Arts Essay

Whispering and Shouting the Truths of Desire: A Collaborative Community-Based Research Project with Urban Girls

by Dana Edell
Founder and Executive Director, viBe Theater Experience
PhD Candidate in Educational Theatre, New York University

This paper argues for the need to engage teenage girls in the research that explores and investigates their sexuality and desire. I outline the strengths and challenges of launching a collaborative community-based research project that partners teenagers with an adult researcher. I devised a partnership between myself and a group of girls who are involved with viBe Theater Experience, a nonprofit organization that offers free after school performing arts programs. As viBe's director and as an academic researcher, I present the struggles and rewards of including youth as co-researchers and I propose a series of questions for researchers interested in these partnerships. How do we engage and train young people as researchers? What happens when the research findings are potentially destructive to the participants/co-researchers or illuminate negative things about young people? How can we devise creative research structures that empower people within the communities we are working with to co-research?

* * *

"I didn't, um, I didn't express as much emotion as I should've according to what people would say" (Naima 2008) 1

Excite me
Ignite in me fire
The fire of wanton lust
Of u just
Spreading my legs
From my toes to my waist
Don’t hesitate
To enter
With your fingers
Your tongue
Tell me what I taste like
Dip into scents that whisper sweet flavors
Whisper in my ear
Words so unspeakable
They barely drip/off/the/tip/of/your/lips
(Lily 2006)

The contrast between these two pieces haunts me. Naima is a 15-year-old girl who experienced sexual intercourse for the first time and was consumed by guilt and regret. The second poem was performed by teenage Lily as part of her erotically charged solo theater performance, THIRSTY, in the spring of 2006. Genna is one of hundreds of teenage girls that I have worked with who write and perform glorious shows, individually and collaboratively, about issues, ideas, dreams, fantasies and struggles that they experience as urban teenagers. I am interested in how girls express sexuality, to whom they express it, how they articulate desire, and how they negotiate and challenge the restrictions, prejudices, condescension, and punishments that adults and peers impose upon them when they do express sexuality. I want to find a way to create the safe space for them to both explore desire and sexuality without the exploitation and objectification so rampant in the public spheres; and publish research about these experiences to sound a siren through the silence of girls from academic research about girls' sexuality.

I look to Deborah Tolman's research, based on interviews with high school girls, as significant in its honest representation of girls' sexuality – a topic that has for centuries instilled fear and horror in United States society. But by not talking about it, by not acknowledging it and celebrating it, we send a message to girls that sexuality is bad, dangerous, and meant to be kept secret. I have seen and heard girls express bold and unabashed sexuality on a stage in front of an audience of friends, parents, teachers, and strangers in a way that I have not heard them speak to each other, on the street, or in classrooms. In Sister/ Outsider, Audre Lorde writes, "we have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings. But, once recognized, those which do not enhance our future lose their power and can be altered. The fear of our desires keeps them suspect and indiscriminately powerful, for to suppress any truth is to give it strength beyond endurance" (Lorde 1984, p. 157-58). There is abundant literature and research about adult sexuality, but the field of adolescent sexuality, in relation to desire and eroticism, is still unfolding.

In the spring of 2007, I initiated a collaborative research project where a team of teenage girls worked with me to explore how girls use the arts to express sexuality and the potential impact this has on them and their communities. We are interested in what effects sexual repression has on them, who they talk to about sex, what pressures exist in their schools, churches, or neighborhoods, what information they have, where they get it, how they maintain respect for their bodies and their partners' bodies, and when they choose to write or perform about any of these issues. In collaboration with another local nonprofit organization, Girls Write Now, we created an arts-based resource guidebook based on their questions, fears, and experiences that provided ways for girls to explore issues around sexuality in safe and creative ways. The guidebook also includes writing, songs, poetry about sex, as well as local resources for health and reproductive services such as birth control, abortion and support services for survivors of rape sexual assault. .

The publicly active goals for this research are to create and disseminate these creative books to guide young women in New York towards more positive and physically, spiritually, and emotionally healthy explorations of sexuality. The strength and focus of this project is to work with teenagers in researching an issue, incorporating peer-to-peer interviewing and gathering information, and using a creative approach to finding solutions based on the research findings. We realized in our work that there is a great need for teenagers in the low-income communities where I work to have access to positive, empowering information about sexuality.

