Adapting Different Ships, Same Boat
to Explore Themes Drawn from
the 250th Anniversary of the American Revolution

The work samples provided are from the first iteration of  Different Ships, Same Boat (DSSB).
The videos are of the second time the show was ever performed. 

DSSB is structured for adaptation, and show directors/writers are now working on its next iterations.

DSSB is designed to adapt. Its structure — hosts’ narration curates vignettes into chapters —  is built to make it easy to keep DSSB relevant.
To continue evolving DSSB, its directors/writers:

• Modify the frame for chapters and/or stories (e.g. we did this to gear DSSB for the Town of Brookline’s MLK Commemoration, which launched a much larger partnership with Arts for Social Cohesion)

• Replace individual vignettes, as needed

• Introduce new chapters, as needed

See below for examples of ways DSSB will adapt to explore themes drawn from the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution. 

“We may have all come on Different Ships, but we are in the Same Boat now.”
When Martin Luther King, Jr. said this, America was in turmoil as to WHAT is and WHO is to be considered a REAL American. It is not lost on us that, at various points in this country's history, three of the five members of our team —  Regie, descended from the American enslaved, Guy, an immigrant of Jewish Hungarian descent, or Courtney, a Japanese immigrant — would have been dismissed as NOT AMERICAN, whether effectively, legally, or both.

Recent events and the approach of the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution give us a chance to pause and reflect:  What might it mean to love and celebrate not just America, but Americans?

DSSB addresses this question through moving personal stories — brought to life through powerful spoken word, musical score & song — stories that give flesh, blood, and bone to the small, living histories that make up this country.

DSSB explores real-world inspirations, aspirations and trepidations of people who make America what it is, to bring each other's humanity into sharper relief – and to better enable civic healing. 

As StoryCorps founder David Isay puts it, “you cannot hate a person once you’ve listened to their story.”

Already in its present form, DSSB tells the stories of people who’ve made America what it is —  often omitted from conventional histories. Future iterations will make this explicit and tie it to the guiding question: What does it mean to love and celebrate not just America, but Americans?

DSSB’s directors/writers are now adapting the chapter/story framing to bring out personal/historical/cultural context that ties directly to the guiding question.  

For example:

• Sit Down, Children celebrates the courage of children who continue to show “grown folk” a better future with brighter possibilities. Future framing will tie this piece in to moments throughout America’s history in which youth led movements that have made this country what it is: From the American Revolution itself, to the Civil Rights freedom rides, to the climate and peace movements to marching at the forefront of struggles for justice and dignity and human rights for all Americans.  

• Framing for Hija Mi Kerida will focus on this urban early 20th century Ottoman Jewish song as a type sung by many Ottoman immigrants as they arrived in the US and, ultimately, helped shape cities like New York, Seattle and Los Angeles. In this song, a mother warns her daughter about powerful currents that can sweep her away. On the face of it, this is about love. But these waves can also be metaphors for the identity shifts known to so many immigrants (including Courtney & Guy). For many immigrants, like the daughter in this scene, these questions would have touched on pressures to assimilate (what Du Bois terms a “vortex of Whiteness” ) to gain legal/social foothold. Where are the lines between reinventing one’s self to fit in and performing a role for the sake of safety? All the while growing more distant from, eventually perhaps losing traditions of dress, and food, and language, and values, and…? Such questions are later mirrored in the story of other early 20th century immigrants whose race changes on actual court documents to secure citizenship’s protections and promises.

• Chapter 4, A Rose Among the Ruins, will be reframed to tell of the strengths that have always been a part of this country, and the ways that in so many times, places and ways, ordinary people have brought a bit of light into darkness. This includes family histories that have shaped Americans-to-be. For example, this chapter includes the true story of Guy’s grandparents who, as teens, served in the resistance in Romania and Hungary during the 2nd World War, and helped others escape fascism to greater freedom. Much of what Guy now does (including DSSB!) links to growing up with them. Such stories are the case for so many.

While much is in the chapter/story framing, it is likely that 1-3 stories will be swapped out, and/or a new chapter introduced. DSSB writers are presently exploring new material that will address much of the ideas relevant to the issues of the 250th. As of now, potential chapter headings of the segments include:

• We Pledge Allegiance: True Patriotism (To Love Americans)

• Call Me American: What Defines and Unites Us

• We the People: Immigration and American Belonging

• When they Speak of Our Time: To Ourselves and Our Posterity

• A More Perfect Union: The Stumbling and Struggling toward Better

• Democracy: A New Narrative (A Summoning in Red, White, and Blues)

Good heavens no! An important strength of DSSB is its balance of real with levity, complexity with wit and laughter.

We consider this essential — just watch the first moments of the show to see what we mean.

Or consider the scene at ending Chapter 5 — a humorous country song/story about two Americans from different backgrounds  who  actually take the time to listen to one another. Even though it’s humorous, and a toe-tapping good time, there is a poignance about Just Call Me American, sung by this crew: Each artist onstage is American - and yet at various times most of these artists would not have been considered American, either legally, socially or both, because they are Black or immigrants from Japan or of Hungarian Jewish descent. 

Performance opens up an important space. And that’s where we start, but we take the work further. We have developed a number of associated programs that make it easy and fun for people to do what they crave: Connect meaningfully with one another. 
For example, we have Listening Labs, community strengthening forums in which stories of Different Ships, Same Boat facilitate generous listening with fellow participants in conversations that are honest, intimate, and alive. 

A mountain of social psychology studies going back decades offers evidence of what typically happens when you listen to a person’s story. Stories can increase empathy. Curiousity. Openness to a person, even when you may have written them off.  Stories offer evidence of how, as innate as it may be to “other”, humans are also built to “US” —  to share identities and experiences above our differences. Like: We’re someone’s child. We all know love, and pain, and loss, and joy. 

In a society where it feels so common to eclipse others' humanity with assumptions driven by their membership in a group, like Black, or Jew, or Trans, or Old — stories bring that person’s humanity into high definition, so that instead of a person-shaped haze we see their actual features.

Many focus on the stories of a rarified few, whether famous from history books, or high-budget productions, or well-funded political stages. DSSB dispels notions that change comes just from such ‘important’ people and ‘big’ actions, then or now. What if each of us is exactly what is needed? What if history is more than “the biographies of great men,” as Carlyle wrote, but is alive in each of us?

There is power in intimate human stories that strengthen empathy and openness, beyond just historical facts. Humanizing more of the people who’ve made America meaningfully honors the 250th anniversary, even apart from Founding Father tales. This —  to us — is valuable & important.