Coffee and Conversation (Prop and Generosity)

My heart is so full after seeing everyone's generosity in our class projects, especially during an emotionally hard and draining week. I felt so suddenly full of joy as I received generous acts of kindness that feel like an answer to a prayer I didn't even pray.

For my own performance art project, I thought about the idea of having a genuine conversation over a cup of coffee at a coffee shop. When I took a semester off from Westmont and was home last fall, I had the pleasure of going out to coffee with several people—both people I knew really well and people I was just getting to know. There is something so wonderful about getting to talk with someone and the environment a coffee shop creates, to be able to have deep and meaningful conversations. I miss being able to do this in our current climate, so I decided to create a "coffee shop" and a place for conversation for our class.

Along with serving coffee, I wanted people to be able to engage in genuine conversation and to be able to start these conversations without a lot of awkward small talk first. I decided to write engaging questions on each cup that people were able to ask each other as they sat and drank their coffee while being socially distant. Our class has demonstrated lots of vulnerability with each other as we've presented projects and had conversations as a class so I knew people would be willing to genuinely talk to one another.

I was very pleased with how the project came out. Though we were only able to talk for a couple of minutes, everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves and their conversations. When I told two members of my class my idea for this performance prior to actually performing it, they both remarked that they too missed going to coffee shops. Though COVID may have taken this communal experience away from us for a period of time, that does not mean that there are not other ways we can connect with each other and grow in our relationships during this time.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/5355dc_f97dfe1755cb4c89b8b0bcba3968b3a5/1080p/mp4/file.mp4