Category Archives: UNC Blog

A blog space for UNC DRM 85H students.

Franklin Street: An Experience reflections

Our purpose in creating Franklin Street: An Experience was to not only give people a look at one of the most distinctive aspects of the UNC Chapel Hill campus, but to also give an inside view of some of inner workings of the famous street. We wanted to  go beyond  the one-sided perspective that students get from only walking down the street and show the shop owners and waiters who work there. A major theme that arose later in the writing process was the issue of homelessness on Franklin Street, and our play began to illustrate our societies practice of brushing off members of the homeless community. As several of my group members mentioned, there is an air of ignorance and indifference that surrounds the homeless community, an air that with this play we hope to dispel.

Our main challenge with this play was definitely the time restraints. While an unavoidable problem, due to the time restraints I feel like we weren’t able to fully develop our script and our play. That being said, we also had a difficult time finding the message behind our play. With so many topics available to discuss about Franklin Street, it was difficult to narrow down a message or theme to drive our play. Eventually several themes did emerge, but it was a difficult task to find them.

Fortunately, our play did not require many props or stage equipment. Everything in and of itself is fairly self-explanatory. Because of this, it would be exceptionally simple to perform the play outside. Performing Franklin Street: An Experience on Franklin Street itself could add so much to the production, making it infinitely more real and connectable. It would also eliminate our problems with stage business, allowing actors to literally walk right off of Franklin Street into the play, strongly enforcing the actor’s character.

FRK: Reflection

The purpose of creating this play was to explore a place that most students are very familiar with, on the surface. We see Franklin Street, eat many of our meals there, travel down it on the p2p, and walk across it on our way to various destinations. Most people, though, know Franklin Street superficially. All of the writers of this play were basically this way at the beginning of this project. Not many people take the time to ask employees at a store about themselves and their experiences and their opinions of Franklin Street. Very few students have said more than 5 words to a homeless person—probably “I don’t have any cash”. But in this play, you get to hear entire conversations we’ve had with all kinds of shop owners, employees, students, EMTs, police officers, and the homeless population. It’s a group of people who’s stories you may not have heard, but they are stories that are interesting, and definitely worth hearing, and they’re interesting people to meet in our play.

The biggest challenge we faced was writing the script. We had a bunch of really interesting interviews, and they all had different tones. Some were lighthearted and funny, some informative, some strongly opinionated, some sad, and even some angry. It was very difficult to figure out how to place these monologues that all had different feelings, and we struggled with creating a flow in our play. Clare came up with some fantastic ideas in the script, with the overlapping of lines, and really helped add flow to the play. We just had trouble figuring out some kind of a climax point to build drama, together. We wanted to feel the connectedness, like everything is connected on Franklin.

It was a very neat opportunity, to actually get to delve into Franklin and talk to the people there. Its a street that is full of interesting characters, and I really enjoyed talking to them, and hearing about people that my group members talked to also. The entire process was really fun, despite the challenges. I’ve never written a play before, and documentary theater is something I had no experience with, but I really enjoyed being a part of this project. The interviews were fun, and the script writing was stressful, but I think we came out with something pretty special, and I’m glad I got to be a part of it.

I agree with most of my group members in that I don’t think people need too much additional knowledge when they see the play. The majority of our audience will be familiar with Franklin Street, and will have their own memories and experiences of it, and can add what they hear and see in the play to their own existing perception of Franklin Street. Pictures would be a cool thing to add in the background, especially ones just of peoples faces on Franklin, or storefronts, or panhandlers, but I’m not sure we have the time or resources flesh all this out and to project these in our play.

WC Reflection

Using theatre as a medium, we are reaching out to the community. We are showing the people involved what the issue looks like from different perspectives and informing others about a broader social concern. Perhaps some who watch this play will be inspired to become more involved. I agree with some of the people who posted previously that our play leans toward the pro-bussing side, but I think it does a decent job of presenting many sides. One of the major upsets, though, is not having at least one bussed student represented in the play – and that would have been easier if, as Madison pointed out, we had cars easily accessible.

It was also difficult to reach the Board members. But many of us tried to contact them and their lack of response shows that they are not as open as they claim to be about informing the community. But by doing research via the internet, I was able to create monologues for Tedesco and hope to portray him well by basing it on the characteristics he has shown in videos found online. Reflecting on the resources and time we had, I feel we have done a good job of gathering various perspectives and assembling the play.

I believe this play could be really powerful were we able to mount a full production. Most important would definitely to get more poor and bussed children/families’ perspectives. The script could be better developed with more of that information and time. Using videos, images, and sound would convey a stronger message to the audience. I agree that civil rights clips – especially during the protest scene – are a powerful tool. Lighting would make this play really strong as well. In the beginning scene, having lights on individuals as they speak would help convey how many different perspectives there are. And even throughout the play I see where having lights on specific characters, or some more than others and using other effects would help set the mood for various scenes.

We discussed the idea of having people come in through the audience at some parts and I think that would be a neat technique to use in a full production. Also, having more props and set changes for scenes and characters would help give the audience an understanding of the different types of people involved and how wide-reaching the issue is.

Considering our restraints though, I think it’s amazing that we’ve put a play together in this little time, blocked most of it in one class period and tried to run through it without scripts already. The journey has been great and I trust that it will end excellently.

