Kris Jackson believes everyone should take care of their neighbors, homeless or not.

Jackson and her daughter, Swazi, participated in zAmya Theater Project’s “A Prairie Homeless Companion” two years in a row. The show was created for the stage in 2019, toured in 2023 in Central Minnesota and 2024 in Northeast Minnesota. The Jacksons shared their lived experience of being homeless within the show.

zAmya includes local stories of lived experience in every considered one of their productions, Maren Ward, the artistic director, said.

zAmya is currently celebrating 20 years of using theater to bring awareness to homelessness. They’re hosting a celebratory show on Dec. 14 in Pohlad Hall within the Downtown Minneapolis Central Library. zAmya toured their third adaptation of “A Prairie Homeless Companion” throughout Northeast Minnesota from Oct. 4-11.

There may be a stigma around homelessness, Ward said. zAmya humanizes unhoused people by amplifying true stories and by putting faces on the difficulty. Integrating the lived experience of community members makes the show a visceral, embodied experience.

“When people come to see a show, it tends to be a watch opener of ‘Oh, that is one other human being, similar to me,’” Ward said.

825 Arts celebrated its grand reopening on the Frogtown Arts Festival on Aug. 25. Within the small, newly reopened theater in St. Paul’s Thomas-Dale neighborhood, “A Prairie Homeless Companion” attracted a small crowd, but warranted a passionate response. There was a combination of newcomers and constant zAmya fans.

Once the show was done, the forged and people who participated to inform their experience with homelessness interacted with the audience. A mic was passed to those that raised their hand for comment.

One thing in common each audience member expressed was gratitude.

“We survive. We don’t live.”

Kris Jackson of Little Falls balances greater than the common person in her day by day life, and he or she gets just $384 in housing aid a month.

Jackson escaped domestic violence in 2018. After receiving a call about an open space, Jackson and her 4 children stayed in a women’s shelter in Crow Wing County for 29 days.

Then, Jackson was told she and her family could move right into a two-bedroom in Morrison County. Before they might move into the two-bedroom, they’d to remain in a hotel for the night.

Members of the ladies’s shelter who haven’t been named brought Jackson and her kids to a hotel in Morrison County. To Jackson’s surprise, those shelter representatives stranded them there.

“Once we were in a distinct county, we were that other county’s problem,” Jackson said.

That’s when Jackson met Rose Surma, executive director of the temporary shelter Oasis Central Minnesota. Surma helped fund Jackson’s stay at a hotel until she found housing.

Jackson filled out 32 housing applications and waited five and a half months before she found a spot to live. Applications included transitional housing, rapid rehousing and everlasting supportive housing. She now lives in a 3 bedroom townhome. Nevertheless, to Jackson, a roof over your head doesn’t include stability.

“Yeah, we’re in a house, but there’s no ability to stop being fearful.” Jackson said. “How am I going to get enough food for my kids to eat? How am I going to be certain that my rent is paid?”

Jackson has 4 biological children and one adopted child. As well as, she is a foster mom and has two dogs to handle. Jackson works as a domestic violence advocate. The job is rewarding, nevertheless it doesn’t pay well.

Jackson lives off of food stamps and people don’t last a complete month. She will be able to go to the food shelf, but persons are only allowed to go once a month and get every week’s value of food.

“The fee of food has tripled, but my food stamps haven’t tripled,” Jackson said. “So even now, having the ability to get the food to stretch far enough in order that now we have food to eat for a month is hard.”

In January of 2023, Jackson and her daughter Swazi, 12, testified in front of the Minnesota House Human Services Finance Committee for the Pathway Home Act, which was approved and provided nearly $200 million for homeless services.

On top of all the things, Jackson coaches baseball, soccer, football, tackle football and wrestling. Swazi reflects her mother’s knack for resilience. She is an athlete, on the coed council at her school and maintains straight A’s.

Jackson’s experience is one version of what rural homelessness looks like.

“We survive. We don’t live,” Jackson said while sharing her story in “A Prairie Homeless Companion.”

Together, Jackson and Swazi sing a song near the tip of the show. They get everyone to clap along.

Lifting up voices

Surma connected Jackson to zAmya for “A Prairie Homeless Companion.” Surma was also a big contributor to bringing a tour of the show through the Northeast a part of the state and Little Falls, Ward said.

zAmya performed “A Prairie Homeless Companion” on the Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless conference in Rochester in 2019. That’s when Surma saw it, and zAmya decided to create adaptations of the show based on homelessness in rural areas, Ward said.

“We decided to do a workshop in Little Falls to create recent content and meet recent performers,” Ward said. “The show evolved to grow to be something that has these places in it where we plug in local stories and statistics.”

Due to COVID-19, the theater couldn’t start touring the show until 2023. Nonetheless, zAmya and people contributing in greater Minnesota made it occur.

“It demonstrates that individuals are greater than their struggle with housing insecurity,” Surma said. “They’re diverse. They’re interesting. They’re people similar to us. It also points out the systematic fails which have contributed to the person crisis and difficulty.”

The core of zAmya shows are the voices of those that are or have experienced homelessness. That’s the reason zAmya reached out to the Northeast Minnesota Continuum of Care (NE CoC). Continuums of Care are regional organizations made up of housing service agencies, healthcare providers, community stakeholders and community members coming together to create a plan to handle homelessness in that region.

