Monthly Archives: October 2010

Monologue (pro-busing)

You know what?

The day before history tests were the days I dreaded the most in a school year. I’d spend hours memorizing the notes for the unit, but just before entering the class, I’d shove them into my backpack.

You know-the teacher would begin calling students by alphabetical order, and as my name approached- I could feel my heart beating faster and faster.  I’d walk to the board, already hearing snickers -and I remember I would always know the correct answer to the question that the teacher asked, and my hand would even jolt forward to begin writing- but I would never dare to answer correctly. I would look up into thin air, and pretend to have forgotten the answer till time would be called….

It wasn’t till high school that I began to realize that there were others like me-others who wanted to learn. You know what- I lost sight of who I was in elementary school- and meeting people from diverse backgrounds made me who I am today. I mean, going through elementary school was bad enough- I’d hate to see other kids facing the same problems I did.

FRK Monologue: “I Mean,”

I Mean,

C. Green

I mean, sure I give to the homeless.

Well, I mean, I used to.

Or at least, I usually tried to, if I had any extra cash on me. The thing is, though, how do I know what they’re gonna use that money for?

I mean, sure, maybe it’s going to their wife and kids but how do I know that?

For all I know, they’re turning around and buying drugs with it.

I mean, I don’t know.

Usually I try to give people the benefit of the doubt.

This one time, though, there was this guy on Franklin.

He told me about how he just needed some cash to buy his two or three kids, I don’t remember which, but anyway he just needed to buy them dinner.

I gave him some money and then I went to get dinner at Biskis, and I was in there for maybe an hour, something like that, with my friends, and then I’m walking back  down Franklin and I see that same guy on the other side of the street, walking with a group of guys, just chillin you know?

I mean, maybe he went out, bought dinner and fed his kids and then came back. But I mean, probably not.

So that’s pretty much why I don’t give money to people anymore. I mean, I’ll buy them a slice of pizza or a donut or something, cuz all they can do with that is eat it, but I don’t want to give my money to someone who doesn’t actually need it, or to finance some guy’s crack habit. You know what I mean?

Fictional Documentary

Fictional Documentary

—–Interactions Between Real Life and Real-life-based Theatre

In her analysis in the article, Bodies of Evidence, Carol Martin describes that “contemporary documentary theatre represents a struggle to shape and remember the most transitory history—the complex ways in which men and women think about the events that shape the landscapes of their lives. ”

Documentary theatre, as its name implies, distinguishes itself from all other forms of theatre works by its strong connection with real life. Since the premiere of the Laramie Project, reproducing real life archives such as interviews and videos has become the mainstream impression about documentary theater among its audience.

However, in the documentary theatre, COLUMBINUS, co-written by Stephen Karam and PJ Paparelli, writers adapted a controversial yet revolutionary manner to bring its audience back to the Columbine High School massacre in 1999. Columbinus takes the form of documentary theatre to rise discussions in its audiences on the adolescent. This play is based on real archives. However, the actors and actress perform in a typically fictional manner instead of acting as if they were real people in the real life.

In the first act, the writer used plenty of symbolism. For example, every student in the play has a name and several objects that represent his or her personalities. Moreover, all these students are labels themselves that reflect the faces of American high school students, and the interactions among them reveal many symbolic scenes that exist in the real high schools. However, later in the second act, every element of this play has changed. In the direction before the first scene of act two, PJ Paparelli commented that act two is of “no air of pretense or affection” (86), but a sense of reality and genuineness, letting its audience know that the play is going to reproduce real life events. No more symbolism is presented, and the massacre is happening.

The contrast between the two acts leads us to the question of why PJ and Karam made the play in this way. However, when I tried to look into this contrast, I only found limited information directly from the theatre makers. As PJ dismissed the United States Theatre Project after making its first but also the last play Columbinus, the direct source of insights about this play is missed. Fortunately, after the first production of Columbinus in New York, theatre makers and companies across the U.S. reproduced the play in multiple areas. In the following part, I will use comparison between PJ Paparelli and Karam’s and other artists’ productions of Columbinus to address the previous question.

According to the script, the first act is intended to be a general reflection of American high school lives. In a review of this play on New York Times, Charles Isherwood comments that “The interaction among the types presented here will probably accord cleanly with the memories of anyone who attended a suburban American high school in the last few decades.” The behaviors of characters, the conversations happened among them, and the set up of scenes are “accurate as these snapshots of the daily cruelties and occasional mercies of high school life certainly are, (but) they are also familiar and sometimes banal.” In my perspective, although some audience who look for more backgrounds or analysis about the massacre will probably get disappointed, the first act reached a success by recalling up people’s memories on their own high school lives. The absence of some “real” turns the play into a broader background, rising wide resonance among its audience.

