A Reflection on My Time At coLAB Arts #ForeverInspired
Rafael Lozada
My experience with coLAB began the summer of 2019 when I ran into John Keller, Director of Education and Outreach, while interning for another Rutgers affiliated organization. After catching up a bit, John, who introduced me to Meisner technique in his Fundamentals of Acting 3 years prior, began sharing about his involvement with coLAB and the growing Trueselves project work.. The second installment of the thread, True Love: An Act of Support, was then in the midst of being produced and John was already setting his sight on what came next. In hindsight, I now know that an “ever-evolving” quality is an intrinsic part of coLAB’s identity.
It was clear from day one that John and Dan’s life mission is to serve and, without regards of how cliché it may seem, to leave the world better than they found it through their passion for art and activism. This has left (get ready to hear this again) an ever-evolving impression on me. A memory of mine that embodies their servitude is that of John prompting us to write down our goals both in life and within the company during our intern orientation. One of my answers was to become a voice for the diverse identities who make up who I am, some of which include gender fluid, immigrant and Hispanic. That exercise felt more specific than the regular first day ice breaker and embodies one of the qualities in coLAB’s culture I have loved most. That quality can be summed up in other clichés like “sharing is caring”, “all hands-on deck” and “there is no I in team”. We have consistently been encouraged to share our thoughts, thus sharing some of the idiosyncrasies that make up our identities, to build on the project at hand which in turn has me feel included, valued. It is not lost on me that interns don’t feel that way often.
That sense of inclusion can be an even rarer find for me because of my gender fluid identity. However, the close friends that I have kept in the loop on this experience have have expressed that they feel “this was custom made for you”. That sentiment rings true to me as I have gotten to expand on my knowledge of the history of my trans and gender non-conforming community by reading the Trueselves scripts. Additionally, I have been tasked with diving deeper into policies and historic events mentioned in them and developing annotations for the organizational archive podcast series. Even more, I have gotten to hear fellow LGBTQ+ folk narrate the stories of their lives when transcribing oral histories. I believe this has prompted a stronger sense of self as I have found commonalities in our experiences. My arts related Spanish vocabulary has also expanded through these projects as I have had the opportunity to translate curricula and guides with the purpose of advancing and including more and more members my New Brunswick community. Let it be known that before my time at coLAB words like curricula and symposia were absent from my vocabulary.
While I am currently in the last month of my junior year at Rutgers, I feel reassured that there is value to a theater major and gender studies minor. To put it short, my time at coLAB has helped me hone in on my professional identity. I find this realization similar to the way the Meisner technique John introduced me to, which is characterized by specificity, introspection and sharing of self, has helped me hone in on my personal identity. With the now (here it comes) ever-evolving confidence in my sense of self, the professional skills I’ve been learning and the collaborative approach I have witnessed while at coLAB, I hope to lead a life of service like that of John and Dan. Their brotherhood is the heart and core of what coLAB stands for: a coming together of artists, communities and social advocates with the purpose of social change.
Rafael Lozada is a Rutgers Theater Major and Gender Studies Minor who worked with coLAB Arts during the Spring of 2020.