State of Mind 2.0-Malta, Montana

A Residency Diary

Friday night February 6, 2026

The Malta Mustangs Girl’s Varsity Basketball team are down 58-55. There are 5 seconds left- The Mustangs get the ball off a rebound, and Denver, who came down with the ball, passes up to Neva already breaking down court- the seconds are ticking- as the clock is about to hit zero, Neva gets to the edge of the three point line and shoots. The room holds its breath as the ball flies, and everyone- 1500 people- everyone watches. The ball goes swish, and the room explodes. This takes the game to overtime, and Neva has had a glory shot that the town, and all of us on the State of Mind crew, won’t forget for a long time.

The next day, at 11 am as our brunch theatre is about to begin, I get to walk over to Neva, who we got to know this week, Neva, now in our audience at a table with members of her team, and I say- That was amazing, Neva-congratulations! And she says- crazy, right? I wish we’d won…but, it was cool. Can’t wait for the show!

And then, the show starts.

Rewind.

State of Mind 2.0- something new.

It’s a Sunday night. February 1, 2026.

We’re heading to Malta, Montana. It’s a one week trip. Friday, February 6, is a massive night at their high school Gym- Girls Basketball, Boys Basketball, Wrestling, all amidst a heated rivalry with the neighboring town (70 miles away) of Glasgow. Glasgow comes over for the event- they expect up to 1000 people in the Gym that night, nearly 20% of the combined populations of the two towns. That night is one focus of our residency. Here’s text being shared around town that explains our visit, and our presence.

“State of Mind is a free theatre and public conversation residency about Mental Health that, in the last 18 months, has visited 30 Montana communities, including Malta. At the invitation of Malta High School and a local health coalition, Malta is the first place we’re returning to for a second visit. This week’s visit has one specific goal, determined thru conversation with Malta school and health leaders- help normalize mental health conversations among adults and young people. Seven of us are here- 4 theatre makers, 2 visual artists and a filmmaker: between Monday and Thursday, we’re working with every single high school student at the school. Through workshops and conversations, they will help us create art and theatre that tackles this week’s goal.

For Friday night’s games and duals at the Gym, we will have filled the hallways around the gym with art exhibits that share thoughts and messages, and interactive displays that invite community members to join the conversation. And on Saturday at 11am at the Tin Cup, we will co-host (with the Phillips Cunty State of Mind health coalition) a free meal/theatre event for the public that will include new performance and conversation.”

Although we’re still on the road touring with 1.0, more communities are asking us to return, and we are creating custom theatre/arts based 2.0 engagements that serve needs community members have expressed. It will be a big learning week.

Theatre. New Work. Building Trust. Coalition. Civic Imagination.

Day One

Long day. Worked with every high school senior in workshops generating content for visual art and theatre that we’ll share with the community at the end of the week; conducted afterschool workshops with students who are acting as our core collaborators across the two artistic disciplines; held a meeting and orientation to the week with our partners, the local health coalition that coalesced after our residency last April and is going strong.

Three images- one, above, our motel upon arrival last night, moon and all. Below, two, a test of an interactive prompt that will eventually be a lovely installation alongside today’s interesting student responses, and 3, the director of the local rural hospital reading another test, what students would say if they were concerned with the mental health of a friend. The exhibit is gathering data for public health workers and she was helping vet the content. She is very excited with how this will aid local efforts around community narratives, stigma reduction, prevention and social connection.

Day Two

I could describe the day- the workshops with students, the preparation for Friday’s large scale art exhibit (early illustration iteration from artist Tandy Kunkel pictured here), preparation for Saturday’s performance/meal/dialogue, about our presentation at local Kiwanis tonight (homemade oatmeal butterscotch chip cookie pictured here)…but I think at the end of this long day, what’s most on my mind is that, amidst the workshops today with 9th graders, we had that experience where, as young people talked and created, as we successfully engaged lots and lots of students…a couple were living in the ongoing social dynamics of their situation, and feeling left out. Our presence, our temporary intervention, does not reach their troubled, pained interior life and so we become, became, something else they couldn’t completely access…and they check out, or they leave to gather themselves, or they sit, or stand, trapped in wanting to participate but held back by themselves, and by our not completely successful attempt to build that grail of a goal- the fully inclusive community within a community that is not always, or perhaps rarely is, that. We reach for them, we sit with them, we try and learn with and from them…and sometimes, we just fail. And they are, again, other.

And I know their world is far wider, deeper and realer than the minutes we get together, and we can’t ever know what goes on in someone else’s mind/heart, and no matter how much we want to…be useful, connective and collaborative, sometimes we aren’t.

So we talk about how to do our best, to marshal the resources we have, and the resources around us in the place we are, to be more than a prompt for a moment of exclusion/disengagement. How to build an experience that offers something, to everyone…or at least the accessible, actual opportunity of that experience, to everyone…and we will try that again, tomorrow.

Day 3.

