Final Script and Artist Statement
The final script can be found at this google link:
Final Script
Artist Statement:
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.
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).
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