With Dramagirls 2008 having wound down for the year, we are already anticipating Dramagirls 2009.

That anticipation brings to mind one of the most exciting moments in any Dramagirls year. On our first Monday night together, girls and women gather. They listen patiently to guidelines and expectations, participate in name games and icebreakers. All the while, eyes dart nervously, expectantly scanning the room. Each girl and woman wonders the same thing: which one of these is mine?

The mentoring relationship is one of the pillars of Dramagirls. Women artists from around Chicago each team up with a girl from Chase School in Logan Square. The girls and women work together on poetry, lanterns, masks, puppets, and performance activities. They take risks together. For five months, they are there to support one another and push one another. Each night is a balance, the women teaching what they know, and learning alongside the girls. The girls reminding the women how to question, collaborate, and let go.

2008 was the first year that I got to match the women and girls up with one another. In the fall, we ask the girls what they might be looking for in a mentor (one girl said she wanted someone who could hula hoop; another requested a mentor who would draw her pictures). We observe the girls in the fall during our drop-in art program, looking for each girl’s personal needs (the one who gets frustrated with paint might soar with a painter as a mentor; the one with the wild energy might need a physical performer to keep up with her). Then we pore over the volunteers’ resumes and applications, looking for a good fit. And we wait for that moment, on that Monday night in January, when the matches are discovered, friendships are formed, and the next five months look like ages of possibility.

—Virginia Killian, Dramagirls Mentor

Photos by Mentor Michelle Alba