Teachers & Mentors, Pt. 1: Magic
It’s a summer afternoon in 2002. I’m sauntering through the streets of New York City when I hear someone call my name. Looking around I see--- a woman, her complexion is a Texas summer-bronzed-brown. Her face crowned by a head of blond short locs, her arm that is full of colorful bracelets is waving at me from the barely opened window of a city bus. It was my college mentor, the woman who introduced me to magic – Glenda Dickerson, affectionately called “Professor.”
“Angela!” she calls out.
I am whisked back to the darkened theater on Spelman College’s campus where I’d spent countless rehearsal hours with her as a student stage manager. Professor created, “miracle-plays.” Often based on a myth or other archetypal story, she imbued them with symbols, African American culture, folklore and poetry.
My favorite part was the conception phase where she would start with the skeleton draft and we - the cast, production, director and dramaturg – became a troupe of co-creators breathing life into the words. As we quilted the play together, we learned that messages come from unexpected places and we were all listening for them. I learned to look to nature, to trust my intuition and the whisper of voices. Every rehearsal we had a new script, it was partially my role to keep track. I learned the importance of a word and the dynamic, non-linear process that comes with magic and creation.
Rehearsals were a ritual space. She would often start or end rehearsals with us all in a circle where one at a time we call in the Ancestors and then we would call out our own names. The circle would respond by chanting it three times. With each response - something was evoked in you, lifted in you. I call that something…magic.
My degree says I have BA in Theater –a syncretic meaning for my major in Magic, Storytelling, Creativity, Ancestors and Black Women.
The day of my graduation, just as I made it to the top of the steps of the stage, preparing for my name to be called next…I glanced over at her. She was looking at me. She kissed the tips of her fingers, opened her hands, motioning towards me, as if blowing me a kiss, except I knew…she was sending me across the threshold with wings. It was my time to create my world, to find my voice in the world, to evoke my magic in my travels, to honor the word and seek out my communities of contrary and creative people.
And that’s exactly what I’ve done over the last 26 years of my life. As I deepen into my own writing and the Coaching work that I now offer my groups and individual coaching clients I notice...
*My writing is a poetic, a collage of different things that weave together around a theme. My process is wide, the drafts a dance.
*My Coaching practice, primarily focuses on Women, introduces and guides each Woman into the depths of the magic she possesses.
*My approach is highly intuitive, magical yet grounded in experience. We work to reclaim and re-member all parts of who you are.
*I emphasize the embodiment of my client’s transformations. Whether writing something, a ritual, or other means of expression, we work with them to mark the soul milestones during their growth and transitions.
I am forever grateful to Professor Dickerson, I wish I could sit with her and thank her (again and again) for introducing me to a Magic that is deep, real, natural, contrary, miraculous, communal, cultural, and feminine.
What about you….What is your relationship to your Magic? What does magic mean to you?
“We are here to perform an act of Magic, An Act of Magic to perform.”
- GLENDA DICKERSON
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I’ve been thinking about the mentors and teachers I have encountered along my Path and how my life and my work has been touched profoundly by each of them. This is Part 1.
I, too, was shaped by the work of the great Glenda Dickerson. She was my mentor and close friend in my years at Howard University. We co-authored the play, “Re/Membering Aunt Jemima: A Menstrual Show” in 1992.