this upcoming week of new student orientations, and hey, this is the kind of thing I do at work.

Then I had to laugh at myself, because I realized that just about twelve hours later I would be asking people whom I had never met before to engage in a series of activities and processes that would ask them to speak openly about their values, identities, and visions to a group of total strangers....and to make a visual representation of aforesaid identities using, among other things, styrofoam plates.

And I am amazed and humbled by how openly people were speaking about their histories, convictions, families, communities, desires, obsessions, talents, struggles, hopes, faith, and dreams.  It gave me an incredible charge to look around the room and see an extraordinary group of people who could, among other things, form an exceptional marching band, do an installation at Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery using things found in a wastebasket, create a collective summer internship in Appalachia through the CPGC, choreograph a dance to the theme music from Beverly Hills 90201, and walk into complete new and strange situations with openness, insight, and spirit. 

And, perhaps most importantly, I found someone that I might actually be able to beat one-on-one on the basketball court.

Theresa Tensuan
Dean of Multicultural Affairs/Director of the Office of Multicultural Affairs