Habitat: The beginning.

The mayor of Duluth had just announced the “10 Year Plan to End Homelessness,” the city was experiencing a housing crisis, and I was 19 years of age living in Duluth with curiosity as my guide. I began work on Habitat during the fall of 2004 conducting interviews, gathering information, and working to understand the housing situation in Duluth. During that time I was also interested in more esoteric questions of "Home" and what it means to have a home. As I am constantly questioning what is basic to human survival and what surrounds a feeling of "rooted-ness," I found myself extremely attentive to people's living situations and how they surround themselves with the things that satisfy their needs. It also became painfully obvious to me that there are many that do not have their needs satisfied. These are the voices for which I wanted to create an arena to share their story, because these are the voices that are generally not visible to most people. Their stories stimulate and provoke insights into what most people take for granted.

Building relationships with those that I interviewed was one of the most fruitful experiences of this project. I was growing into myself, enthralled by a community that I had little to no exposure to when I was growing up. In order to understand, I slept along the shores of Lake Superior, I stayed at the shelter, I ate at the soup kitchen, I visited those who needed help. The voices in “Habitat” are a collection of the stories told to me, perspectives on homelessness, and expressions of hope.

Utilizing the stories for a theatrical performance was a natural progression and documentary theater presented a particularly interesting approach. I looked to the Tectonic Theater Project's, The Laramie Project and modeled the structure of the show after my knowledge of Moises Kaufmann's approach. The interviews were recorded on an analog Marantz system and transcribed with an effort to preserve the manner in which the person spoke. I remained hunched over the interviews for the next year finding the similarities and highlighting the differences of the stories. The interviews were edited and combined culminating in a thoughtfully composed narrative, told by the people of Duluth, guided towards answering questions regarding housing.

Habitat has been invited to perform in various spaces including the Oral History Conference at Columbia University, Duluth's Health and Human Services Conference in October and is now incorporated in the curriculum of the Minnesota Advocacy and Political Leadership Graduate program at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. It has been used as a tool for stimulating dialogue around poverty issues among community action organizations and has brought folks of all backgrounds together. It has been an extremely welcome performance in the community with strong audience turn-out and positive feedback. It has been said to be "a remarkable community event with the capacity to be a powerful force in Duluth."

Rachel Anne Johnson

playwright