Washington, D.C
DC’s Shawn Shafner Brings Jewish Tradition to Center Stage
Shawn Shafner balances many roles: teaching artist, educator, activist, actor, mindfulness coach and longtime summer camp staff member.
Shafner, who holds a bachelor of fine arts in drama and theater arts, facilitates Jewish ritual theater programs, educating audiences on the East and West coasts about Torah and Jewish tradition.
The multidisciplinary artist is an early childhood educator and ritual facilitator for the nonprofit Storahtelling, where he’s worked since 2005. Shafner runs the theater department at Camp Ramah in northern California in addition to his seasonal work with Trybal Gatherings, a summer camp experience for young adults.
Shafner looks forward to premiering one of his solo shows in June at the Atlas Performing Arts Center in Washington, D.C., where he is an Atlas Arts Lab resident. It’s called “Sheldon Feldman Sings the Songs They Told Me Not to Sing.” Shafner lives with his fiancé in the Brightwood Park neighborhood of D.C.
Tell me about your Jewish upbringing and background.
I guess you could say I grew up in the Conservative movement [in Colorado]; the synagogue we belonged to growing up was within the Conservative movement, but we were always on the Reform side of that. We definitely celebrated Jewish holidays, [but we] didn’t have a strong Shabbat practice growing up — we didn’t go to temple very often — although my sister and I both went to religious school once a week, then twice a week to prepare for our b’mitzvah.
I went to NYU … and college was when I began to find my own journey through Judaism. I was at the musical theater school at NYU Tisch [School of the Arts] and I remember asking a friend, “Are you going to Hillel for the High Holiday service?” — I think I went to the Rosh Hashanah service and I didn’t find it super inspiring. And she said, “I don’t do that; I’m going to the art museum where I’m doing my observation of the holiday.” I was like, “You can do that?” That year, I followed [my friend] there and realized that there is a different way to have contemplative experience.
How did you get to where you are today?
I did a project with Hillel, a devised play about someone wrestling with their queer identity called “Song of Solomon.” Through that, I met the women who would later found the Kohenet Institute and a year later, I received a Spielberg fellowship through the Foundation for Jewish Camp. I was tasked with creating a theater program at a Jewish summer camp. The training for it was a fellowship for a week at the Brandeis-Bardin Institute with [Rabbi] Amichai Lau-Lavie, the founder of what’s now called Lab/Shul, but was then called Storahtelling. That was really my full entrance into Jewish adulthood.
At one point, Amichai and other faculty started playing music and said, “Flip through the siddur. Whenever you find a line or even a word that moves you, go ahead and say it out loud.” We sort of made our own prayer that way. That really changed my understanding of what it meant to be Jewish and to practice Judaism.
What were your responsibilities at Lab/Shul?
I started making interactive theater that brought the stories of the Torah alive. We’d go to communities and when the Torah service began, myself, another actor and two musicians would open the story into this interactive play that was either translated by biblical characters in the story or modern-day people who were reading the story. [Our performances] included the pshat (literal meaning) of the Torah with midrash (rabbinic additions), both ancient and more contemporary.
We were also inspired by the Jewish Renewal movement to open the Torah up with group aliyot (calling up to the Torah), and an interactive question session where we invite the audience to put themselves in the stories. We essentially used techniques from psychodrama in order to reveal their own feelings and emotions around stories.
You’ve been an actor and artist since the age of 5. What about art appeals to you?
Art is a window into what the human experience is in a way that removes our specific identities and enables us to imagine what it could be like to be anybody. I think we’ve always needed it, but now, especially, the ability to have empathy and compassion for an experience that’s not your own is so important. It’s really integral in the Jewish experience as well. “I’m a stranger in a strange land and I have been a stranger before.” Our midrash teaches us this idea that we are to see ourselves through the other. It’s important that we have access to universality of the human experience, and this is really where art comes in.
How do you make summer camp fun for young adults through Trybal Gatherings?
Trybal Gatherings is for adults, primarily for people in their 20s and 30s, and we have a cohort of folks from the D.C. area who come every year, and it’s been a pleasure to watch that community grow. There, it’s kind of like giving young adults a taste of their childhood back, whether they went to summer camp and loved it, or went and didn’t like it and are coming back to reenact their summer camp experience, or if they never went to camp but want a taste of it, or maybe their partner went to camp but they’re not Jewish.
What’s great about Trybal is that they give this connection to Judaism that’s really open. It doesn’t proclaim to have the one true way to practice. However you show up Jewishly is the right way. Our Jewish connection can be through liturgy, through Shabbat, but also through things I do at camp, like through making pickles, doing improv together and celebrating some of our Jewish comedians, through meditation [and] through practicing mindfulness within the Jewish tradition.
