The Awesome Difficult Work of Love (ADWL)
ADWL is a community-participation spoken word and music performance that explores identity, belonging, and what it means to connect across differences to create true community based on shared values and vision.
Productions
Madison, WI – 2008 | San Francisco, CA – 2012 | Sedona, AZ – 2022 | Flint, MI – 2026
Through workshops, rehearsals, and performance, ADWL brings together people from diverse backgrounds to craft their stories of identity under the direction of locally-based poet mentors and to perform their musical instruments under the direction of ADWL’s creator, the composer and pianist Adrienne Torf.
By engaging across differences of race, sexuality, age, gender, ability, and socioeconomic background, ADWL challenges divisive narratives, amplifies underrepresented voices, and provides a platform for each participant to present themselves to their community as how they want to be seen and heard – to self-identify, rather than to be identified by others.
The Awesome Difficult Work of Love is based in a sentence from the late poet, teacher and activist June Jordan:
“We need, each of us, to begin the awesome difficult work of love, loving ourselves so that we become able to love others without fear, so that we can become powerful enough to enlarge the circle of our trust and our common striving for a safe, sunny afternoon near to flowering trees and under a very blue sky.”