March 28, 2024

No ‘snake oil’ here

Entertainer and activist Jonny Stax comes to Creston this weekend to teach ways to develop “medicines” from experience and art

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A dash of memory, a pinch of song, a splash of essential oils, a bit of lessons learned, and a healthy portion of art supplies. Stir it all together with some puppetry, a story and a bit of dance and you have Jonny Stax’s recipe for a medicine or “potion” to share with a world that is hurting.

Stax’s “Potions for Humanity” this weekend aims to give youth a way to turn their own experience into art and share the lessons they learned about getting through it with someone else who may be on a similar journey. He will meet with Creston Community High School art students and GSA club today and then hold a workshop where the public is welcome 10 a.m. Saturday at Create Creston,104 N. Maple St.

During the workshop, participants will be encouraged to come up with a memory of a time that was “significant to their development” and create a sensory experience that brings to mind a way they were able to survive and grow through that experience — a potion.

“I want us to see how our personal journey toward living our best lives, cultivating our gifts, and manifesting our visions can help us co-create worlds that are just, equitable, diverse, and inclusive,” Stax said.

This weekend is only the beginning of the process for Stax. He would like to see it grow into a stage show or traveling program of “knowing and telling the stories” that come out of the potion-making experience. He said the idea comes from the old traveling medicine shows in the 19th century old west where salesmen settled in a town for a day or two to hawk their wares — sometimes known as “snake oil,” now synonomous with deceit and trickery — using a variety of entertainers such as dancers, ventriloquists and acrobats to keep the crowd’s attention.

Stax won’t be selling snake oil. He’ll be teaching others to find their own medicines.

“The only devious aspect of my potion show will be my mustache,” Stax said. “In fact, I am not interested in selling medicines but instead the methodologies to create our own medicines — the potions that come from the lessons we learn from the experiences we have.”

Potions may be made of movement or song, smells or sights or texture. CCHS art teacher Bailey Fry-Schnormeier said a mug she has made could be a potion.

“It’s where you put your energy and joy,” she said. “When you hold it in your hand, with cocoa ... it is warming you ... it is warming your soul.”

When Fry-Schnormeier explained this idea to her students, they smiled. She told them the potion was working. Just the thought of sharing something made by hand and infused with memory and purpose caused a shift in perspective, a healing moment.

Fry-Schnormeier and her husband Blake Fry-Schnormeier met Stax at a convention they attended last year. Through conversations at the summit and in the time since, the idea of the potion show began to blossom. This was accompanied by a discussion about the needs of the youth of Creston for whom — in Stax’s words — “the world is not typically made.”

GSA

Bailey Fry-Schnormeier said she was approached last year by two students who asked her to be the advisor for a Gay-Straight Alliance group. GSAs support students regardless of their gender or sexual orientation by providing a safe place to talk about the issues they are facing and promoting policies and changes that help stop bullying and discrimination.

“This is a population of kids that are five times more likely to be harassed and to commit suicide,” explained Blake Fry-Schnormeier.

The Creston GSA group is student led. They plan their own meetings and activities with Bailey Fry-Schnormeier acting as a sounding board and steering them to look at all possible sides of issues.

“They are so brave and so vulnerable,” she said. “They are so much more accepting. It makes me want to see what I can do.”

The mission of GSA and Stax’s potion show mesh well, both aiming to give people tools to not only handle their own difficulties, but also help others.

“We can make these potions available so that someone who goes through something similar in their lives may be able to unleash that power in their own journeys,” Stax said.

Stax said he is looking forward to working with this group of teens and hopes with their input the traveling potion show can become a reality. He wants them to know they are not alone and that they can do more than survive — they can thrive.