Many Korean adoptees we hear from said they grew up thinking they were white.” We have more Korean adoptees in Minnesota than any other state. Transracial adoption complicates things even further. That is, if there are two adopted children in a family, a dichotomy is common.Ĭooper said, “Both of the adoptees act out their fear of abandonment, but in different ways.
One of the themes that kept coming up in the story circles, according to Berks and Cooper, was the theme of the “good’ adoptee and the “bad” adoptee. There are a lot of overlapping feelings for people whose lives have been touched by adoption.” There can be feelings of grief and loss, overlaid with expectation. Many adoptive parents are also grieving their inability to conceive and produce a birth child. But usually a child gets placed for adoption because their birth parents can’t raise them. There is a lot of joy in adoption, where almost everyone is acting out of generosity. Both the play and the graphic novel wrestle with that.”Ĭooper, who is an adoptee, said, “We don’t shy away from difficult truths in our plays. He continued, “This is a collective story about adoption experienced from many different angles. The drawings are based on the original cast members, and the characters speak the lines that were spoken in the play.” We wanted the graphic novel to follow the play. She was uniquely fit to illustrate this project. After Berks and Cooper decided to adapt the play into graphic novel form, they asked actress and illustrator Becca Hart to draw a mock-up of two scenes – and they liked what they saw.īerks explained, “Becca is a theater artist who spent her adolescence deep in graphic novels. The dictionary definition of a graphic novel is a story presented in comic-strip format and published as a book. That’s different from the experience of seeing a play.”īerks added, “We’ll always be people who love theater but because of this experience, everything we do will have more than one application moving forward.” There’s something really special about a piece you can read and touch and share with someone. She explained, “A graphic novel is closer to theater than film, because the reader gets to choose where their eye goes. A remount wasn’t possible, but we tried to think of ways to share the play more broadly.
EVERYONE HAS A STORY OLAUGHLIN AUDITORIUM PROFESSIONAL
The cast included professional actors along with members of the adoption community who had never acted before.Ĭooper said, “We were often asked when we might remount the play, because it held so much meaning for people who saw it. When the story circles ended several months later, more than 200 adoptees, adoptive parents, birth parents, adoption social workers, foster families, siblings and others affected by adoption had participated.įrom those stories, Berks and Cooper created a play called, “In my Heart: the Adoption Project.” In 2016, it was performed at Mixed Blood Theatre by a 34-member cast and live band. Seven years ago, Wonderlust Productions co-artistic directors Alan Berks and Leah Cooper (both former South Minneapolis residents) began inviting people from the adoption community to share their personal stories about adoption.
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