After four years of its debut, another production of this play was directed by Alex Tobey for Necessary Dialogues Theatre Co., in Raleigh. Despite of all its side effect of fictionalization, no matter who remake this play, and no matter how much different directors change the settings in the play, the way of representing the Columbine High School life in the first act remains the same. According to Tobey, “ Columbinus takes an uncensored look at the lives of real high school students, and contains strong language and mature situations”. (http://triangleartsandentertainment.org/2010/08/columbinus-aug-12-15/) Even though I did not go and see the play myself, the repetition of the first act in different productions proved the success of it.

Furthermore, besides the function of the “air of pretense or affection”(86) in act 1, we should also take a look at its influence on the whole play. As I mentioned, the play made a sudden turn in the tone at the end of act 1. A sudden transit from symbolism to realism creates a sense of abruptness, and that abruptness is exactly what PJ wants to present on stage, because it rises a question, “why did these familiar high school experiences lead to such monstrous tragedy?” This question is where the discussion begins.

In Charles Isherwood‘s opinion, the first act offers “a diagnostic aid in understanding the roots of the monstrous events depicted in the second act”. The contrast and connection between the two acts mirrored the similar relations between American High School lives and the tragedy in Columbine. Thus, this transaction is the crux of this play, which brings us into a discussion based not only on the Columbine horror, but also our own understanding of high school experiences. Even though PJ Paparelli did not offer us any analysis in the play, partly because the massacre in Columbine had been already widely discussed and analyzed by media, like Charles Isherwood commented, we can still easily draw the conclusion that “the toxic combo of social dysfunction and psychological frailty in American high schools was at the root of their(the two murderers) pathology”, by the way he constructed the play. Carol Martin said, in her Bodies of Evidence, that “a text can be fictional yet true”. COLUMBINUS is a true answer told in a fictional tone to a real life question on our youth.

The play ended its off-Broadway performance in 2006, and PJ Paparelli, along with the United States Theatre Project he created, did not bring about any further productions of this play. The United States Theatre Project faded away after its first but also the last production. However, the theatre itself continues to survive. In the following years, this play is produced by Necessary Dialogues Theatre Co., Stray Cat Theatre, etc. In the former production, both the casts and the director were high school young boys and girls, instead of adults professionals. In the later one, Stray Cat Theatre located its main audience source to be university students nearby. Columbinus becomes a start point of a long discussion of both American high schools and the mental world of the youth. Although we could not travel back through time to prevent the tragedy, we felt grateful “for its not happening, somewhere in America, seven times a week.”(Review the Off-Broadway Production of COLUMBINUS for THE VILLAGE VOICE, Michael Feingold).

The play is just a beginning of the discussion on the big picture of the society, in which such event as that described in Columbinus could happen. It directed the aftermath of this event to a positive influence on the society, but high school and college shooting still exist in this country. Like Carol Martin said, “documentary theatre is an imperfect answer that needs our obsessive analytical attention.” A single documentary theatre is far from enough to answer all the questions that perplex our youth nowadays, and more attention and analysis are necessary to fully understand the cause behind those shootings that happened to our youth. But it is undoubtedly a good start, for it triggers discussion among its audience.

COLUMBINUS, By the United States Theater Project. Text by Stephen Karam and PJ Paparelli.

Columbinus”: Exploring the Evil That Roams a High School’s Halls, By Charles Isherwood, http://theater.nytimes.com/2006/05/23/theater/reviews/23colu.html.

COLUMBINUS | Aug 12-15, by Robert W. McDowell, http://triangleartsandentertainment.org/2010/08/columbinus-aug-12-15/

Bodies of Evidence, Carol Martin.

The function of documentary film

In an article, “Documentaries (in name only) of Every Stripe”, that appeared in last Wednesday’s (October 13) New York Times, film critic A.O. Scott expressed frustration with not being able to pin down the “truth” of recent documentary offerings as well as the extreme variety of genre’s structural elements in its post-millennial form(s). For me his analysis echoed that of our own Carol Martin who argues in “Bodies of Evidence” that documentary theater is best understood in terms of its diverse and sometimes contradictory effects or functions rather than trying to codify a set of structural or dramaturgical conventions for the genre.

