We recently connected with Anu Yadav and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Anu, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

I think deciding to pursue creativity and art in any form is always a risk, and its about centering your own well-being and mind in a society that constantly tells so many of us we are not enough, that we can’t think, and that we don’t get to honor our inherent creative genius.

It’s a risk to keep creating, keep evolving and truly following your passion – and that can happen however you organize your life – whether or not you have a full-time, part-time, over-time job. We all deserve to bask in the brilliance and sheer playful joy we are each born with, even if its a few minutes before we fall to sleep, or stealing away some time while on the job at the factory floor. Creativity is our birthright. In fact, as acclaimed poet Luis Rodriguez says, “when we are caught up in a crisis, creativity is the path out of it.”

There was a moment when I was experiencing homelessness, I was couch surfing after having lost my housing, healthcare, and income all at the same time. And I kept thinking, ‘is this the bottom?’ But I reached a point where it somehow occurred to me ‘wait, maybe there is something I can do.” I had just debuted my solo play, MEENA’S DREAM, directed by Patrick Crowley, choreographed by Paige Hernanadez, and accompanied by an amazing group of musicians, Rajna Swaminathan, Anjna Swaminathan, and Sam McCormally. It was ready to tour. I thought of one venue I had performed at years before and I sent an email. Soon that email resulted in a performance. It helped me build momentum to keep trying things.

I had written the story while deep a crisis of my own, and now my play became a different kind of lifeline of actually supporting me and my collaborators. It t reminded me that I could lead in my own life. I felt like something hard in me loosened. Like a knot of defeat had softened with a little bit of hope. And that motivated me to keep going. And each tiny victory helped propel me forward to the next. I savored each one. Little by little I got a bit more unstuck til I was no longer asking myself “Is this the bottom?” and instead I was asking “What next?”

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am an actress, playwright, cultural worker and a facilitator. Social change is at the core of my work, particularly a focus on the plight, fight, and insight of poor and working class people. I think art has a powerful role to play in catalyzing transformation, connecting people to each other, and deepening public dialogue.

As a theater person, I not only do that work in a theater, but also in all sorts of spaces. I apply the same principles of creativity, storytelling and listening to ‘non-arts’ settings too, whether that is strategic planning, community engagement, or facilitating conversations with a team or group organizing around a shared vision or goal. I’ve even helped design and implement a large Countywide initiative that supported communities to lead their own arts and cultural projects.

My primary work really is about listening deeply and it’s been an incredibly wild and humbling ride to engage in this practice as both an artist and facilitator. I love figuring out in real time how to best surface and synthesize the best thinking of everyone in a room or an organization, identifying shared values and supporting relationship building.

Right now I am writing a musical inspired by poor people’s organizing and revolutionary love. I have never before identified as a songwriter until I began writing songs a year and a half ago. That, too, is humbling, to lean into discovery, awe, joy. Art is truly a way to process, reflect, stay human, and get through things. I love supporting the creativity of others as a way to build community and engage in social justice, and it is good to keep practicing it for myself as well!

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

I think the best thing a society can do to support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem is to fully enact the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights – our right to healthcare, housing, healthy food, water, education, etc. The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival has a great platform for this, specific to the United States. Rev. Barber talks about how a budget is a moral document. And in the US – and in the world – we have the objective resources for everyone to live with dignity — and for all of life and the planet herself to thrive. It will take a movement to build the political will for what Dr. King called a radical redistribution of resources. We do not need billionaires while most struggle, suffer or die due to poverty or a lack of our basic rights.

Society must come to realize that all of us are creative, and when all of us have the time and means to create, the world is better for it.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of being an artist is connection – whether that be a moment of delighting in my own mind, connecting with someone else moved by my art, or being moved by someone else’s art. Or even how art becomes a vehicle for people to grow closer to each other. For me, art is not about the work itself, it’s about the ability to transmit and grow the kind of revolutionary love that the world needs to be organized around. In Hinduism, bhakti is the purest form of devotion and surrender to God. It’s the understanding that God dwells within us all and therefore we, all of life, and the Earth, are godly. How beautiful if our world, all of the policies, and systems revolved around this?

To me creativity is at the core of this kind of love. Similar to agape, a Greek word in the New Testament, it is a creative, redemptive, unconditional, and unsentimental kind of love we must rise to embody until there is abundance and dignity for all.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.anuyadav.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anuyadavishere/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/anu.yadav1
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anu-yadav-arts/
• Youtube: @anuyadav108