Stephen Dupuie with the Edison Neighborhood Association and more speaks to the vast number of projects that support his community.

- Well, today I am talking with Stephen Dupuie, who's the artistic director at Dormouse Theater, and he's also the executive director at the Edison Neighborhood Association.

What else are you, I know you're a lot of things.

You wear a lot of hats.

- I, you know, I'm a partner, I'm a dog dad, all of that wonderful stuff as well.

Yeah, and just a lover of Kalamazoo, bit of an activist, somewhat outspoken sometimes, an advocate for sure.

Yeah, that's probably enough, yeah.

- You wear lots of hats, like I said.

So when you think about the Edison neighborhood, to me it's really vibrant, but how would you describe the neighborhood?

- I always think of it as really urban and really rich culturally.

You know, a lot of neighborhoods can be really segregated in terms of where you find the culture, but Edison, it's really weaved throughout.

- The vibe for me that I get people are into the arts.

You have a lot of artists and budding artists in the Edison neighborhood, why do you think that is?

- Well, first and foremost, it's still one of the most affordable places to live.

And when you think about artists, like I think about me and as a starving artist sometimes.

And I think, you know, like that culture piece plays into that as well.

I think that inspires artists to have that around them.

- And so they, you've put on a lot of different events, you know, the Edison Neighborhood Association has been a part of or supported or put them on themselves.

What are some of those events?

- We do a community social every month, and that's the last Saturday of the month.

And we theme that differently and partner up with different folks.

We just did a Bike-BQ with Open Roads and an organization called ModeShift, which advocates for you know, biking and walkability.

We have been doing bucket drumming with Carolyn Koebel and that has been really cool.

- But you also do this other event that I think is so much fun, it's the Quarterly Art Crawl.

- Yes, we call it WAACC 'cause it is the Washington Avenue Arts and Culture Crawl.

And I wanted to point out that it's arts and culture crawl.

There's a map for that, and it goes, there's a very specific route to take.

And we're connecting like the strategic, you know, boring part about it in the back end of it is that we're connecting different business nodes in the neighborhood.

You know, anybody could drive there, but the map that we're using is about biking and walking, and getting people sort of more comfortable getting out and just walking around and meeting (indistinct).

- Yeah, and you get to visit with some of the owners of the stores, and you're out there, you know, with your community.

You have your hands, as I said, you know, earlier into so many different things.

I mean, you definitely have your pulse on the neighborhood and Dormouse Theater is really a big place for you.

You're the artistic director there, right?

- Yes, yeah.

- So what does that entail and tell me about what the Dormouse Theater brings to the neighborhood?

- Wow, well, so the Dormouse, that's obviously my passion project and to me is, it's like a lot of things where it's changed and evolved, you know.

I feel like I set up a lot of goals for myself and I accomplished a lot of those goals.

And then it has evolved into more of a space where multiple artists, different mediums have come and perform.

So originally it was, you know, my passion project, I do performing arts and particularly we produce sketch comedy shows with a sort of a social angle to them.

But now we have all sorts of different live music, we have got an all ages punk show coming up this weekend, there's hip hop music that we host, we host dance troops and belly dance and urban dance.

And, just stuff that I didn't necessarily expect was just gonna filter into the space, but it kind of just evolved there.

And a very improv thing to say was, "Yes, and," kinda my approach to my directorship at the Neighborhood Association.

For Edison Jazz Fest, for instance, people came to me and said, you know, they wanna do this thing.

And I was like, "Yes, and this," and talk about how this can be a bigger, more culturally relevant thing.

- Yeah, and how do you curate the talent?

How do you find the talent that you present?

- Some of it comes to me, Kalamazoo is such a great community for working artists, you know, there's statistics on how it's the most affordable place for working artists to live and all of that.

So it's really just that, that web of folks, you meet one person and then the next thing you know, you've met another person.

And I had somebody come to me recently saying, "I wanna start an open mic night."

And I just said, "Sure, yeah, go ahead.

Let's work together on that open mic night that you wanna cultivate."

I just find that, you know, a good leader just knows when to get out of the way.

You're there to support, you're there to, you know, to cheerlead and push and offer advice, maybe sometimes the shoulder to cry on or, you know.

What you do is you just, you say, "Yes, that sounds amazing, how can I help make that happen?"

- So what's your goal, like what, when you wake up in the morning, what gets you jazzed up?

- Oh, so I advocate a lot for folks in the neighborhood.

It's a little more serious part of the job.

There is some disinvestment that's happened in the neighborhood for a long time.

There are certain things that get me jazzed up about just quality of life things that are not being addressed or shoved under the rug.

Obviously art motivates me, I'm obviously a huge supporter of art.

And at the Dormouse I do have the opportunity to like, produce our own sketch, I get to direct, I get to perform and that's super fun.

I forget how much I love it until I'm, you know, until I'm in it and I'm doing it.

- Tell me a little bit about the Edison Jazz Fest.

What's in store, what's the plan?

- So Jazz Fest this year has all been Brick and Mortar Sessions and they've been doing that at the Clover Room.

And so they're bringing in, they do like a Wednesday night jam pretty much every Wednesday, where they have somebody plays and then other jazz musicians are welcome to come and jam after the performance.

And then they're also bringing in some real great world class talent every once in a while.

- Stephen, thank you so much for talking with me here today and doing what you do.

- Absolutely, thank you so much for having me.

(upbeat funky music) - [Announcer] Support for "Kalamazoo Lively Arts" is provided by the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation, helping to build and enrich the cultural life of greater Kalamazoo.