By the end of his piece, Scott seems to have come to a similar conclusion: “So the salient question might not be, “What is a documentary?” — an abstract, theoretical approach to a form that is grounded in the concrete facts of life. Instead it might make sense to ask what (or whom) a given documentary is for? Is it a goad to awareness, an incitement to action, a spur to further thought? A window? A mirror? The more you think about it, the less obvious the truth appears to be.”

I thought this article was a terrific precursor to our turn to documentary film which will begin October 26!

Interview and Writing (Wake County)

I only got to interview one person so far, but I will meet with someone else over fall break. I interviewed Shalini Chudasama, a freshman here. Before Wake County, she attended Leesville Middle School in Vance County. She attended East Millbrook Magnet Middle, a magnet school, for 8th grade and then shifted to Wakefield H.S., which was not a magnet school. She then attended The North Carolina School of Science and Math (NCSSM). She had a diverse experience at NCSSM, but that was to be expected considering it required students to apply and one of its goals is to give students a diverse educational experience. She described Leesville as a typical small southern town, with a mostly white population in her school. East Millbrook was a sharp contrast – there was a lot of diversity since it was a magnet school. She was surprised at the diversity she found in Wakefield because of the mostly Caucasian make-up of the area she lived in.

The busing situation never really affected her directly. She said she knew some people who were bused from different neighborhoods, but never talked to them about it. Though she is not actively involved in an effort to keep busing, she thinks it’s a bad idea to stop busing. Her sister works as a teacher in Charlotte and says that it the segregation between children with good resources and those without is highly noticeable – “She’s doing Teach for America so of course she’s at one of the worse off ones. Students know they’re stupid because they go to this high school and they’re from this area.” She said Wake County is one of the best places to live because of its good school system, and with a lot of research opportunities close-by. She recognizes that there are benefits to neighborhood schools – such as spending more time for activities and less travel time. However, looking at the examples in which stopping busing have failed, she feels busing is better than neighborhood schools. One thing she said though was that she no longer follows the situation much because it doesn’t affect her anymore.

I think it would work really well to make this a monologue, but there are things she says that I can see working other parts in the play. I don’t want to use her dialogue from the interview directly, but there are some words and sentences that I may keep the same. It would be neat to have a section in the play where there are different characters on stage all voicing opinions on the issue, one at a time. Shalini may not have strong enough opinions for that, but some other people interviewed would fit well in that section. I’m not sure about how to make this a plot based play anymore because of all the diverse opinions and backgrounds people presented – but I still strongly support having scenes and monologues to present the situation.

Interviews with the Homeless

Over the past two weeks, I’ve obtained two distinctly different interviews from the homeless community on Franklin Street. Unfortunately, some of the information gathered is not very lucid, but this does give us insight into the minds of a couple of homeless people. They told me parts of their past, some of the experiences of living of Franklin Street, and even some of the history of Franklin.

The first interview I performed was of the most memorable moments of my time in college. His name was Robert, and he had only two years to live before the cancer killed him. He was a very bitter man, and had obviously developed some mental problems since his time on the street. He had left his wife because she was cheating on him and lost his job as a construction worker. While he was talking he would repeatedly interject, “I am a dead man”. When we had finished talking for the most part, several other homeless people passed us and greeted Robert enthusiastically. Apparently they had heard his story, and would often give him any extra money they received.

My second interview was with James, another homeless man who was later joined by his friend, James. James is an old hat on Franklin Street, born and raised in Chapel Hill. He told me he remembered when Franklin was just a dirt road, and recounted a short history of some of the shops. He also let on about encountering violence and racism from students, especially when there is drinking involved. His friend James then came over, and started talking to me as well. He was not a member of the homeless community, but a real estate agent. He had also spent more then ten years in the army, and told me about all of the crazy food he had consumed over the course of his stay.

While not all of the information is usable, I would like to include at least a bit both of the interviews. Robert’s interview would go nicely with some of the student’s views on homelessness, especially the interview where a student expressed distrust and the moral implications of giving money to homeless people. While the real estate James’s story wouldn’t have much to do with Franklin, the original James’s interview would perfectly connect the homeless community to the history of Franklin Street.

