Where Our Joy Goes: Rat Chella 2024
The smooth sound of a harp filters through expectant silence on a sunny Sunday afternoon in mid-August. There’s a light breeze and plenty of shade provided by large maple trees. The audience, seated on borrowed blankets or on the grass, is mesmerized. On the stage, the wooden back porch of a house, is Eleanora the harpist. She plucks a soothing and melodic song that then reverberates through an amp in an unexpected twist. Eleanora expertly loops the melody and layers notes on top of it to create new sounds that never become too disjointed but alert the audience that this is not a classical harp performance. In rapt attention, we all sink into the music, despite faint voices from neighbors in adjacent yards. And when the song is finished, we erupt into vigorous claps and cheers. The second day of Rat Chella is underway.
Rat Chella, even in its first manifestation, might be the essence of a DIY production. The best DIY shows have a scrappy, hand-made feel, transforming reclaimed materials and spaces into social, collaborative centers of energy and creativity. A porch is practically a stage already, especially when dressed up with hand-made décor (colorful streamers and large felt flowers affixed with electrical tape) and a mismatched assortment of bought and borrowed equipment. This venue, fondly referred to as Emma’s Yard, has been home to a handful of such productions in recent years. The yard in question is behind Emma’s house, a bulky split-level on a corner of Somerville, MA’s recently renovated Lincoln Park, and its transformation into a DIY music venue was in part inspired by the park itself. When Emma moved into the house she noticed that, among the “electric scooters and designer dogs” in the park, a family of rats was living quite happily under the slide in the playground and later, an unknown neighbor’s chalk art of a rat bearing the motto, Welcome to rat country.
To Emma, who has a history of involvement with housing justice, this imposition of art in the manicured park represents both a problem and a solution. Along with friend and co-founder of Yardwork Productions, Corey, these backyard events are envisioned as a foundation for coexistence and community, building spaces where neighbors know, support, and care for one another. Especially when our lives are shaped by external forces beyond our control, “partying with your neighbors builds solidarity,” Emma tells us. “We love rats, everyone is welcome, no one is disposable.” Still, she acknowledges that their work is a bandaid, a small part of a solution to much larger problems. Developments like the park renovation and recent Green Line train extension to nearby Union Square have skyrocketed rent prices, driving current residents (including Emma herself) out of the neighborhood, dissolving existing communities in the process.
Flyers for the event, have no address besides the name of the park. As we wander around the border of the shiny new playground, unblemished basketball courts, and designated parkour course, we spot a green banner with pink lettering through the trees: “Rat Chella.” We cross the street and find three-foot long hand-stitched patchwork rats zip-tied to a chain link fence leading us to the house, like a path into a strange wonderland. Just through the gate stands a card table serving as a ticket booth, where we are greeted by a middle-aged woman who proudly informs us she is Corey’s mom. She checks our names off a list and hands us wristbands.
It quickly becomes apparent that friends, family, and neighbors are the backbone of the volunteer corps. A dad wearing a custom “Rat Pit Crew” t-shirt is stationed behind the nearby concessions table, cranking out hotdogs served on grilled slices of white bread. As audience members filter in with their own drinks, they wander around to the back of the house, past a merch table overseen by friends who we later learn flew in from Austin and Nashville just to lend a hand. A blond, bare-footed child ducks by us to consult with Emma and to announce that he has picked up five pieces of trash. He and his siblings live down the street and volunteered (demanded) to help flier in advance of the event, and now eagerly scamper about fulfilling any missions they are given.
Around half of the nearly sixty people present are wearing some iteration of a Rat Chella t-shirt. Some are custom-made and screen printed on the shirt of the volunteer’s choice, and white shirts with pink Rat Chella writing are available for audiences at the merch table. These start popping up in the crowd as attendees join volunteers in showing their support with pride.
