The X Page: A Storytelling Workshop is an interdisciplinary community arts project that connects women who are immigrants or refugees with artists in Waterloo Region, who assist and mentor them in writing and performing their own stories.
In the spring of 2019, The X Page performed our Season One show “Quilt of Stories” for a live, sold-out theatre audience. “Quilt of Stories” featured music, movement, staged scenes, and the compelling personal stories of nineteen women, told in their own voices.
For our 2020 season, four performers from Season One returned as peer mentors.
While our Season Two performance had to be cancelled due to COVID-19, we are grateful that the stories had already been written, and will be published by The New Quarterly later this spring.
Our workshop uses writing and drawing exercises based Lynda Barry’s teachings and philosophy, including “the X page.” Lynda Barry is a 2019 recipient of the MacArthur “Genius Grant,” an American graphic novelist and a brilliant teacher, who encourages her students to go forth and use her ideas in their own work — and that’s exactly what I decided to do with this project.
We like to say that The X Page is the opposite of the blank page. It’s the space where we enter into an image using all of our senses. Thank you, Lynda Barry.
