Ryn Stafford: INKLING
“I’m a straddler in the sense that I am able to deepen my commitment to one thing by committing myself to another.”
Spring 2023 Artist-in-Residence at the Traveler’s Rest State Park
Ryn in residence at Traveler’s Rest State Park.
How was your experience as an Open AIR Artist-in-Residence?
It was sincerely magical. I had always had in my head that I’d go to Montana and do something artistic. When I found the opportunity and made the Lewis and Clark connection to their site in Lolo, I was excited. My Uncle Pompey weeks before, mentioned something about a black man who accompanied the expedition, and I was struck by how little was known about him. I wanted to research him (York) as a historical figure, a person, and a black subjugated person in the context of colonialism and slavery.
I sincerely couldn’t have nicer things to say about the people I met in the residency. I was shocked. I think I shared with Kelli that Minnesota Nice didn’t hold a candle to Missoula Nice. I was wonderfully supported by so many of the staff and community members at Travelers’ Rest State Park. I felt like I was constantly having all these conversations about history that were casual and interesting. It was kind of a utopia for me, and I’m afraid I’ll always want to come back.
Ryn at MonkeyBear Harmonic Workshop
What are you up to now (post Open AIR)?
I’m participating in a puppetry program called the MonkeyBear Harmonic Workshop for the rest of 2023 and 2024. The workshop is full of many beginners, and all participants are artists of color who work around Minneapolis, so that’s really cool. At my beginner’s stage as an artist, I find I need role models who remind me that really beautiful things can prevail in the face of just about anything. The artistic aspect of the program is lovely, but equally lovely is the sharing and bonding. I’ll sulk about one thing and hear a friend who’s going through their own thing. I’m graduating from a response of why don’t you be tough like them? To you look at their plight and still find their art utterly worth making, so why don’t you lend yourself the same compassion?
At the end of the program, we will present a short, original stage play with the puppets we’ve made. I’m thinking of making a life-sized Keanu Reeves, but we’ll see. I’ve also been dabbling with screenwriting and preparing for a move to Los Angeles. I’m looking to pivot to the screen more in 2024, and I’ve got some great family connections there as well. I’m always craving change, and I think being challenged in new environments brings things out in me that are invigorating. In NYU film and TV writing, I encountered some peevish professors whose students adapted. Not that the environment was cruel, but there was this air that if you asked someone how they were doing, they might assume you were trying to get something from them before they considered you earnestly wanted to know. When it's not insufferable, the world of commercial entertainment can be snappy and scrappy. People are quick-witted. I miss that.
I’ll be flying back to the Twin Cities throughout 2024 to participate in MonkeyBear, so I’m anticipating getting the best of both worlds–heartfelt, theater-making Minnesotans and jaded, urbanite Californians. But it’s cool because I’m a straddler in the sense that I am able to deepen my commitment to one thing by committing myself to another. I want a smorgasbord of people and places and experiences. That’s where I like to be.
Ryn at MonkeyBear Harmonic Workshop
-What keeps you returning to this subject, body of work?
The struggle of return! It’s a question for me every day that I often answer no to. The commercial realities of trying to be a career playwright have changed my relationship to my work. The problem of being desirable to the art market–for practical reasons–starts to seep into the editing process, the formation of one’s artistic identity, and so on. The pressure contradicts initiative because artists behave rebelliously by nature. You feel silly trying to resist every point of this kind of pressure because doing so might cost you a job, and why would you want to cost yourself a job? It has strangely affected me to occupy a bureaucratic and administrative headspace, and whenever I describe it to other artists, they give me this look as if to say what in the world are you talking about? Just make your art. It hasn’t felt that simple.
Art is often something I need to say. It’s a thing I have been mulling over. It’s a problem whose couch I’ll ask to crash on for several nights in a row. This dogged impulse called curiosity is the impetus from which I make what I make. Not the impulse of self-preservation. And anyways, if I did try to create from the latter, I don’t believe I’d make anything particularly good. A woman in her twenties, am I right?
In real life, I don’t brazenly knock on art’s door when I’m good and ready to, and then come inside without resistance. Dreams wake me up like a lightning bolt, my ego gets brushed up against, some black elder at the family reunion is being beautiful–and I get the inkling to write. I think art is a consequence of living. Is art like breath and air and food and sleep? Maybe not. But it’s like fashion. It’s like loving. It’s like daring somebody to do something. It’s like flicking somebody off on the freeway. How often do you return to these things? And why?
Ryn at MonkeyBear Harmonic Workshop
