Elise Bryant Interview, September 18, 2021

My name is Angie Whitehurst and your name is...

Elise Bryant.

Welcome. Nice to meet you.

It's a pleasure to be here.

We're going to ask one question and that is... within your work life, can you tell us about something that you contributed that you feel valuable bit about happy and proud?

How much time do we have?

The week.

Okay. All righty, what came to my mind is, my first love is theater. And when I was a little kid in Southwest Detroit, we used to put a blanket on the clothesline with clothespins, and have a show. And even though I wasn't the oldest person in our little group, I was always the MC and so, I got into theater, but when I went to college, I went into pre-med because that's what they're supposed to do. I didn't, I did theater on the side and in 1974 I joined a feminist theater company called Workers Lives Workers Stories. In 1982, Joyce Cornblue and High Cornblue, the directors of the labor studies Centre at the University of Michigan invited me to start a labor theater project and it was called Workers Lives Worker Stories and we gathered people from unions in our area. Some people are unions of one woman was a woman who did not work outside the home and the other woman was not union members but she worked in a industry. Anyway, it was a mixed group of folks. So we did that for a long time.

And then I came here in 1997 to teach at the National Labor College. And I was asked to teach a course. They needed a Humanities course other than English and I said, how about Labor Theater? So I created this course called Labor theater. And every year, people who needed Humanities requirement would come and take this class. Most of them didn't know nothing about theater and often, they would say, oh, the Mrs. makes me go see Les Miserables or I had to see, you know, cats or something like that, but we would study who were start the Greeks really. And we we read Waiting for Lefty, we read, I Just Want Somebody To Know, which is a woman's play, that was written by George Corn Blue, another woman. And third play was the play by Oh Yah Mo about the Martin Luther King assassination. Title. Just wanted my head. Anyway, we read those three plays and then we'd go see a play. And after the play, we have another class and we together we will discuss the play and every time in class, at some point, this happen in every class. They would stop, one person would stop and go. Whoa. Wait a minute. Why are we talking like this? I go talking like, what? What we talking like this thing? I said, I'm like a now analyzing the play because? Yeah, you're like making this talk like this? Like, no, I'm not. I'm not making talk like this. You have a context, you studied the history of of theater and you just saw live play. Now, you take that knowledge and applied it to what you learn and I thank Karen Roe who taught me about participatory teaching techniques and follow for Paolo Freire and the pedagogy of the oppressed and all that. And I learned it by doing it. They would take in the information and always, there was one person. Usually, the class clown, who would say something really profound. And the whole class will turn around. Go Chucks he go. Yeah, you just said that you go. Yeah, it was like because their potential, the imaginitive it potential was unleashed and because they had a language and a common experience. They could talked about it in a way that deepened the process. So, years later, people would come back to the college and take other classes and they would come to they called me up and they see me in the hallway. Go me and the missus went to see a show last week and what they did was they stopped going to the big shows and they would go to the little show that goes like this working in DC

and and be able to analyze and talk about the costumes, the set, the plot, the de new moi and you know, the characterizations. And I just loved it and I really felt like the gift and love of theater. Also theater, that changes lives theater the adresses, real issues, was, I was able to pass that on and create a group of people who came back every year. We had a little theater club for the people, people who have never been in my class would come to go with us to go out to a theater, the night. We went to see a show and so I just I feel very fortunate.

That is awesome. I want you to talk a little bit this festival you run every year.

Oh, the great Labor Arts Exchange. Yes. Yes. In fact, that's what brought me to D.C,. to the DC. area. It is ctually held in Silver Spring, Maryland, and I was at a labor notes conference in Ypsilanti, Michigan and Saul Schneiderman who was president of ask me, local at the Library of Congress was a founder of the labor Heritage Foundation. Invited me to, here to the great Labor Arts Exchange. And I was like three days of labor songs. I can't imagine any more boring, but I thought he was cute, but I said, yeah, sure. I'll come and do this thing. Wanted me to be able to panel talk about the labor theater project. So I came and I just loved, I walk in the room and it was mostly white people, you know, artists and singers and songwriters mostly guys too, with guitars. But Reverend Orange is at the front of the room, talking about the civil rights movement and the songs that inspired the civil rights movement and people started singing with him and they we were singing it, four part harmony. I looked around. I thought I think another found another part of my tribe. It's a a whole other group of people who know these songs and could sing these songs and that's what hooked in and I still haven't come and ever since then, I'm the director of Labor Heritage Foundation. I put together the great people coming together.

And that has had a huge impact! You have a lot to be happy about.

Thank you sister. I appreciate it.