Hope in Despair: Life on Life’s Terms began with 16 Dartmouth students, two professors, and about 20 female residents of the Valley Vista Rehabilitation Center walking to the front of a room and introducing themselves to each other by saying their names, where they were from, a like, and a dislike. Initially, we came together as two apparently different groups: students from a fancy, name brand Ivy League institution and women from a hidden, stigmatized population in a substance abuse rehabilitation center.
But once we started talking and introducing ourselves, we noticed links across the gap that divided us. Some people said they didn’t like authority, and some people defiantly stated that they didn’t like onions. We shared the human experience of liking and disliking, and we even shared some of the same objects of affection and disgust. The exercise became about a shared relationship instead of solely a shared object. A bridge began to form between groups whose material conditions could be immediately recognized by who had to ask to use the bathroom and who could just go.
Over eight weeks we turned these shared relationships back into a shared object, a shared moment in which we put on the performance on which we collaborated. The project centered on the women at Valley Vista, but the students learned as much and grew as much as the women. At the final
performances, participants’ voices, including those who were not even at the performance, spoke as one voice, not of a homogenous life experience but of a heterogeneous community.
— Alex, Student Participant