DMP Final Script/Artist and Educator Statement
This project definitely stretched me as an artist, but it also helped me realize that I do have valuable creative ideas to contribute to any project. My specific contribution was being one of the many voices helping to craft the plot. I felt like we honestly had a very balanced group, with each of us voicing our ideas and fine-tuning the final script to represent each of our visions. I asked a lot of critical questions to help get the piece to where we wanted it to be, giving input on what I thought went really well and helping bounce ideas around when we felt that there was something that needed to change. I got cast to read part of a poem, but I also got to write my own verbatim lines based off of the interview that I performed. I felt like this project was particularly meaningful to me because it really centered around a narrative and required preserving the integrity of the various people whose stories we were telling. As an educator, I feel like this project would be exciting to alter and teach in a classroom setting. Perhaps instead of performing a play, I could have my students write a piece of literature, be it a poem or a story, that has to incorporate aspects of an interview that they need to perform, or research they need to conduct. However, I really love the idea of a play and I feel like it applies to an English classroom very well. I feel like the structure of this assignment might be just a little bit too abstract for a high school English classroom, however, and so I think sticking to a creative work of literature might go over better--or else giving the students a little bit more to work with so that it wouldn't be so time-consuming. They could, for example, create a short devised play based off a theme from a book we have recently read, and therefore all of their interview and research could be focused on that theme and how it adds layers to their interpretation of the book. I could help the students see how to incorporate their interviewees' responses with integrity while still applying them to fictionalized characters--verbatim theater doesn't have to be non-fiction. This assignment could help the students understand how much work goes into the research process in order to accurately portray any sort of story or narrative. I think that an assignment where students pick a topic that is pertinent to them based on a book that we've just read, conduct interviews, and then respond critically to those interviews by producing a creative piece is meaningful. It helps with analysis, it helps with comprehension and synthesis, and overall it just sets the students up for greater success by stretching their minds--just as I personally felt stretched throughout this assignment.
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