I am fiercely committed to conducting research in this way – alongside the people who are at the center of it. It was illuminating to create research questions with teenage girls and to understand what they felt was lacking in their communities. The activities we created for the interactive portion of publication were all articulated and devised by young people, so I trusted that other youth would find value and entertainment in them. The girls knew what their peers would connect with in ways that I could never foresee. They knew how to phrase and frame questions for the surveys in a language teenagers could really hear. Their presence brought an energy and urgency to the work that was a constant reminder of its necessity. But still, there are challenges! Working with teenagers is as frustrating as it is amazing. A couple of the girls involved in the project were pregnant or had babies; attendance was sporadic; focus was scattered; and I found that in the end, I was really doing much more work than they were. They were high school students and we weren't able to find a way for them to get academic credit or a stipend for their time and efforts. I had expected (and hoped) that they would be so excited about the project and that that would be "payment" enough. But I realized that my love and passion for research wasn't as contagious as I'd expected. The girls participated because they were committed to working with viBe – as artists, as writers, and as creative collaborators. This new project fell outside the sphere of "performing arts" and it was difficult for them to see the immediate rewards and excitement that a performance project can generate.

I also struggled to reject power structures and hierarchies, but found that I was the one with all of the access – to the libraries, the computers, the copy machines, and the credit card. So I became the "leader" in a way that I didn't really want to be. I also realized the challenge of writing "authentically" and critically about my co-researchers. Their writing focused on seemingly shallow outcomes – overly hopeful and positive results, or fatalistic and unsupported negative ones. What happens when I "discover" multi-layered negative outcomes? What if some of the things I write about teenagers are impossible for them to comprehend now, and could my analysis of their actions be destructive to their sense of self?

The project stalled as spring somersaulted into summer and all of our schedules changed. I hope to continue with the project and work with a larger team of teenage co-researchers and dig deeper into this area. The potential impact is gargantuan as I envision our community as a place where teenage girls can reclaim and celebrate what their sexuality really means to them. As a scholar, I am interested in adding to the literature about girls' sexuality. There is not enough research about girls' sexuality (especially research created with teenagers) and creativity, and how sexuality is part of the female voice that is often silenced during adolescence. I hope that my scholarly work will be useful in helping to understand how best to provide positive sexual health resources for urban girls and the importance of incorporating the arts into it.

Post a comment, ask a question, tie in some literature, relate your own experience from the field… Go to www.pageia.blogspot.com.

To make suggestions about the site, the blog, or to submit your own essay about public scholarship in the arts, design, or humanities, email Kevin Bott at kbott@syr.edu

All names have been changed to protect the individuals’ identities.


