-Langston Hughes

 

Holding onto hope is perhaps one of the most important and fundamental parts of living a good life. Finding your way to optimism when things are their darkest helps ensure the strength to carry on no matter what comes next. Hope helps us navigate troubled waters, it buoys us above despair and keeps us moving forward. It takes great strength to maintain this but in building our resilience and believe that there is a light ahead, we can move through the tunnels of life emerging perhaps not unscathed but changed in ways that build new skills to get us through the next time.

 

Kristin Marting spoke to us from New York where she is the founding artistic director of HERE. As a people-oriented person and theater maker, the pandemic has been a very strange time for her but it has also been a time of great learning and change. Among the lessons she has learned from this time is the ways in which the structure of her organization must change in order to achieve greater equity. While HERE had already been moving in this direction, the events of 2020 have pulled this need into sharp focus and made it even more of an imperative. Marting also says she has learned a great deal about work-life balance and will take with her the wisdom to slow down and not overwork herself as a habit. This year Marting decided to send homemade valentines to her friends, a gesture that received tremendous feedback. To hear more about how her life has changed during the pandemic and more, listen to the complete interview.

 

Judith Page spoke to us from Brooklyn shortly after Valentine’s Day. Throughout the pandemic, she has been spending her time at home focusing her time on photography, something she can do in her apartment. For over a decade Page has incorporated photography into her work, combining it with other media. She uses her home as a studio and for the last year has been working on a southern gothic style series called Shadowlands. The series examines the new place Page finds herself in – namely her experience of suddenly spending the majority of her time alone in her apartment. To hear more about this series, one of her strongest artistic influences and more, listen to the complete interview.