Project
I
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I
have been invited to donate my papers (which include lots of paper
as well as slides, photos, videotapes, costumes and artwork) to
the Tretter Collection, a GLBT collection in the Special Collections
of the University of Minnesota Library. Linnea Stenson of the Schochet
Center at the U extended the invitation, and I was happy to receive
it. Despite having moved many times over the last years, I had the
good sense to not throw away what I knew to be valuable materials.
I realized the request was not a fluke when, a month after I had
agreed to the donation, the MN Historical Society approached me
with the same request. I delivered my materials to Andersen Library
on the West Bank before I left for Brazil for the winter. They filled
about 50 archival boxes.
I
would like to take a year to go through all of this material, to
organize and annotate it. It will be a treasure for future historians,
as they look back on our gay, performing arts, and HIV communities
in the last decades of the 20th century. With the guidance of my
friend and dance historian Judith Brin Ingber, I will work with
historians and librarians to learn best practices to explain and
add value to the collection. It will take time. At a box a week,
it will take about a year. My goal is to be finished by my 50th
birthday, October 22nd of 2003. I fear that if too much time passes,
it will never get done. That's the difference between being at the
end of August with a package of tomato seeds, or a healthy garden.
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Project
II
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Last
winter I began to write the history of Patrick's Cabaret. (The stories
frequently leaked over the line into personal memoir. I did not
let that trouble me.) I plan to continue this as I carry out project
#1, which will be a constant source of material for me as I write
these stories. I plan to collect the stories into a book, maybe
Patrick's Hats. In my adult lifetime I have worn many: at Patrick's
Cabaret, on the board of directors of the National Performance Network,
driving a school bus, on stages across the Americas and Europe,
in classrooms working with teachers and students, and on panels
funding everything from performance artists and playwrights to HIV
prevention programs. I took my hats off in bed usually, but I promise
to write about sex and romance, too.
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Project
III
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As
I carry out the library and writing projects, I will also be working
with Joel Gibson as a spiritual advisor and Colleen Convey as a career
counselor to discover what path I can best forge next. Joel is the
former dean of St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Minneapolis and a friend.
Colleen is a consultant I worked with last year in the Institute for
Renewal of Community Leadership. She helped me to realize that yes,
it was time for me to move on from the cabaret. With their help, I
will create the transition into the next phase of my career. I don't
know yet what it will be, but you can trust that it will build on
my track record of creating space for people to envision and live
their lives more freely, consciously and creatively. |
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