In 2023, NE CoC made more effort to incorporate perspectives of homeless people of their planning, Cara Oakland, CoC co-coordinator, said. The efforts are called “recent perspective groups,” quarterly open meetings with volunteers with experience with homelessness. Those that go to the meetings are paid for his or her time.

“It might have been 30 years ago,” Oakland said. “It may very well be immediately. They may very well be living in a tent. They will are available, join this meeting and provides input on essential planning pieces and concepts around where we put funding and what we prioritize around homeless services.”

These meetings seem like the story circles zAmya conducts with a purpose to gain an accurate understanding of what rural homelessness looks like within the regions they tour their shows.

The brand new perspective meetings are held within the unfinished basement of Grace House, a homeless shelter in Grand Rapids, Oakland said. The meetings are informal. Pizza and gift cards are provided, and staff members from Grace House take part.

Everyone sits around a table. People come and go. Some people even bring their kids. People share their stories in the event that they are comfortable.

“They were vulnerable,” Oakland said. “They proceed to be vulnerable. They’ve ideas because they’ve undergone the homeless response system they usually are shooting them out.”

That’s the reason working with zAmya on “A Prairie Homeless Companion” was an excellent fit, Oakland said.

Ron Oleheiser and Julee Jackson, executive director and outreach directors for Grace House shelter and members of NE CoC, helped zAmya bring the show to a few Minnesota North College campuses in Grand Rapids, International Falls and Virginia. Jackson connected zAmya to a shelter in each area to conduct story circles.

The story circles and the brand new perspective group at Grace House empower those with experience in homelessness, Jackson said.

“They arrive together and support one another,” Jackson said. “We see people leaving, talking and constructing those connections with one another.”

Tracey Howg, this system manager of the 2 Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe shelters, got here to know zAmya after they got here to the shelters to conduct story circles mid-August.

Within the Leech Lake Band, homelessness is usually hidden, Howg said. On the reservation, encampments are arrange in hidden places, multiple families are piled up in single-family homes and persons are living in condemnable structures.

“Quite a lot of the homelessness that happens here on the reservation will not be right in front of your face,” Howg said.

Geography is a big think about homelessness, based on the Minnesota Homeless Study by the Wilder Foundation. Rural and Urban homelessness look very different.

One-third of Minnesota’s homeless population lives in rural greater Minnesota. Over 8,000 people were homeless in 2023, based on the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Homeless people in greater Minnesota usually tend to be chronically homeless, move around from place to put and be doubled up in a friend or family’s house.

Native Americans are disproportionately affected by homelessness, based on the Wilder Foundation.

Greater than two-thirds of Minnesota’s homeless population has experienced trauma during childhood. Homeless people in greater Minnesota usually tend to experience trauma and violence in childhood and while homeless in maturity.

Tammy Shoots, case manager for Bill’s House shelter in Virginia, Minnesota, attended a story circle. Shoots talked about her own experience with homelessness to encourage members of the shelter to do the identical.

Story circles not only impact communities, but those that are unhoused as well, Shoots said.

“They enjoy telling their stories because they need people to know it will probably occur to anybody,” Shoots said.

“That’s considered one of the nice things about art.”

After attending the show, people feel moved and motivated to assist make a difference, Surma said.

There was a pair who saw the show in Little Falls that rent out AirBnbs. After they saw the show, they desired to work with Oasis Central Minnesota. They offered, at any time when an AirBnb was vacant, to accommodate people temporarily.

Shoots said options for shelter are very slim in rural areas, and encampments are built on the outskirts of towns.

People aren’t as aware of homelessness in rural areas as they’re within the Twin Cities, Shoots said. The “A Prairie Homeless Companion” tour combats that.

“People will probably be aware we do need funding from different agencies to assist us grow,” Shoots said.

Jackson saw the show in Brainerd when zAmya did their Central Minnesota tour in 2023. Audiences strongly reacted to the non-public stories of the homeless individuals who participated, Jackson said.

“There have been plenty of people within the audience who were delivered to tears at the tip of the show,” Jackson said.

zAmya helps people understand rural homelessness altogether, Oleheiser said.

“If people understand it a little bit bit higher, they could discover a strategy to help all people,” Oleheiser said.

Ariana Daniel, executive director of Servants of Shelter in International Falls, expressed nothing but gratitude for zAmya’s work. The audience in International Falls laughed, cried and sang, Daniel said.

“It was a giant release,” Daniel said. “That’s considered one of the nice things about art. It enables you to release that grief, and with homelessness, that shame.”

Theater is a robust medium to spread awareness since it is live and audience members are in the identical room as those that are telling their stories of homelessness, Ward said. Especially for the reason that audience interaction and conversations at the tip of the show are really intimate.

“Newspapers or documentaries may not evoke the identical amount of heart-opening empathy that theater or someone telling their story can,” Ward said. “It shatters your expectations of what you think that is true about someone who has had that have of being homeless.”

Should you go

zAmya recently announced a brand new musical called “Dis Place,” based in North Loop. The musical will a community engagement event on Nov. 22 at Corner Coffee Shop at 7 p.m. to supply a sneak peak of the musical and discuss housing insecurity. “Dis Place” debuts in March, 2025. Tickets can be found here, and admission is free.