More than a line of dialog

April 9, 2018

You are never so much an individual as you are a community. 

That’s a line of dialog from my current play.  I wrote it with an intellectual sense of how it applies to the community I am writing about.  Visiting Pohnpei recently, I had no sense that I would experience it quite so thoroughly.  A relative stranger to Pohnpei with just a couple of contacts, almost immediately I received invitations from people I did not know well or at all.  My hope had been to read my play for a few folks and meet someone with insight into how truthfully I was capturing this place.

My first reading happened almost immediately.  Unsolicited, honest feedback popped up during the reading (my listeners enjoyed my first attempts at the language!) and in earnest honesty afterwards (some hard to hear, and others encouraging and delighted).  And, almost immediately, I was invited to do other readings.  And have dinner.

Visiting my previously unmet translator led to having one reading videotaped to add to a resource on Pacific-based events.  At a cultural day event I was welcomed and warmly invited in.  I got invited to a double-birthday party, hanging with the guys beneath a thatched pavilion talking cross cultural friendships and learning.  I didn’t start the conversation, but I was immensely glad to be a part of it.

I got to see a small start-up theatre group for youth. That led to lunch. That led to meeting another gentlemen. That led to several of them attending a reading to then share more kind words and encouragement to ‘finish the play and bring it back here to perform.’  A local chief invited me over for some sakau, which unbeknownst to me became the demonstration of sakau making, drinking and sharing a local delicacy of roast dog because, as he said, “I wanted you to experience those things that are in the play so you know well how they happen and feel here in this place that is the place of your play.”  That same chief introduced me to the gathering by asking for a copy of my play. He talked up what I was doing and what he liked about my play.  He honored me with an early cup of sakau (protocol, you know!) and gave me a necklace that he has always worn when meeting the high chief of the area.

A final reading with college students included lovely laughter and appreciation of both how culture is captured in the play and how culturally relevant the play is to them.

My trip ended with a journey to a neighboring atoll where, of course, the local community there kept encouraging me to eat, rest, be comfortable, understand.  In two different sakau sessions I was called forth, once being told, “The chief wants you to have the second cup.”  Although simply a visitor in my mind, along for the ride to observe others who were hosting a workshop, you cannot simply be such an individual.  Once there, you are a recognized presence, no matter.

I traveled to Pohnpei in the hopes of maybe walking about and discovering a few nuggets that might help me with my developing play.  I ended my journey in a boat being inundated by the ocean as we sped back to the main island so I could make it to my departing plane on time.  As the 500th wave drenched me to the skin, I realized how immersed I became in so many events and lives and experiences.  The line of dialog reverberated as at the last minute, when i suddenly had no ride to pick up my luggage and get me to the airport, a ride almost immediately appeared.

You are never so much an individual as you are a community.