Today we’d like to introduce you to Josy Jones.
Hi Josy, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I never thought I’d be an actor, director, playwright, community builder, facilitator…or any of the hats I’ve worn in the last decade. I started off intending to teach English as a Second Language (ESL) at a resettlement agency. Then, I found theatre. I learned that skills I learned in theatre were actually very useful when teaching English.
In high school, I always thought the theatre kids were cool. I was too intimated to try out for anything. Fortunately, my last high school (I went to four) had drama as a class instead of an extracurricular, after school program. I was so excited to be part of the magic of theatre. I was happy to be a stagehand, helping move set pieces around or helping actors get dressed backstage between scenes. I was content to merely exist adjacent to the stage but never be on it. Then, I started applying for colleges. The college of my choice, a women’s college in Macon, GA called Wesleyan, had a theatre scholarship that you had to audition for to obtain. I’d never auditioned for anything, but the teacher who taught my theatre class helped me prepare. Bless the teachers who have helped me along the way. I performed my monologue, and Wesleyan’s theatre department offered me a scholarship. I was too young to understand that meant they expected you to audition for the shows they produced throughout the year. I had no intention of acting. Remember, I still thought teaching English was my calling.
Fast forward, my professors expected every theatre major/minor to audition for shows. I auditioned, thinking I wouldn’t get cast, but begrudgingly fulfilled my obligation so I could continue to be adjacent to the magic. To my horror, they cast me in a one-act play about this woman who turned her abusive husband to dust. I think it’s called “Poof.” I was forever changed, and it didn’t stop there. I was a double major in theatre and international relations (again, fully intending to teach English). I was learning lots of things about the world, the economy, war, genocide, human rights issues, you name it. All of it was heavy stuff, but there was something unsatisfying about writing papers about things that felt so important.
In one of my courses, I read a play by a woman named Paula Vogel and then another piece by a woman named Suzanne Lori Parks, and it changed how I saw what theatre could be. These women tackled the difficult by putting it on stage and wrestling with it for audiences to experience. Very soon after, I began to take a playwriting course. I used it tackle subjects I was grappling with or learning about, including FGC and colorism. I also learned about site-specific theatre; this would change how I thought about theatre completely, but I wouldn’t know it for some time.
The summer before I returned to school for senior year, I lost my grandmother to cancer. She was more important to me than I could ever explain. I went into my senior year numb, unfeeling. I put my head down, and I worked. About three months into operating this way, I was cast in a show where I played a fictional character who held a lot of anger in her heart after losing a sibling. In that performance, I harnessed the pain I felt about losing my grandmother and I was able to cry, freely for the first time in months. It was a sort of cathartic few months for me. This character was in so much pain, and she hid it behind malicious actions. But as she grew, she gave me permission to move past my own numbness into grief and healing.
So, there I was, senior year, learning that theatre not only had the power to help me say things I thought people should hear but that it also gave me the permission to grieve and process my feelings. Whoa. So, then I graduated, and I entered the theatre scene in Macon, GA. I realized very early on that the theatres in the area were not particularly doing work that spoke to me. I was looking for work that challenged me, especially after having such an intimate experience with a theatre piece, and instead they were producing shows like “Oklahoma.” Though there is nothing wrong with “Oklahoma,” I was ready to continue to be challenged and stretched by the work. At the time, I was also experiencing a lot of artists (theatre and non-theatre), who were looking to continue to hone their crafts, but didn’t have the platform to do so. I also observed that Macon had a lot of underutilized space and businesses. I also knew I didn’t have any money to rent a building to create my own work, but I realized I could lean into the intersection of wanting to activate space, cater to artistic development, AND create new, challenging work.
So, in 2015, I founded the Chameleon Village Theatre Collective (The Cham Villa for short). The Chameleon to represents our ability to adapt to space and Village to acknowledge my commitment for creating with community. The Cham Villa is a site-specific theatre collective dedicated to activating underutilized and underappreciated spaces. Our first performance, “Cope” was a site-specific piece written to take place in an art gallery in Downtown Macon. It was pretty successful, and then I kept going, asking more artists what they’d like to work on. The Macon chapter of Chameleon Village was a lot of experimenting. We created shows that happened in a tattoo parlor, play readings in a bar, a walking advertisement, and we even started making improv! It was a rewarding chapter.
Fast forward again to 2017, my partner, Floco Torres, and I move to Akron, OH. We both realized our time with Macon was over, and it was time for something new. We picked Akron because it was another Knight Foundation city (like Macon), and we already knew a few people here. We visited in 2016 and then packed an SUV full of our stuff and drove 12 hours north to an apartment we’d never even stepped foot in. I did odd jobs and shows, including working at a summer program at the Cleveland Public Theatre and performing with Ohio Shakespeare Festival, I finally landed at the Chameleon Village’s first project in Akron, OH: “Rebranding the City: A Humanizing Tour of Akron.” As a partnership between Gum-Dip Theatre and the @PLAY project, we interviewed people all over Akron about their dreams and concerns for the future of the city. It became a touring show that went to a nursing home, a community correctional facility, parks, and other spaces.
Later, I found I’d won an Emerging Cities Champion award. It was granted to me to teach a playwriting course to residents of a neighborhood in Akron called Cascade Village. I recruited artists from the neighborhood (all writers in some respect, none of them in the theatre). I wanted to give them the tools to rewrite the narrative of their Village by conducting a site-specific walking tour through their neighborhood. They wrote and read and learned and then I directed and produced their site-specific work on a playground and a flight of steps for others to experience while walking through the neighborhood. During the same period, I also worked on a play called “Tame,” an LGBTQ+ spin on Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew.” I also worked on a project with an organization called QuTheatr, serving as their dramaturg and text curator, among other projects I’m sure I’m forgetting.
