BIMA Artslab: Jewish Sociodrama - Summer 2010
Using a playwriting form known as Sociodrama, Ethnodrama, or Reality Theater, I facilitated a class in reality-based playwriting for a group of high school-aged Jewish participants at the intensive summer arts program BIMA at Brandeis University in the summer of 2010. During this workshop, participants created and performed original dramatic text based on interviews with their peers. Inspired by the work of Anna Deveare Smith (Twilight: Los Angeles), Moises Kaufman's Tectonic Theater Project (The Laramie Project), and the oral history organization Storycorps, participants digitally recorded interviews which focused on "essential questions": How do I want to be remembered? How is my Art and Faith connected? When is my religion dramatic for me? What will the afterlife look like? What are important stories from my family? Why are these stories important? After recording interviews, the class uploaded its audio to the web, followed by a detailed transcribing process resulting in dramatic character monologues. Participants then took their individual monologues, acting out their new theatrical text and searching for the place where "speech fails and character begins." In a final showcase performance for the BIMA community, interviewers became actors, interviewees became characters, and the participants' real-life words became a theater experience for creators and audience alike. Below is the the edited script of collected interviews from BIMA Artslab 2010: Jewish Sociodrama.
Using a playwriting form known as Sociodrama, Ethnodrama, or Reality Theater, I facilitated a class in reality-based playwriting for a group of high school-aged Jewish participants at the intensive summer arts program BIMA at Brandeis University in the summer of 2010. During this workshop, participants created and performed original dramatic text based on interviews with their peers. Inspired by the work of Anna Deveare Smith (Twilight: Los Angeles), Moises Kaufman's Tectonic Theater Project (The Laramie Project), and the oral history organization Storycorps, participants digitally recorded interviews which focused on "essential questions": How do I want to be remembered? How is my Art and Faith connected? When is my religion dramatic for me? What will the afterlife look like? What are important stories from my family? Why are these stories important? After recording interviews, the class uploaded its audio to the web, followed by a detailed transcribing process resulting in dramatic character monologues. Participants then took their individual monologues, acting out their new theatrical text and searching for the place where "speech fails and character begins." In a final showcase performance for the BIMA community, interviewers became actors, interviewees became characters, and the participants' real-life words became a theater experience for creators and audience alike. Below is the the edited script of collected interviews from BIMA Artslab 2010: Jewish Sociodrama.
| jewish_sociodrama_artslab_showcase_script_bima_2010.doc |