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Arts Essay Whispering and Shouting the Truths of Desire: A Collaborative Community-Based Research Project with Urban Girls by Dana Edell Founder and Executive Director, viBe Theater Experience PhD Candidate in Educational Theatre, New York University This paper argues for the need to engage teenage girls in the research that explores and investigates their sexuality and desire. I outline the strengths and challenges of launching a collaborative community-based research project that partners teenagers with an adult researcher. I devised a partnership between myself and a group of girls who are involved with viBe Theater Experience, a nonprofit organization that offers free after school performing arts programs. As viBe's director and as an academic researcher, I present the struggles and rewards of including youth as co-researchers and I propose a series of questions for researchers interested in these partnerships. How do we engage and train young people as researchers? What happens when the research findings are potentially destructive to the participants/co-researchers or illuminate negative things about young people? How can we devise creative research structures that empower people within the communities we are working with to co-research? * * * "I didn't, um, I didn't express as much emotion as I should've according to what people would say" (Naima 2008) 1 Excite me Ignite in me fire The fire of wanton lust Of u just Spreading my legs From my toes to my waist Don’t hesitate To enter With your fingers Your tongue Tell me what I taste like Dip into scents that whisper sweet flavors Whisper in my ear Words so unspeakable They barely drip/off/the/tip/of/your/lips (Lily 2006) The contrast between these two pieces haunts me. Naima is a 15-year-old girl who experienced sexual intercourse for the first time and was consumed by guilt and regret. The second poem was performed by teenage Lily as part of her erotically charged solo theater performance, THIRSTY, in the spring of 2006. Genna is one of hundreds of teenage girls that I have worked with who write and perform glorious shows, individually and collaboratively, about issues, ideas, dreams, fantasies and struggles that they experience as urban teenagers. I am interested in how girls express sexuality, to whom they express it, how they articulate desire, and how they negotiate and challenge the restrictions, prejudices, condescension, and punishments that adults and peers impose upon them when they do express sexuality. I want to find a way to create the safe space for them to both explore desire and sexuality without the exploitation and objectification so rampant in the public spheres; and publish research about these experiences to sound a siren through the silence of girls from academic research about girls' sexuality. I look to Deborah Tolman's research, based on interviews with high school girls, as significant in its honest representation of girls' sexuality – a topic that has for centuries instilled fear and horror in United States society. But by not talking about it, by not acknowledging it and celebrating it, we send a message to girls that sexuality is bad, dangerous, and meant to be kept secret. I have seen and heard girls express bold and unabashed sexuality on a stage in front of an audience of friends, parents, teachers, and strangers in a way that I have not heard them speak to each other, on the street, or in classrooms. In Sister/ Outsider, Audre Lorde writes, "we have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings. But, once recognized, those which do not enhance our future lose their power and can be altered. The fear of our desires keeps them suspect and indiscriminately powerful, for to suppress any truth is to give it strength beyond endurance" (Lorde 1984, p. 157-58). There is abundant literature and research about adult sexuality, but the field of adolescent sexuality, in relation to desire and eroticism, is still unfolding. In the spring of 2007, I initiated a collaborative research project where a team of teenage girls worked with me to explore how girls use the arts to express sexuality and the potential impact this has on them and their communities. We are interested in what effects sexual repression has on them, who they talk to about sex, what pressures exist in their schools, churches, or neighborhoods, what information they have, where they get it, how they maintain respect for their bodies and their partners' bodies, and when they choose to write or perform about any of these issues. In collaboration with another local nonprofit organization, Girls Write Now, we created an arts-based resource guidebook based on their questions, fears, and experiences that provided ways for girls to explore issues around sexuality in safe and creative ways. The guidebook also includes writing, songs, poetry about sex, as well as local resources for health and reproductive services such as birth control, abortion and support services for survivors of rape sexual assault. . The publicly active goals for this research are to create and disseminate these creative books to guide young women in New York towards more positive and physically, spiritually, and emotionally healthy explorations of sexuality. The strength and focus of this project is to work with teenagers in researching an issue, incorporating peer-to-peer interviewing and gathering information, and using a creative approach to finding solutions based on the research findings. We realized in our work that there is a great need for teenagers in the low-income communities where I work to have access to positive, empowering information about sexuality. I am fiercely committed to conducting research in this way – alongside the people who are at the center of it. It was illuminating to create research questions with teenage girls and to understand what they felt was lacking in their communities. The activities we created for the interactive portion of publication were all articulated and devised by young people, so I trusted that other youth would find value and entertainment in them. The girls knew what their peers would connect with in ways that I could never foresee. They knew how to phrase and frame questions for the surveys in a language teenagers could really hear. Their presence brought an energy and urgency to the work that was a constant reminder of its necessity. But still, there are challenges! Working with teenagers is as frustrating as it is amazing. A couple of the girls involved in the project were pregnant or had babies; attendance was sporadic; focus was scattered; and I found that in the end, I was really doing much more work than they were. They were high school students and we weren't able to find a way for them to get academic credit or a stipend for their time and efforts. I had expected (and hoped) that they would be so excited about the project and that that would be "payment" enough. But I realized that my love and passion for research wasn't as contagious as I'd expected. The girls participated because they were committed to working with viBe – as artists, as writers, and as creative collaborators. This new project fell outside the sphere of "performing arts" and it was difficult for them to see the immediate rewards and excitement that a performance project can generate. I also struggled to reject power structures and hierarchies, but found that I was the one with all of the access – to the libraries, the computers, the copy machines, and the credit card. So I became the "leader" in a way that I didn't really want to be. I also realized the challenge of writing "authentically" and critically about my co-researchers. Their writing focused on seemingly shallow outcomes – overly hopeful and positive results, or fatalistic and unsupported negative ones. What happens when I "discover" multi-layered negative outcomes? What if some of the things I write about teenagers are impossible for them to comprehend now, and could my analysis of their actions be destructive to their sense of self? The project stalled as spring somersaulted into summer and all of our schedules changed. I hope to continue with the project and work with a larger team of teenage co-researchers and dig deeper into this area. The potential impact is gargantuan as I envision our community as a place where teenage girls can reclaim and celebrate what their sexuality really means to them. As a scholar, I am interested in adding to the literature about girls' sexuality. There is not enough research about girls' sexuality (especially research created with teenagers) and creativity, and how sexuality is part of the female voice that is often silenced during adolescence. I hope that my scholarly work will be useful in helping to understand how best to provide positive sexual health resources for urban girls and the importance of incorporating the arts into it. Post a comment, ask a question, tie in some literature, relate your own experience from the field… Go to www.pageia.blogspot.com. To make suggestions about the site, the blog, or to submit your own essay about public scholarship in the arts, design, or humanities, email Kevin Bott at kbott@syr.edu All names have been changed to protect the individuals’ identities.