Since then, I’ve been obsessed with what happens when you include community in the theatre creation process. I started working on a project called HOME in 2019. My neighborhood, West Hill, has an interesting history and zoning; however, the residents aren’t very connected. So, I spent time surveying residents and asking them if they would want to be interviewed about what HOME means to them. With an ensemble, we dissected those interviews and created a site-specific performance designed to happen inside of a house in West Hill. That performance was in September 2021.
During all of this, 2020-2021 became a year of growth for me. My mentors, co-artistic directors of New World Performance Laboratory, were forced into early retirement, and I helped write and dramaturg their final show before leaving the U.S. I spent a lot of time listening and collecting stories about migrants crossing into the U.S. from Latin America. I wove those stories into the final goodbye that will forever be an important experience for me. I really felt like the intersection of everything that I’ve ever understood about what art can be was manifested in that process. During this artistic awakening, I joined the leadership team of the nonprofit, the Center for Applied Theatre and Active Culture (CATAC), that used to represent NWPL’s work. And that’s where I find myself now. I am an arts administrative lead, still running the Chameleon Village, and still training and honing my skills as an artist. I find myself so curious about where the art can lead me and leaning into the mystery and possibility of this path I’ve chosen.
Currently, I am working on a few things: curating the HOME project into an interactive exhibition that documents its journey from 2019 until now (while preparing to keep working on the performance itself), creating a site-specific forest performance about Black joy, continuing to lean into leading horizontally with my administrative team, and learning how I can continue to foster the magic of theatre and the arts by supporting others. That’s 12 years in a nutshell (hahaha)!
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
I don’t know that the road is smooth for anyone. It was a lot of twists, turns, dead ends for me. I think one of the hardest things about being an artist is there is no path paved. You’re constantly making your own path, constantly realizing this is the first time you’ve done something like this project or that. It’s really uncertain, and I think one of the hardest things I’ve learned is to be okay with that uncertainty. I’m still learning. I think also learning that I’m a business, regardless of if I want to be or not. That was a hard lesson too. I really just want to be a creator! I think we all do, but that’s not realistic. You gotta do the business to make the art… Currently, I’m struggling with reminding myself that it’s okay to just create without getting something out of it. That’s the struggle of this current chapter, alongside figuring out how to balance it all.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I am an actor, director, playwright, community builder, and founder of the Chameleon Village Theatre Collective. The descriptor is already long, but I’m thinking about adding facilitator, arts administrator, and project manager just to be accurate and precise…but then it’s definitely too long (haha).
I specialize in creation of new work, specifically site-specific work. I’m learning to lean into utilizing ensemble creation (or creating scripts with actors in movement) rather than writing a script by myself. I’m really beginning to enjoy dramaturgy too.
What am I known for? That’s a fun question…really hard though. I think I’m known for experimenting and asking a lot of questions.
I am most proud of…honestly, I’m more and more proud of my work with everything I create. I’m currently very proud of what I’ve been able to accomplish with my last project. The intersection between community and art is often talked about but rarely nurtured, or so it seems. I think I’m proud of my ability to balance my love of community with my love of creation. I’m proud of my ability to let the art continue to surprise me.
What sets me apart? I’m a Chameleon of sorts, no pun intended. I can adapt to whatever is asked of me. And if I don’t know how to do something, I will learn. I am also really dedicated. I love rolling up my sleeves and working it out.
Do you have any advice for those looking to network or find a mentor?
This may seem cliche, but I think it’s a flow. You have to keep your senses open. Search that job board, stay up to date with what folks are working on, know the artists in your city. Eventually, you begin to flow in the direction that’s meant for you. But don’t just become complacent. You have to be active, open, ready to receive.
My flow, specifically for creating, always comes from a place of observation. What am I seeing? Like when I started the Chameleon Village, what I SAW was that there was a lot of underutilized space. What I heard was artists want more opportunities to hone their work. When I moved to Akron, I was open, I kept my senses awake. I found out that there was a theatre festival here, I went, I took a workshop, I got a job touring a theatre’s show. Don’t be afraid to really walk in whatever direction your intuition pulls you. If it sparks something in my spirit or intuition, it’s a yes from me. If it’s new and I’ve never done it, but it piques my interest even better. I don’t always have it figured out, but there’s always a reason, a lesson, for why I’m there to begin with.
I will say mentorship as a working artist can be difficult to find, but I’ve found if there’s someone doing something similar to what you want to do, it doesn’t hurt to reach out and talk to them/apply/audition/etc. You really never know. I recently reached out to a woman states away because I heard her talk on a podcast and my spirit was moved. It really was that simple.
Also…be consistent and persistent. Do what you say you’re going to do, and do it well, and often. Be reliable and people will call.
Also, a slight cheat code: I’m also dating an artist! He gets it, and I can talk through where I’m stuck. Not all of us are so lucky, so be intentional about building an artistic support system. You’ll need them.
…I’m sure this is too artsy of an answer, but I really mean all of it!
Pricing:
- Donate to Chameleon Village through our non-profit umbrella: www.catac-akron.com
Contact Info:
- Email: TheChameleonVillage@gmail.com
- Website: TheChameleonVillage.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/thechamvilla OR www.instagram.com/TheJosyJones
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/thechamvilla
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/thechamvilla
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAlLcdK5j-ZfqfHof3SNdoA/videos
Image Credits
Akron Life, Tylar Sutton Greater Akron, Bruce Ford “Reimagining the Village” (steps), Shane Wynn HOME performance (me on cajon), John Aylward
