Kris Jackson believes everyone should care for their neighbors, homeless or not.

Jackson and her daughter, Swazi, participated in zAmya Theater Project’s “A Prairie Homeless Companion” two years in a row. The show was created for the stage in 2019, toured in 2023 in Central Minnesota and 2024 in Northeast Minnesota. The Jacksons shared their lived experience of being homeless in the show.

zAmya includes local stories of lived experience in every one of their productions, Maren Ward, the artistic director, said.

zAmya is currently celebrating 20 years of using theater to bring awareness to homelessness. They are hosting a celebratory show on Dec. 14 in Pohlad Hall in the Downtown Minneapolis Central Library. zAmya toured their third adaptation of “A Prairie Homeless Companion” throughout Northeast Minnesota from Oct. 4-11.

There is a stigma around homelessness, Ward said. zAmya humanizes unhoused people by amplifying true stories and by putting faces on the issue. Integrating the lived experience of community members makes the show a visceral, embodied experience.

“When people come to see a show, it tends to be an eye opener of ‘Oh, this is another human being, just like me,’” Ward said.

825 Arts celebrated its grand reopening at the Frogtown Arts Festival on Aug. 25. In the small, newly reopened theater in St. Paul’s Thomas-Dale neighborhood, “A Prairie Homeless Companion” attracted a small crowd, but warranted a passionate response. There was a mix of newcomers and loyal zAmya fans.

Once the show was done, the cast and those who participated to tell their experience with homelessness interacted with the audience. A mic was passed to those who raised their hand for comment.

One thing in common each audience member expressed was gratitude.

“We survive. We don’t live.”

Kris Jackson of Little Falls balances more than the average person in her daily life, and she gets just $384 in housing aid a month.

Jackson escaped domestic violence in 2018. After receiving a call about an open space, Jackson and her four children stayed in a women’s shelter in Crow Wing County for 29 days.

Then, Jackson was told she and her family could move into a two-bedroom in Morrison County. Before they could move into the two-bedroom, they had to stay in a hotel for the night.

Members of the women’s shelter who have not been named brought Jackson and her kids to a hotel in Morrison County. To Jackson’s surprise, those shelter representatives stranded them there.

“Once we were in a different county, we were that other county’s problem,” Jackson said.

That is when Jackson met Rose Surma, executive director of the temporary shelter Oasis Central Minnesota. Surma helped fund Jackson’s stay at a hotel until she found housing.

Jackson filled out 32 housing applications and waited five and a half months before she found a place to live. Applications included transitional housing, rapid rehousing and permanent supportive housing. She now lives in a three bedroom townhome. However, to Jackson, a roof over your head does not come with stability.

“Yeah, we’re in a home, but there’s no ability to stop being fearful.” Jackson said. “How am I going to get enough food for my kids to eat? How am I going to make sure my rent is paid?”

Jackson has four biological children and one adopted child. In addition, she is a foster mom and has two dogs to take care of. Jackson works as a domestic violence advocate. The job is rewarding, but it does not pay well.

Jackson lives off of food stamps and those do not last a whole month. She can go to the food shelf, but people are only allowed to go once a month and get a week’s worth of food.

“The cost of food has tripled, but my food stamps haven’t tripled,” Jackson said. “So even now, being able to get the food to stretch far enough so that we have food to eat for a month is tough.”

In January of 2023, Jackson and her daughter Swazi, 12, testified in front of the Minnesota House Human Services Finance Committee for the Pathway Home Act, which was approved and provided nearly $200 million for homeless services.

On top of everything, Jackson coaches baseball, soccer, football, tackle football and wrestling. Swazi reflects her mother’s knack for resilience. She is an athlete, on the student council at her school and maintains straight A’s.

Jackson’s experience is one version of what rural homelessness looks like.

“We survive. We don’t live,” Jackson said while sharing her story in “A Prairie Homeless Companion.”

Together, Jackson and Swazi sing a song near the end of the show. They get everyone to clap along.

Lifting up voices

Surma connected Jackson to zAmya for “A Prairie Homeless Companion.” Surma was also a large contributor to bringing a tour of the show through the Northeast part of the state and Little Falls, Ward said.

zAmya performed “A Prairie Homeless Companion” at the Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless conference in Rochester in 2019. That is when Surma saw it, and zAmya decided to create adaptations of the show based on homelessness in rural areas, Ward said.

“We decided to do a workshop in Little Falls to create new content and meet new performers,” Ward said. “The show evolved to become something that has these places in it where we plug in local stories and statistics.”

Because of COVID-19, the theater could not start touring the show until 2023. Nonetheless, zAmya and those contributing in greater Minnesota made it happen.

“It demonstrates that people are more than their struggle with housing insecurity,” Surma said. “They’re diverse. They’re interesting. They’re people just like us. It also points out the systematic fails that have contributed to the individual crisis and difficulty.”

