From These Streets I Rise is a performance piece created, co-produced, and performed by Mikki Jordan. This production is pieced together from a selection of interviews conducted with Street Roots’ vendors directly impacted by homelessness. Mikki shared her vision for this piece, exploring the effects of the current pandemic on the living everyday realities of Portland’s houseless community.
This show was created in honor of Street Roots. Their mission is to create income opportunities for individuals struggling with homelessness and poverty. To honor this mission CoHo will donate 75% of all ticket sales directly to Street Roots. The majority of those funds will be given to the Street Roots vendors who contributed their stories to this project. Click HERE to donate to Street Roots directly.
“In this time of a global pandemic where social distancing has become the new norm, live theatre will play a vital role in bringing our community together and creating much-needed opportunities to celebrate both our shared humanity as well as our capacity for resilience. The monologues in this piece touch on themes of community and resilience – celebrating our capacity to adapt, grow, and come together as a community amidst great adversity.
In revisiting this piece our ideal would be to gather more interviews of Street Roots vendors exploring the theme of “social distancing”. Much of the media narrative has focused on how this pandemic has impacted the well-off and working class, but those who have long struggled with homelessness and poverty likely have a very different experience of “social distancing” that predates our global health crisis.
We are interested in exploring the pandemic from this perspective while also creating an event that celebrates the incredible work of Street Roots. Like so many non-profit organizations within our community, Street Roots is struggling to stay afloat while simultaneously serving some of the most vulnerable members within our community. They have been on the front lines of this pandemic, working hard to ensure their vendors struggling with homelessness and poverty have access to basic resources that can allow them the ability to shelter in place when there is literally no shelter available to them.
If the state of the world prevents us from conducting additional interviews, we do feel the piece as written stands on its own as the themes of community and resilience remain universal and feel all the more prescient given the challenges of our current times.”