WK- Interviews

I conducted my first interview with Amy Kreis, a graduate of Leesville Road High School in Raleigh. Her entire education took place in the Wake County school system, beginning in Kindergarten. Amy had very positive things to say about her experience and emphasized that diversity was why she was well prepared for college and the real world. She is concerned that after the switch to neighborhood school students will not have the same experience, saying “students need to mingle with people from different backgrounds to learn from them and prepare students for the real world.” Amy also said, “Can I say segregated schools? Because my school would be all white. Like literally, all white.” What Amy is saying is important to the play because it shows how much the students value diversity.
The second interview was with Patty Williams, an active member in Great Schools for Wake County. She covered everything from pinpointing the problem to showing how simple the issue is and her beliefs about education. Patty had a great analogy for the issue saying that it’s like a car’s engine has broken and instead of fixing it, the mechanic changes the tires, expecting that to fix the car. The problem originally was that nodes kept being reassigned repeatedly and the parents were up in arms. Instead of fixing this one problem, the board decided to change the entire school system, which according to Patty was entirely unnecessary. Patty also spoke of times when she would question specific people about issues and what their responses would be. A particularly potent one, which would be great acted out on stage, was when she asked a board member why he ignores all research in a survey they conducted and he replied that they knew it was not right because they were not asking the right questions.
I would like to write a monologue with Amy speaking where she is increasingly getting annoyed, as she was in the interview, beginning with her talking about her positive experience in the schools and ending with her complaining about the board members. As mentioned above, I think it would be great to have someone play Patty, another person Chris Malone, and have their interaction acted out. Also, she had a lot of statistics which I would like to figure in and lots of great one-liners that could be great added into different parts of the play.
Keely mentioned that she thinks her monologue about Rev Petty should come after a student and Amy’s would be great before it. Also, I think Patty’s different interjections would be great placed around different monologues throughout the play.

FRK: CD Alley, Clothing Wearhouse, and Time After Time

I was able to conduct three different interviews with several business owners and workers on Franklin Street.  I interviewed Autumn, from the vintage store on West Franklin, Time After Time, as well as Ryan from CD Alley and Ryan from Clothing Wearhouse. Each interviewee gave an interesting glimpse into life within the Chapel Hill community separate from that of the university. The most interesting stories from each business owner and worker were those concerning interactions with the homeless and interactions with other shop owners. Ryan from CD Alley told me a story of a homeless woman named Mary who used to come in and use the CD listening station in the store. She would sing along so loudly that Ryan occasionally had trouble getting work done. All of the people who worked in the store grew to love her and she still called to check on things after she moved away from Chapel Hill. He and Ryan from Clothing Warehouse had a lot to say about the rich music scene in Chapel Hill. None of the interviewees felt very strong about the UNC students. They appreciate the business but believe the business could exist without the students. Time After Time has been in Chapel Hill since 1983 and Ryan from CD Alley said he gets a significant amount of business from out of town record collectors. As Autumn said, “I love the students… well the ones who aren’t stupid. The stupid ones can go fuck themselves.” She was upset by drunken frat boys who had busted the shop window open two nights in one week.

I think these interviews would be perfect to add to the comical aspect of our play. Ryan from CD Alley even mentioned that his job would make a great sitcom. He then proceeded to tell me that if it were in fact a sitcom, the owner of Triluessa’s would be the villain. I am definitely going to try to get an interview with him. Perhaps we could use the interviews to make our play into a snapshot of a day on Franklin Street. Each person I interview had a very distinct personality and would make a great character. Ryan from Clothing Wearhouse looked and acted as if he had been pulled out of the 1960’s and placed into present day. Ryan from CD alley was a soft spoken ex UNC student who just never left town. Autumn was sarcastic, blunt, and a general badass. She also bartends at The Cave on Franklin.

I would love for us to have a play in which characters interact. We could use the interviews to generate dialogue between members of our quirky cast of characters. We could have action occur in one of the stores and have each character react and interact because of it. Just as an idea, maybe we could use Mary’s departure as an event to tie everything together since she was connected to both the homeless community and the store owners.

George Ramsay, Tim Tyson, Sam Tyson Interviews (Wake County Schools)

I have so far interviewed three people. George Ramsay is a Freshman at Carolina that was influential in mobilizing the student backlash towards the School Board. Tim Tyson is a local historian at Duke University. He is a board member of the state NAACP chapter and referred to himself as The Movement’s official historian. Sam Tyson, Tim’s son, organized a soul band that plays at many Movement rallies and events.

The main takeaway from the interview with George was that, from his perspective, the adults involved in all of this are acting like children. He had some compelling stories about name-calling, petty threatening, and general school-yard type behavior that was taking place between our elected officials. George hesitated to say anything too controversial, and stressed the need for compromise in solving the issue.