The core of zAmya shows are the voices of those who are or have experienced homelessness. That is why zAmya reached out to the Northeast Minnesota Continuum of Care (NE CoC). Continuums of Care are regional organizations made up of housing service agencies, healthcare providers, community stakeholders and community members coming together to create a plan to address homelessness in that region.

In 2023, NE CoC made more effort to include perspectives of homeless people in their planning, Cara Oakland, CoC co-coordinator, said. The efforts are called “new perspective groups,” quarterly open meetings with volunteers with experience with homelessness. Those who go to the meetings are paid for their time.

“It could have been 30 years ago,” Oakland said. “It could be right now. They could be living in a tent. They can come in, join this meeting and give input on important planning pieces and ideas around where we put funding and what we prioritize around homeless services.”

These meetings look like the story circles zAmya conducts in order to gain an accurate understanding of what rural homelessness looks like in the regions they tour their shows.

The new perspective meetings are held in the unfinished basement of Grace House, a homeless shelter in Grand Rapids, Oakland said. The meetings are informal. Pizza and gift cards are provided, and staff members from Grace House join in.

Everyone sits around a table. People come and go. Some people even bring their kids. People share their stories if they are comfortable.

“They were vulnerable,” Oakland said. “They continue to be vulnerable. They have ideas because they’ve gone through the homeless response system and they are shooting them out.”

That is why working with zAmya on “A Prairie Homeless Companion” was a great fit, Oakland said.

Ron Oleheiser and Julee Jackson, executive director and outreach directors for Grace House shelter and members of NE CoC, helped zAmya bring the show to three Minnesota North College campuses in Grand Rapids, International Falls and Virginia. Jackson connected zAmya to a shelter in each area to conduct story circles.

The story circles and the new perspective group at Grace House empower those with experience in homelessness, Jackson said.

“They come together and support each other,” Jackson said. “We see people leaving, talking and building those connections with each other.”

Tracey Howg, the program manager of the two Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe shelters, came to know zAmya after they came to the shelters to conduct story circles mid-August.

In the Leech Lake Band, homelessness is generally hidden, Howg said. On the reservation, encampments are set up in hidden places, multiple families are piled up in single-family homes and people are living in condemnable structures.

“A lot of the homelessness that happens here on the reservation is not right in front of your face,” Howg said.

Geography is a large factor in homelessness, according to the Minnesota Homeless Study by the Wilder Foundation. Rural and Urban homelessness look very different.

One-third of Minnesota’s homeless population lives in rural greater Minnesota. Over 8,000 people were homeless in 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Homeless people in greater Minnesota are more likely to be chronically homeless, move around from place to place and be doubled up in a friend or family’s house.

Native Americans are disproportionately affected by homelessness, according to the Wilder Foundation.

More than two-thirds of Minnesota’s homeless population has experienced trauma during childhood. Homeless people in greater Minnesota are more likely to experience trauma and violence in childhood and while homeless in adulthood.

Tammy Shoots, case manager for Bill’s House shelter in Virginia, Minnesota, attended a story circle. Shoots talked about her own experience with homelessness to encourage members of the shelter to do the same.

Story circles not only impact communities, but those who are unhoused as well, Shoots said.

“They enjoy telling their stories because they want people to know it can happen to anybody,” Shoots said.

“That’s one of the great things about art.”

After attending the show, people feel moved and motivated to help make a difference, Surma said.

There was a couple who saw the show in Little Falls that rent out AirBnbs. After they saw the show, they wanted to work with Oasis Central Minnesota. They offered, whenever an AirBnb was vacant, to house people temporarily.

Shoots said options for shelter are very slim in rural areas, and encampments are built on the outskirts of towns.

People are not as aware of homelessness in rural areas as they are in the Twin Cities, Shoots said. The “A Prairie Homeless Companion” tour combats that.

“People will be aware we do need funding from different agencies to help us grow,” Shoots said.

Jackson saw the show in Brainerd when zAmya did their Central Minnesota tour in 2023. Audiences strongly reacted to the personal stories of the homeless people who participated, Jackson said.

“There were a lot of people in the audience who were brought to tears at the end of the show,” Jackson said.

zAmya helps people understand rural homelessness altogether, Oleheiser said.

“If people understand it a little bit better, they might find a way to help all people,” Oleheiser said.

Ariana Daniel, executive director of Servants of Shelter in International Falls, expressed nothing but gratitude for zAmya’s work. The audience in International Falls laughed, cried and sang, Daniel said.

“It was a big release,” Daniel said. “That’s one of the great things about art. It lets you release that grief, and with homelessness, that shame.”

Theater is a strong medium to spread awareness because it is live and audience members are in the same room as those who are telling their stories of homelessness, Ward said. Especially since the audience interaction and conversations at the end of the show are really intimate.

“Newspapers or documentaries may not evoke the same amount of heart-opening empathy that theater or someone telling their story can,” Ward said. “It shatters your expectations of what you think is true about somebody who has had that experience of being homeless.”