We have now spent time with ¾ of the school’s population…the design of the interactive art display is getting clearer…the theatre piece for Saturday is taking shape. The opening song is sounding like its gonna work; we gained a student performer who will join us ‘onstage’. We did a radio interview (Jono Eiland in attached photo), we began to work with filmmaker Josh Aaseng to document the process (Malta host Gina Lamb being interviewed by artist Jackie Vetter for a new track in the show). And, today we had a student reach out to us for support; they needed access to a telehealth counselor because they wanted to talk with someone not embedded in their community (a not uncommon request in small isolated rural areas, at least in Montana). We connected her with a resource and she will get that support.

Day 4

Our final day of workshops with students- we’ve worked with every student at the high school now- we know everyone walking the halls; we’ve written with them, we’ve listened, they’ve helped make art exhibits. Our script for Saturday’s Brunch/theatre/public dialogue event is done, and we did part of the building install. Our main goal was to help this community normalize conversations about mental health, across the youth and adult populations. We’re hearing from teachers and administrators that the conversations from the workshops are leaking out and people are talking about stuff that they’ve never heard them talk about before. Resources, supporting each other, thinking through questions that came up in the workshops. Friday, day 5, we hear as many as 1000 people (20% of the population of Malta and Glasgow, two of the most geographically isolated towns in the lower 48) will come thru the gym, and our installations. The hope is that the conversations continue to spill, and that the students bring their families over to check out the art and participate in the interactive installations.  And then, that they bring them Saturday to the community meal and performance.

Day 5 & 6, end of residency

So Day 5, Friday, we spent 9 am – 2pm finishing the art exhibits. One was filled with work students had created based on text generated in our workshops with the high school student, and one was an interactive exhibit designed and led by our two visual artists in residence, Tandy Kunkel and Cat McIntyre, created to gather data from the community for local health officials and a coalition of behavioral health stakeholders. This exhibit, filled with large scale, eye-catching and playful pieces, asks questions like-

On a scale of 1-10, how comfortable are you seeking mental health support?

On a scale of 1-10, how common was it in the home you grew up in to talk about mental health?

If you had to seek mental health resources, would you know where to go, Yes or No?

At 2pm, people started streaming into the building, and continued to do so until the last game ended at 10pm that night. Students from the visiting (opposing) team- Glasgow- started to show up. First, the girl’s Varsity basketball team. As they sat in the gym, waiting for other buses to arrive, I invited them to be our first participants, and walk the exhibit…I followed close behind, to make sure they understood instructions, and, really, to see what they thought. They engaged with everything- they dug it, and started telling other folks to come check it out. The population of Glasgow and Malta, the two towns competing in the games and matches that day, is a combined 5200. Peak crowd Friday night in that gym was 1500 (far above the expected 1000)- estimated by the Malta principal as the largest winter gathering in Malta in decades. Everyone of these folks went through our exhibit. Some participated, some walked by without a glance, and some quietly took it in but didn’t stop. Throughout the day/evening, students who we’d worked with during the week spent time checking it out, and stopping to thank us and tell us they were talking about stuff they usually didn’t talk about. Throughout the day and evening, we heard people- families, adults- talking about mental health. Late that night, we gathered and decided what would happen with the art- some would stay up in the school, some would move downtown to a prominent window on Main Street, and some, at the invitation of the visiting Glasgow HS principal, would travel 70 miles and live for a while in that high school and collect data- and start conversations- in that school community.

Saturday, we got up, checked out of our motel and headed to Tin Cup, a restaurant on the edge of Malta where we’d be performing a new version of our show State of Mind. We re-shaped half the material in that script to live in and around a 4-course free brunch for the community, interspersed it with new material we created during the week with students, and added moments of dialogue for audience groups at their tables over food and between performance. I wrote a new song with performer Jono Eiland (original company member at Sojourn Theatre and here with us for the week), and we opened and closed brunch theatre with that. Would people show up…?

They did. Families. Hospital administrator. The local behavioral health coalition. A dozen students including much of the starting line-up from the Girl’s Varsity basketball team who we watched the night before almost win a nail-biter. And the event- the show? It worked really well. It was 75 minutes long, felt intimate and connective, seemed satisfying for the audience. We liked it as much as the show we’ve been touring for the last 18 months. At the end, we thanked our hosts. They thanked us. Tears were exchanged. Plans were made for a next conversation- a debrief and a what’s next.

And now, I, and we, have some learning and thinking to do. That 2.0 Pilot felt successful on a lot of levels…and, is it right for all the places we’ve been invited for a return visit? Is it a sustainable model for us? Is it the most effective use of our work as artists, as community facilitators, as contributors? In a way, so much of the week explored and modeled different ways artists can facilitate in community- in classrooms, in public meetings, in pop-up museums, amidst theatre…How does that relate to the facilitation training I’m giving around the country, and to others who may want to iterate the State of Mind model in their own community? More to come, lots of conversations to have. Grateful to the team and our hosts.