The Heroine Journey as Metaphor for Ensemble Mindset
Playwright, Lynn Nottage
In a previous post, I wrote about the call to the heroine journey—a journey of empowerment and activation of potential—as one for self, but also one that includes others. As distinct from the hero’s journey, it’s one that brings along those who are also on a path of discovery and growth. I was reminded of our Jazz Leadership Project principle called Ensemble Mindset, which is our term for the bedrock of high-performing jazz ensembles.
This mindset is purpose-driven, values-based, and intention-focused. Ensemble Mindset creates a foundation of trust, support, and high-level communication. It is a mindset that drives collaboration, as it is fueled by creativity and a sense of shared responsibility and accountability. Jazz musicians create based on a common platform and language, which feeds the cohesion needed to improvise their own voice, welcome syncopation (the unexpected), and swing to the delight of fellow musicians and audiences alike.
The Ensemble Mindset is a space of co-existing and co-creation at the highest level we can manifest in that moment.
Inhabiting an Ensemble Mindset prompts you to be constantly aware of how you are showing up and how well you function interdependently. That brings me back to the heroine journey, and the stories I came across that sparked and revealed how well-aligned this journey is to the Ensemble Mindset.
Hannah Drake is a visual artist, spoken word poet, and activist, who for years educated herself about the slave trade in her hometown of Louisville, Kentucky. When she visited the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, she was surprised that the lynching victims from Kentucky were not identified. It was at that point that the call to create the “(Un)Known Project” was answered. Drake wanted to change the narrative and create a remembrance for these unknown people. Her journey brought together artists, designers, sculptors, words from a 13-year-old activist, and community members sharing their untold stories. When complete, the multi-media project, “(Un)Known Project“ will include two granite, limestone and steel benches positioned on the bank of the Ohio River with hand-etched images representing female and male slaves, poetry, and metal chains wrapped around the bench legs; four sets of footprints (representing a family) sandblasted into a sidewalk leading to the benches; and a Floating Reconciliation Experience on a steamboat featuring events related to the antebellum South. Drake’s call is to lift up the forgotten.
Artists in Lynn Nottage’s “Watering Hole” project
Another story that beautifully demonstrates the heroine journey in action is Lynn Nottage’s latest project to create a welcoming, inclusive space for what she felt needed to be a different theater experience coming out of the pandemic. A two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Nottage invited seventeen other artists of color to share her residency at the Signature Theater for an immersive experience called “The Watering Hole.” Most of these artists had never worked in the space. Her call was to bring equity, inclusion, and safety to create a highly collaborative sharing of varied works.
When spiritual teacher, author, and the founder of the Academy of Inner Science Thomas Huebl speaks about relational cohesion–the ability to create space in ourselves for others—Hannah Drake and Lynn Nottage are two shining examples. Huebl says that “maturity is the conscious experience of interdependence, through which we can grasp the difference between “thinking about” and “thinking as.”
Embracing the heroine journey means that we can find the room to be inclusive and foster deeper connections and relationships. It means, as our tag line for Ensemble Mindset states, “collaborative co-creation through collective intelligence.”
