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Original Play- Documentary Theater

  • 1.  Original Play- Documentary Theater

    Posted 12-15-2020 09:47
    Hello Community, 

    I hope you are all feeling inspired in the face of the challenges we are all facing. 

    I'm writing with a share and some offers:

    THE SHARE
    Share. This fall, my high school students and I worked with a playwright to create a documentary theater piece called The Hope Project. Our goal was to capture the time we are living through in America and to explore the Hope and Fear that run through the country right now. We collected 15 interviews over zoom after devising some archetypes, players, concepts we wanted to explore to tell this story. I found interview subjects using social media and list serves. Interviews were collected up until election day. Then my playwright had 6 days to turn around a first draft. The script went through 6 drafts before we froze it and got to rehearsing. In the end we made this: The Hope Project by Daniel K. Isaac- Live .
    I hope you'll give it a watch- I'd love to hear what you think. 

    THE OFFERS:
    1- Documentary theater was a great process for our students. Zoom opens the door to interview a much broader demographic than our communities might be able in normal times. I encourage you to consider a project like this. If anyone wants to talk through what we learned. My zoom door is open.

    2- This script is available- if anyone is looking for a show that can be made on zoom, it has some real potential. I'm lucky enough to be at a pretty progressive school in Brooklyn, NY. So I recognize the content may not be a fit for every program/ community. I'd be happy to help you work out an agreement with our playwright if you'd be interested in working with the material. 

    3- I learned some really great tech solutions for producing a zoom show. I programmed the whole thing myself, and was able to produce this show for a comparable budget to our in person productions. I'd love to share my knowledge with some of you if anyone wants to push the envelope a bit. 

    YouTube remove preview
    The Hope Project by Daniel K. Isaac- Live
    A group of high school students conduct interviews with folx across a divided America in the months leading up to the election to gauge the temperature of a ...
    View this on YouTube >


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    WT McRae
    Director of Theater
    Berkeley Carroll School
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