Review: ELEVATED SOAPBOX Strikes a Cord at Therapy

All my life I've been hearing this tune: "Downtown Albuquerque is just about to be revitalized." I'm finally beginning to realize that this is an oft-repeated refrain--I found my grandma's New America magazine from the 70's, with the article: "Looking Forward: New Life for Albuquerque's Old City Center." Am I cynical, seeing this? No--many problems defined in that article have been solved. But now there are new needs for ABQ's urban core. This may be the same old tune--but how do we learn new verses?

I suggest tuning into WeAreThisCity, a non-profit dedicated to enlivening Albuquerque's cultural dialogue through art. I'd first heard of WeAreThisCity last November--when, listening to Hakim Bellamy's "WeAreThisCity" manifesto, I recognized a pitch-perfect revival of Albuquerque's vitalizing refrain. Since then, I've been reading into all their lyric efforts: By Christmas they'd opened their for-profit branch, Therapy--a gallery/gathering space downtown, at 119 Gold. While the Christmas opening was a bit out of tune, since they'd just got the space so things were unkept and awkward, co-founder Max Baptiste spoke with confidence and vision about a vibrant and multifaceted community home--

Right away, Therapy began to realize this vision, starting the Elevated Soapbox, a monthly speaking event, held in Therapy: Each Soapbox has a theme, and is curated by a different guest, who chooses six people from the community to each speak for six minutes about their personal life, passion, and profession.

I went to my first (and Therapy's third) Soapbox last Sunday: The March theme, in alignment with Albuquerque's massive, citywide event programming around Women's History Month, was "Women and Creativity." The six female speakers gave a striking, diverse program...now, I'm not going to delve into each speech; none needed significant critique, and to blather on about them here would diminish the immediacy, the presence by which they were delivered.

Yet I would like to relate the impression of the night, collectively felt throughout the receptive audience (seated comfortably on couches and sipping free beer from Sidetrack brewing): A concentrated concert of accomplished local leaders in theater, media, visual arts, writing, and dance--representing stalwart local institutions like Working Classroom, Harwood Arts Center, Public Square, Shift Dance Company, and The SCA Contemporary Art...it's not easy to 'sum up'.

But I'll offer one encapsulating phrase--which came not from the speakers, but from a woman in the audience whose hand shot up three minutes before the end of the last speech.

The speaker, Ebony Isis Booth was a black woman speaking about her experience of racial invisibility in Albuquerque--where black culture is not cohesive, and white culture is pervasive--describing her struggle with personal identity and the feelings of isolation that come of this. Booth saw the raised hand and stopped her speech. "Yes?" She asked.

"Every speaker tonight has stressed the importance of including stories," said the audience member, "from people from marginalized racial and cultural identities." This statement encompassed all the compelling melodies of the night's speakers, and had gone deeper, had rung the underlying chord--expressing the newest necessary lyric in the music of revitalization. She went on: "But the theme of the night is Women and Creativity, not race and culture. Why do you think there's this intersectionality?"

Without skipping a beat, Booth put her hand over her belly and answered the question with, striking a chord of equal depth, harmony: "As women, as artists, our role is to nurture, and to heal our society."

Photo Credit: Ron Reiring, Blue Corn Live

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