The performance collective Songbird & Starling to perform its first interactive workshop

By Cameron Aalto, Ashland.News

Community members will gather Saturday morning at the Oregon Fringe Festival to experience and participate in a new workshop titled “The Initiation.” 

Songbird & Starling, an Ashland-based performance collective, created the immersive theatrical experience. Participants, according to the Oregon Fringe Festival website, will enter into the fairytale world of Osterei following the protagonist Cetula through her ritual initiation — and, coincidentally, their own. 

After learning of the secrets to the three separate Guilds of Osterei: The Mystics, The Philosophers, and The Artisans, participants will scramble to save their world. 

The workshop is a non-traditional and interactive theater experience where participants impact the storyline and have the ability to perform alongside Songbird & Starling artists. 

Among these artists are the two co-founders of Songbird & Starling: Aurora Quinn and Lilith Andromeda. 

Quinn has acted as the primary writer and director of “The Initiation.” She says, “When I heard about the Fringe Festival coming up, I really wanted to create … a kind of a theatrical workshop for people … about overcoming group identity into the larger collective.” She said the project “came out of a seed of wanting to design … I guess theatrical game play for people … it’s become a little more of a story-based performance than originally conceived.” 

Quinn’s love for storytelling and world building stems from her childhood. “What started to emerge,” she said, “was this whole rich story world … I love world building, I grew up playing Dungeons & Dragons and writing like little pieces of fiction … so I got … really deep into this kind of archetype of the project.” 

Quinn describes the historic beginning of theater stemming from re-enacted stories told around the fire. “Theater started as ritual, and that is something we oftentimes forget,” she said. “Theater is … an enactment and, if we can come back to enacting things collectively, and enacting new stories collectively … that’s a real transformational power.” 

Andromeda adds that “The Initiative” emphasizes the “creating (of) new myth and the … reinviting of ritual into our everyday lives.” “Ritual” is described by Quinn as “a collectively enacted experience of offering body, mind and spirit to the greater body. It is about dropping into presence with the group and establishing a sacred container for awe and play to come through.” Songbird & Starling implement their values by including their attendees in their performance. 

This interactive performance is free to the public on a first come, first served basis with only 42 slots available. To participate, attendees must meet the performers outside of Southern Oregon University’s Music Building. 

Ashland.news intern Cameron Aalto is a senior at Southern Oregon University. Email him at aaltoc@sou.edu.