








ArtSpot trains local youth and incarcerated women in these methods via their educational programs in the New Orleans Public Schools and in a Louisiana women's prison (Michna 544). Since 2005, ArtSpot has broadened its communityengagement methods to produce performance projects that help transform the racial divide in New Orleans and heal local individuals and communities from the material, psychic, and spiritual damage that the 2005 "Federal Flood" inflicted. According to Mwase in an interview, ArtSpot's research into local Baptist congregations revealed to them the extent to which churches in New Orleans both reinforce the city's racial divide and "ground" local communities. According to Becker, when he stepped inside and perceived its total destruction, the tears he had been holding in since the day of the storm suddenly poured forth. In this scene, Mwase and Randels reenacted the colonizing encounter from the point of view of two children in Zimbabwe engaging in a role-playing game about their nation's history. Since Mwase's character was the only one who had access to collective memories of what actually happened when the whites first arrived, she took on the "role" of colonizer and diamond-company owner, Cecil John Rhodes.6 Randels's character, in turn, took on the role of a tribal chief.
