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OTHER NEWS STORIES - Shoreline CC student dies in domestic dispute - Two year renovation complete; library now boasts new technology and amenities - When to find your Student Gov't Officers - News Briefs Dynamic Jones; artistic activism Luna Katz Ebbtide Reporter Filing Sarah Jones solely under the storyteller heading is a bit like describing a school as a building outfitted with desks and chairs: it's accurate, but hardly the whole truth. Sure, in her work as a poet, playwright, and actor, Jones tells stories, but she makes the telling of them political, as if her life-and the lives of her characters-depended on it. Speaking via phone from her home in New York City, the 28-year-old Jones is dynamic, with a piercing energy that makes her sound a bit like an enthusiastic basketball coach. Sarah Jones "I really value performers who are successful at creating portraits of real people," she says. "Communicating stories of real interest, and sometimes real drama, that don't indict the audience, but just wake them up. Make them feel a little more alive in their experience and help them know that this is not about feeling guilty." Jones first crossed into the public eye in 1998 as the author of Surface Transit, a one-woman play about eight vastly different characters literally navigating the public transportation system while emotionally navigating their own personal biases. Soon after, Equality Now, an organization dedicated to erasing global gender inequalities, commissioned Jones to write a piece about the global condition of women; she returned with Women Can't Wait. This one-woman show is about eight women from different countries and cultures and the injustices they experience because of their gender. Just a few months later, she was performing it before the U.N. general assembly. Though "Women Can't Wait" deals with intensely personal subject matter and heart-wrenching stories (one character endures marital rape; another struggles with her culture's history of female genital mutilation), it does not point accusatory fingers. Rather, its political content stems from the fact that these women are granted a safe and visible space to speak their truths. These are women who have traditionally been unseen, and Jones makes them visible and powerful. "In my work, I don't profess to have the solution to everything that's wrong," she explains. "I'm just interested in making sure that certain facts aren't buried by Fox News and certain others. What I'm trying to do is create alternative spaces, alternative ways of thinking and approaching what we've been taught to accept as normal and standard... I'm trying to give as many of my characters [as possible] the opportunity to be seen and heard." Unfortunately, Jones' penchant for stories, which contradict the constructed realities of the mainstream media, has landed her in hot water with the FCC. When Portland, Oregon public radio station KBOO-FM played her song, "Your Revolution," a critique of homophobic, misogynist gangster rap, it faced a $5,000 fine. But the funny thing is that facing this sort of adversity only reminds Jones that she still has much work ahead of her. The fact that various organizations (again, she mentions Fox News) attempt to obscure any version of reality that differs from their own makes her very suspicious. "The truth is not our enemy," she states. "It's not something we have to protect ourselves from. On the contrary, as the saying goes, 'The truth will set you free.' Not being able to face reality leaves us vulnerable as people and as a nation. "It's all about really getting at the truth and being able to accept our own responsibilities," she concludes, "but also to begin to get out from under this legacy of injustice that is part of our culture. Once we can begin to do that, we feel so free." © 2002 Shoreline Community College™