Final Script and Artist Statement

The final script can be found at this google link:
Final Script

Artist Statement:

               The very first thing I learned through this group project is that creative collaboration is much different (more difficult?) than a typical group project. I can collaborate in academic settings, and I can collaborate in creative settings where each person involved has a clearly defined role, in the way that creating a film requires actors, directors, editors, sound work, etc. In this project, however, there were no clear roles, and that was frustrating until we began to divide work later into the process. I think part of this has to do with creative vision. If one person has a clear creative vision, and that vision is shared and accepted by the group, it’s easier to work towards that artistic goal. For much of the project, I felt like there wasn’t a clear direction, so it was difficult to make decisions, and I was trapped between wanting to start productive work on what I thought was the assignment’s end goal, and not wanting to A) force my concept onto everyone else, or B) accept the humility and vulnerability in allowing a creative vision to be manipulated by group process thinking. There’s a needed balance between the limitations required for students to work productively, and allowing students the freedom needed for creative thinking. After performances today, Amy mentioned that she had hoped to see individuals take the lead in different areas as we worked through different aspects of our final, and different areas where we each had strengths. I think that was missing when my group first began. Because everyone had a different concept of what our end project looked like, and because no one idea seemed like the obvious one to take, it was difficult to have individual leaders help push the performance in the right direction when we hadn’t decided what the direction was. The process of sifting through different ideas (at one point, we played with the concept of heartbeats and representing a family on stage through heartbeats. At another point, we considered bringing real food to the dinner table and inviting the audience to eat with us) and eventually piecing all our ideas together (a concept that became important to our theme of different kinds of families) we were able to split the production into bite-size pieces so each person had complete control over the aesthetics of one aspect of the performance.

               Since this is a convenient place to put it, I presented the idea of staging our performance around a dinner table, and keeping it consistent throughout the performances. I also interviewed and edited the audio and visual for Laura’s story and took part in the discussions of how to represent her on stage. After McKaye and Maegan created the opening video, and one transition video, I edited both to incorporate static, and I created the last transition video to tie in multiple themes we were playing with (conflicting familial ideals, 50’s family, static and confusion, cacophony, and gospel concepts of family). I was very pleased with those videos because I was able to focus and work individually while still moving towards a group goal (which I found was how I worked best in the group).

               How do I translate all of this to a future classroom setting? I think Amy was right that one of the important conversations we had in creating our presentation was how do we represent our own and other’s stories. In any kind of class performance or creative work, the concept of representation becomes key and would work brilliantly in incorporating discussion of social media or unreliable narrators. One my favorite ideas from Intention was the idea of having students not just respond to each other’s work, but use it as inspiration or fodder in creating their own creative pieces. I love how much power and dignity this gives to student work, giving it the same treatment one might give canon, inspiring respect from students regarding their peers and confidence in students and their ability to join important conversations. I love this aspect of a creative group project. How would I mitigate the confusion I experienced during the first part of this project though? (Admittedly, I could definitely have used some sleep those days too though) I think this project was made purposefully large, and purposefully open to interpretation. I think translating this project into a high school setting might start by giving a little more limitation/specificity, or start with smaller groups and work bigger. I did appreciate how each day we had in class was focused on a specific aspect of media/theatre performance, so that we were given the skills we needed to fulfill the project. I wonder if we did something similar where the final for one class was some kind of conglomeration of our previous lesson, like a portfolio assessment where the portfolio as a whole was one big project.