MDR lunch talk

Today I went to talk given by Darren O'Donnell who is the Artistic and Research Director of MDR (Mammalian Diving Reflex). It was a very interesting talk in which he gave examples of performance works and projects he did with children, specifically most of the projects were done in Toronto, Canada. One of the projects he mentioned was the "Haircuts by Kids" in which the children who were participating in the project literally hosted a hair salon where adults would come in and allow children to cut their hairs and fashion them in different and fun hair styles. How fun is that! The children also were in charge of setting up appointments and in charge of the pay for the haircuts throughout the whole project. To think, that these adults gave their time to go and have their hair cut by children, knowing that there may be a possibly that the haircut can go wrong was amazing. O'Donnell produced other projects involving children, some where the kids had to create a monster and they had to teach it how to be evil, and another where children hosted their own Children's Choice Awards. His projects were not just with children, he also worked with adults and senior citizens as well. One of the projects he worked on was called "Slow dance with a teacher" in which he hired and paid professor from a university to come and slow dance with strangers at a certain place through out the whole event. I really did find this talk to be interesting and it sounded like to me that Mr. O'Donnell had also enjoyed doing all of these projects with the people he had met as well.