May
2002
Creativity
with a Conscience
The Satya Interview with Mimi
Kennedy
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Co-star of the hit TV series Dharma and Greg, Mimi
Kennedy is
also known for her strong views about environmental and humanitarian
issues. She is frequently invited to participate as a speaker or panelist
at events, and is a regular guest on Bill Maher’s Politically
Incorrect. This popular New York actress also enjoys her real-life
role as a devoted
mother of two. Here, Mimi shares some aspects of her life and views
with Angela Starks.
You’re a successful actor, but also an activist and author,
not to mention a parent. What’s it like to juggle all those roles?
I don’t really find myself having to juggle them; it’s more
a case of devoting myself to one at a time. Sure, some things slip
through
the cracks, but one thing that I never neglected was parenthood. I
sometimes find myself at the supermarket at 11:30 at night, but it
all gets done!
As for my activism, sometimes it amounts to just raging over the newspapers
and writing letters. But all my life I have been accumulating knowledge
and experience, and now that I’m a little older I find I have the
focus to put it into effect. All that knowledge eventually finds an
outlet; what goes in must come out. I’ve always educated myself
about alternative viewpoints to counter what the mainstream media feeds
us.
As activists we can get bound up in our sense of responsibility, which,
although useful, can cut us off from our lives and the world around
us. That’s where I think creativity is so important, to reconnect
us to ourselves and help the life energy to flow through our veins.
It doesn’t have to be acting or writing a novel; it can be just
writing down your dreams.
I don’t mind being an actress in the midst of all that’s
happening in the world, because I know that creativity is an important
part of
being human. I think people should have a very theatrical or celebratory
sense of themselves.
Tell us about your work with the National Theater Workshop for the
Handicapped.
The National Theater for the Handicapped was started by a friend of
mine who was a Jesuit priest, and he had only one arm. He also loved
acting, and wanted to provide opportunities for other handicapped people
to do so, so he organized workshops. I ended up writing a play for
them.
My involvement with his group really made me think about the inherent
differences between people. There’s no such thing as “perfect,” physically
or psychologically.
You received an Environmental Media Award with Alan Rachins for an
episode of Dharma and Greg that dealt with alternative transportation.
How did that topic find its way into the series?
Actually, the main incentive for that was comic effect, having the characters
puffing and panting on their bikes. But the show does have socially-conscious
writers with a whole range of opinions who take the opportunity to get
alternative viewpoints onto mainstream TV.
Appearing in the movie Erin Brockovich must have been quite an education.
It certainly was, but the main education was seeing life imitate art.
Just two years later, in my hometown of Van Nuys, CA, I found myself
at a meeting about groundwater pollution—just like in the movie.
In this case, it was because of the aerospace industries that had dumped
a huge amount of waste in the area over the years, at a time when there
weren’t all the residential buildings in close proximity like
there are now.
You recently held a gathering at your home with Medea Benjamin, the
head of Global Exchange and former Green Party Senate candidate. She
had just returned from Afghanistan. Did you learn anything during that
meeting that you can share with us?
Yes. For example, I learned about Medea’s mission to take to Afghanistan
four family members of victims who had died in the September 11 attacks.
She said she wanted them to meet “grief-to-grief” and they
did; she said they cried about ten times a day during that trip. Everyone
around them was profoundly touched by the oneness of humanity. Only
if you experience that somehow and open your heart to it can we get
over the violence and vengefulness.
The situation in the Middle East makes me so sad. It’s as if these
people need to go on suffering for the world, as if they are an evil
vein that needs to be bled so the world can get better. But no—they
are people! Where is the leadership to take them out of this? We’ve
gotten into a very dangerous collective attitude about this, saying
“It’s hopeless, just cut it out,” as if it’s not
a living tissue, not an organ we need, but a tumor. Well, you can’t
talk about people as if they are tumors.
Can you tell us a little about the novel you are working on?
I’m almost done; I’m at the stage where I’m polishing
it now, and I’m very excited about it. It’s about three young
women, their society, their choices, their marriages, their everything.
It covers the issue of water and the health of the planet and also about
the responsibility of the powerful to take leadership. One likes to
think in terms of everybody having a moral choice, but those of us who
have real economic and political options need to start making choices
with something greater in mind than our own desires. It’s not
just about giving your money at church anymore.
So I thought art might do it. I wanted to write a novel based on my
life and what I’ve seen. I wanted to show how change comes easily
to the privileged, how it can be done with the heart and with great
joy, or how fate can unwind based on people’s foolish choices,
especially from one generation to the next. Around me I see what’s
become of us yuppies; we think “I will give my children everything
and we’ll be safe.” Well, they are not safe, the last thing
they want to be is safe. They are going out and taking ridiculous risks.
They haven’t been taught responsibility, they haven’t been
taught how to look to their souls—and as a child of course you
want to negate, you want to oppose. We need to be willing to say we
value the family—the beautiful community of love and blood that
we live in—then take the responsibility to change how connected
we are to other families. We are all one.
Anything else you’d like to add?
I think a lot of parents read your magazine, so I’d like to tell
them that my 16-year-old daughter and her friends were invited to the
meeting with Medea. We pushed aside the dining room table, rented a
bunch of chairs and in came Medea Benjamin who is about 5’2”
and spoke like one of the mothers in our group. The teenagers were utterly
transformed by that day. She brought a burkha with her from Afghanistan;
the difference between Medea speaking to us and then donning the burkha
was the difference between a living woman and a corpse. In that moment,
these young people viscerally understood the problem of oppression,
and also they thought, “Oh my God, this is a woman that my mother
admires and who is changing the world. She has run for the Senate and
she’s out there doing this and she looks like someone who dropped
her children off at our school.”
To anybody who feels strongly about any issue, I would suggest, for
example, that when you have a house party for someone who is eloquent
in some of the subjects you are interested in, invite the children,
because when it happens in their house it makes all the difference in
the world.
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