Tim Tyson, while ostensibly on the same side as George, did not pull any punches. He connected the current neighborhood schools movement to segregationism of the past with a long train of historical events, people, and speeches. In his mind, the narrative that we tell ourselves (“The civil rights movement won”) is false and the backlash was actually worse than the gains. He saw the neighborhood schools movement as the latest episode of that backlash. Tyson spoke passionately about the importance of this moment of history and Wake County in the grand scheme, and while he was clearly much too intelligent to believe in “the good guys versus the bad guys,” this conflict seemed almost implicit in what he said. He even went as far as to suggest that, if necessary, fighting would be resorted to in order to prevent what he saw as the evil of racism.

Sam Tyson, on the other hand, was content to talk about his music. To Sam, the Movement is almost a place to get gigs, in which he can do more than just make music. Sam had candid insights about his father and Mary Williams, insights that will prove to be very useful in the construction of our play. One thing that particularly interested me was a story Sam told about the education his band got by sitting and listening to the speeches after they played.

The interviews I got were so interesting that I feel an Anna-Deveare-Smithesque series of monologues taken directly from the transcripts would be much more compelling than any kind of tinkering I could do. The stories told are dramatic, the opinions passionate, and the voices are sincere. One place where I would like to deviate from the monologuic structure is in a conversation I witnessed between Tim Tyson and George Ramsay, in which they speculated about the origins of the crisis.

Realistically, I do not think that we will be able to give the story a plot structure. Considering the interview reports of my classmates, and the nature of my interviews, I think that a snapshot approach to the play will allow us to most effectively use the material we have.

FRK- The Anonymous Lady and Executive Chef

I was leaving Time Out (the restaurant) after an unsuccessful attempt at arranging an interview with one of the employees (she didn’t really speak English and would only say “You come back tomorrow”) when I stumbled upon my first interviewee.

She was sitting on a wall outside. I saw her watching me write myself a note, and feeling opportunistic, I pounced. I offhandedly said to her, “I just tried to interview a lady who works in there, and she wouldn’t speak with me.” And then, to clarify, I told her about our project. We exchanged a few insignificant comments, then, as if it had just occurred to me, I asked her, “Would you mind speaking to me?” And she said, “I am speaking to you now, aren’t I?” And she slid over on the wall to make room for me. Because our interview came about in such an informal way, I first restated my purpose, asked if she would mind her words being crafted into a monologue and included in a play. She said she did not, although she did wish to remain anonymous. Since she was a stranger, I began by attempting to build rapport. Then, I began with questions about Franklin Street. Did she work there? No. Did she live nearby? She did not. Uncertain of how to proceed, I asked what she thought of the street, in general. A broad question if ever there was one. She talked about how the food on Franklin is expensive. She believed that there should be more fast food on Franklin, because everything else “too expensive.”  I did have to agree that Franklin can be pricey. She went on to tell me about Apple Chill, the festival that used to be held on Franklin. I’d heard about it, but I thought it was interesting to hear its story retold from the average person’s memory. She said that gangs came to Apple Chill and several people were shot and killed, and that’s why it isn’t held anymore.

My second interview was equally as impromptu. I went into Kildaire’s Irish Pub, hoping to set up an interview for later, but the executive chef wasn’t busy, so we sat down and talked right away. Turns out, he’s running the newest bar on Franklin. He told me a bit about being a business person on the street and I thought it was interesting that the Kildaire’s franchise specifically chose Franklin Street as the location of their only bar outside of Pennsylvania. He talked about the students and the regulars and the other local bars, and also about the history of Kildaire’s (which is interesting, but I imagine we’ll focus less on that part of the interview when we write the show).

I’m envisioning this play as concept-centric. From what everyone reported in class, there are a several topics that recur (homelessness, Franklin St celebrations, the community of business owners, etc.) and each interview dealt with at least one or two.I could see how one monologue of my lady’s could be interspersed with other restaurant-related monologues, and how her story of Apple Chill could go with a news story, or a police officer’s account, or maybe just other people’s stories about other Franklin Street festivities, such as Halloween. The new Kildaire’s chef could be juxtaposed with people who have worked on Franklin for decades, or with people from the other bars. Perhaps, if we find similar threads in different peoples’ monologues, we could interweave them, a la Laramie Project. I could see different character’s monologues overlapping and meshing. We don’t have a single event or story-line to follow, so to me, this conceptual arrangement seems to make the most sense.