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Washington, D.C
Lake City’s ArtFields helps bring S.C. stories to national stage in Washington, D.C.
LAKE CITY, S.C. (WPDE) — A community art project with roots in Florence County is now on display on one of the nation’s biggest cultural stages.
ArtFields, the nationally recognized art festival based in Lake City, was selected as South Carolina’s official host for the National Scrollathon, a collaborative artmaking project that brings together people from across the country to share their stories through fabric scrolls.
The project is now being unveiled at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., giving Lake City and the Pee Dee region a place in a nationwide artistic celebration.
Created by brothers and artists Steven and William Ladd, Scrollathon invites participants to design personal fabric scrolls that reflect their experiences, hopes and dreams.
The individual pieces are then combined into a larger work of art that represents communities from across the United States.
Earlier this year, dozens of residents in Lake City participated in the project through an initiative called “Tied Together,” creating scrolls that shared their personal stories and connections to their community.
Carla Angus, an ArtFields consultant, said the project’s impact comes from bringing people together through creativity and storytelling.
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“Everyone who was invited receives these strips of material and fabric, and they select their colors, they select what they want to put together and they create a story behind their scroll,” Angus said. “That’s what’s so powerful about the project because it brings all these different people together with different backgrounds and different experiences.”
In addition to Lake City, Scrollathon events were held at other South Carolina cultural institutions, including the Gibbes Museum of Art and the International African American Museum.
Now, those local contributions are part of a much larger display.
More than 250,000 participants from all 50 states and U.S. territories contributed to the National Scrollathon.
The collection is being showcased at the Kennedy Center, where visitors can experience what organizers describe as a visual representation of the American story.
For Angus, seeing scrolls created in Lake City displayed alongside contributions from across the country is a proud moment.
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“When I look at those scrolls, I know those are thousands upon thousands of individuals that have shared their stories,” Angus said. “Now they have become one unified piece of artwork.”
Angus described the experience as surreal and said it demonstrates how art can connect people regardless of where they come from.
“It’s almost surreal because what we want to do is connect people through the arts,” Angus said. “To be a part of something that is so large, bringing so many states together, it shows how powerful art can be.”
The National Scrollathon will remain on display through Labor Day as part of the Kennedy Center’s yearlong celebration of America’s 250th anniversary and the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
For Lake City and Florence County residents, the exhibit represents an opportunity to see their stories become part of a national conversation, one scroll at a time.
WASHINGTON (DC News Now) — A Texas man accused of shooting at a United States Secret Service agent near the Washington Monument earlier this month has been indicted on federal charges, the Justice Department announced Friday.
A federal grand jury indicted 45-year-old Michael Marx with “assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers using a dangerous weapon” and “using, carrying, possessing, brandishing, and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence,” in connection with the May 4 incident, in which a stray bullet struck a teenage bystander.
“Today’s indictment reflects the gravity of the defendant’s actions on one of the most heavily visited public spaces in the nation,” U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said Friday, in part. “The evidence shows Marx not only carried an illegal firearm into DC, but he fired it at uniformed officers, wounding an innocent teenage bystander who was simply visiting the National Mall with his family on a spring afternoon.”
Authorities previously charged Marx with assaulting federal officers with a dangerous weapon, using and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence, and unlawful possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
According to court documents, an undercover Secret Service agent initially noticed Marx trying to conceal a gun on the right side of his body near 15th Street and Madison Drive NW shortly after 3:30 p.m. on the afternoon of the shooting.
At the same time, the motorcade for Vice President J.D. Vance was leaving the White House, passing through the area just up the street.
Uniformed Secret Service officers arrived to provide backup, finding Marx along the path of Vance’s motorcade. The attorney’s office said officers began to give the Texas man verbal commands, but he started running through a crosswalk and eventually fired at one of the agents as he reached the sidewalk.
The bullet struck the teenage bystander, who was walking behind the agent, in the leg, according to the DOJ.
Agents quickly returned fire, striking Marx in the hand, left arm, and upper body, according to court documents.
Court documents state that agents used Marx’s Texas driver’s license, which he was carrying, to identify him as the gunman. Investigators also identified various aliases Marx allegedly went by, including Patrick Michael and Michael Zavici.
While in the hospital, he allegedly made statements to officers, including ”F— the White House,” and “kill me, kill me, kill me,” the DOJ noted in a release.
Police found a Sig Sauer P365 handgun loaded with 9mm ammunition from the street where Marx fell.
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