Even though this is the first year of Rat Chella, Corey and Emma each bring around six years of experience to putting on community shows like this, working together for the past three. Corey, drummer in the band L.A. Nails (and several others, according to Emma), began with dorm and house shows at UMass while Emma was organizing similar events in Providence, RI. Their collaboration has felt like “the most natural thing in the world to be doing right now,” says Emma, and they make quite a team. Corey works the soundboard from a folding table near the back fence and organizes the artists (he collaborates with many of them). The artists are all locals, some as near as park-side neighbors (one, we learn, is even a Lincoln skatepark legend). Emma on the other hand is constantly on the move, coordinating volunteers, setting the stage, and shepherding audiences, bringing everyone together.
Rat Chella is more than just a party to support local musicians though. “Where our joy goes, our rage is welcome,” Emma says, citing a friend and fellow activist for this framing of the event. The fourth act of the afternoon, drag performer and comedian Andi van Dyke, brings the joy and energy the moment she takes the porch. Wearing a platinum white wig and hand-drawn black pencil mustache over her lips, a red corset and green keffiyeh around her waist, she instructs the audience to “Yell if you see something you like!” as you might at a drag show, before performing a song by the Talking Heads. The audience’s energy becomes boisterous as Andi sings and folds herself over the wooden railing and lays down on the stage, every inch the performer who is living in her joy. The song isn’t complete without a rousing call and return between Andi and the audience singing “Oooh lovely lady, girl you drive me crazy!” Andi then plugs other local artists and shows, including her own “Spill the Chai” drag show before concluding her performance by bringing the audience into her anger. She encourages a therapeutic loud scream from the crowd at the end of the song which echoes through the neighborhood. Making space for rage is important for both Andi van Dyke and the creators of Rat Chella. “We’re living in war-time, but can still take a break for energy and fun. We can hold both that joy and that rage,” Emma tells us. Embodying that spirit, Andi’s final words are to call attention to the violence and humanitarian crisis in Gaza. She invites everyone to partake in slices of watermelon available at the front of the yard, the proceeds of which will be donated to Gaza.
Local and global issues are an unspoken headliner at the backyard festival. Near the merch tables on Saturday were representatives from the Community Action Agency of Somerville (CAAS) passing out materials and sharing info on their Neighbors Helping Neighbors initiative. CAAS is a nonprofit organization dedicated to addressing the root causes of economic and housing injustice in Somerville. On Sunday the fliers are still there and artists, organizers, and volunteers make an effort to point people in their direction. Also on the table are issues of Slit Magazine, a community literary journal created by MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) Student Council. The “Home/Not Home” issue features poems, stories, and art related to visions of home and homeland, movement between homes, and creating home where you are.
It’s hard to miss the hyper-local community heartbeat in the air at Rat Chella. Coming from just across the river in Allston, we are welcomed warmly, but it is like walking through a block party for a neighborhood you don’t live in. Everyone here seems to know someone who is involved. Between sets, people cycle through roving conversations, and with no green room to speak of, even the artists join the crowd, finding fans, friends, and loved ones to sit and enjoy the afternoon with. But even us outsiders find common ground in the music and issues that affect us all. A Rat Chella might not happen in your backyard, especially if you’re nowhere near Massachusetts, but in each of our communities are parties with our neighbors, celebrations of our joy and our rage, and spaces to create something bigger than ourselves.
What’s next for Yardwork Productions? “We’re taking the yard on the road.” Rat Chella 2024 may be the final event for the Emma’s Yard venue, but plans for Rat Chella 2025 are in the works, along with other projects to come. The duo hopes to find new and bigger venues while maintaining their “DIY and anti-capitalist, anarchist attitude,” cultivating spaces for expression, justice, and community.
Spencer Storey Johnson is a writer, artist, and teacher based in Boston. His previous work can be found in Adelaide Magazine, pioneertown, and here at Cult.
Katherine Yeh is a Taiwanese American Writer based in Boston. Her stories have been published in GASHER, Flora Fiction, Blind Corner Literary Magazine, and others. She teaches novel writing at GrubStreet.