Guy Mendilow Ensemble & Regie Gibson (MA Poet Laureate)

Different Ships, Same Boat

Performed by Guy Mendilow Ensemble & Regie Gibson (MA Poet Laureate) | Arts for Social Cohesion

Different Ships, Same Boat is an interactive, multidisciplinary performance combining powerful spoken word, music and song to explore the multifaceted ways Americans risk, live, love and laugh. Unfolding through a series of chapters — each curating real world stories — literary performer Regie Gibson (Massachusetts poet laureate) and composer/storycatcher Guy Mendilow guide audiences with podcast-like narration, at turns humorous, poignant or poetic, over an evocative musical score. With stories from small towns, cities and ports of entry, along with music spanning lyrical American Blues and songs from older homes from which today’s Americans came (e.g. Ottoman Jews from present-day Greece and Hungary), Different Ships, Same Boat offers a stirring exploration of the joys, tensions and complexities of who we are and who we wish to be.

As we commemorate the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, Different Ships, Same Boat invites audiences to celebrate not only America but Americans. This is for those craving a powerful artistic performance of captivating music and stories — a moving, finely-crafted, anthology that connects audiences to American histories, perspectives, and experiences both familiar and different from their own.

Robust residency programming is associated with Different Ships, Same Boat. Programs are designed to strengthen relationships within and between communities. These range from Ponder to Page storycrafting workshops giving participants tools to create resonant stories out of small moments (designed for the non-writer!); Crowdsourced poems (a spoken word piece made of community members’ words and reflections, set to original music and performed back for a community); and Listening Labs — community strengthening forums in which moving stories, told through powerful spoken word, musical score and song, facilitate generous listening with fellow participants in conversations that are honest, intimate, and alive.