FRK Writing Experience

The purpose of the creation of the Franklin Street play was to provide an interesting, and initially humorous look at life on Franklin Street, which acts at the connection between UNC and the Chapel Hill Community. The group expected to learn the history and some interesting facts about Franklin Street, but the play evolved into some sort of attempt at an examination of the social structure of a college town, with the homeless at the bottom.
The play gave us all the opportunity to go out and interact with the community of Chapel Hill. We learned about the unique challenges of business owners, such as the summer slump, and some interesting stories from everyone from a few homeless men to affluent entrepreneurs. One particular challenge was finding a focus and a plot within all of the information we gathered. We met so many interesting people and had so many good interviews that it was difficult to narrow our focus. It was also difficult to balance the humorous and the serious, and I am not sure that we ever quite got past that. I was expecting something quite different when we began the play. I think it is still possible to have a documentary play that is comedic, although I haven’t read one. It was also difficult to get too close to the homeless community and get perspectives from people who work directly with the homeless at shelters, although Eli conducted many good interviews with homeless men.
I believe that some traffic noises and music to enhance the audience’s feeling of being on Franklin would be beneficial to the play, although I don’t know if we will have time to put that

WK reflections

Backlash is a play to not only document a real backlash, but to incite one. Despite having a well balanced viewpoint, I think it is clear that our play supports the bussing policy, or more specifically, a focus on equitable education. I also think our play exists in order to highlight just how complex the issue is; the politics involved, the history, the real relationships that exist in Wake County, and a significant lack of funding. It is important that we make it clear that, for the most part, the people running thing have good intentions. But I think we also have a responsibility to point out when someone has been misguided in their decisions.

Getting the interviews with younger low income students and very involved individuals was incredibly difficult. I became easily frustrated with what I took to be disinterest in our play. I understand, of course, that elected officials have little time to deal with the an undergraduate play, but it was shocking to me that for a School Board so interested in providing excellent education, they were not interested in helping educate people about this particular topic.

As for mounting a full production, I think Akilah’s idea of direct parallels to real situations in 1960s, perhaps through the use of recordings and pictures as well as interviews with people from that time would be helpful in demonstrating the gravity of the situation. Additionally, with the resources (a car), I’d like to find a way to interview younger students in the Wake County Schools to understand their impressions, as well as the parents of low-income students. In some ways, I feel as though we’re speaking for people we’ve never spoken to our selves, which is a little disconcerting. I think it would help with some on the monotony of the student sections if we had real testimonies from low income, bussed students rather than apathetic, “un-affected” students.

I’ve read several mentions of the use of sounds, and I think lighting could also be very beneficial. It would allow for separation on the stage to create different locations, and could be used as Ian Finley’s metonymic image, perhaps with some students sitting in the dark and some in the light, and the light eventually would turn on. That’s a little vague, but with some teamwork could create some nice images.

A Reflection on the process of creating Backlash

During this semester in Drama 85, I have learned a substantial amount of information regarding the effort and work required for creating a play. I must admit that the process was far more difficult than I believed it would be. With a focus on portraying the Wake County School System controversy, the project was very insightful and took plenty of time.

 I, along with my peers, found it far harder than expected to find interviewees. Being in Chapel Hill without my own transportation served as the main reasoning for this issue. However, because of this project I was able to learn more about the issue that I had no knowledge of prior to the class. Because I am not from North Carolina, the issue had not ever come up in conversation. I found it to be quite an interesting topic to research, which pushed me to want to learn more. After so many of my peers bringing new information, the process seemed to be flowing smoothly.

After finding all of the research, the hardest part about actually writing the play was organization and staging. Although many attributes of the play looked great on paper, our group found there were plenty of changes needed in order for the play to run smoothly. I decided to take on the part of organizing another draft for my group and I found that the work that goes into the process is far more complex and time consuming than I ever believed it could be.  

In conjunction with our production, I hope that there will be resources available to others. Some type of forum would be great to follow up with this production. Although we were able to reach out to a lot of students on campus, there are many others who still have things left unsaid. With this being the case, it would be great for students to be able to voice their opinions openly within the campus and for there to be an open opportunity for others from the community to share their own input.

Franklin St. Play Reflection

The purpose of creating the Franklin St. play was to capture the essence of what Franklin St is like. Franklin St. has been a part of Chapel Hill for many years and my group thought it would be nice to show people how Franklin St. has incorporated into the lives of students on campus, the people who live in Chapel Hill, and what life on Franklin is like for the business owners there.

In developing this play especially as a first year student, it gives me an opportunity to get to know the campus surroundings better with Franklin St, since Franklin St. is the place to go when one has nothing to do. People eat, shop, and party on Franklin all the time. It was a unique opportunity to interview people on Franklin St as it is a great way to immerse oneself into the Chapel Hill community. What interested me the most while interviewing was the essence of the tight-knit community that Franklin St. is.  

The challenges of this play were basically the whole development of it. It was challenging trying to get an interesting story from the person being interviewed. It took me almost an hour to get the monologue that I am using for the pharmacist. With so many monologues and not a defining theme, it was also hard putting the play together. I am happy with the result of this play, taking into account the time constraint that we had in interviewing and putting it together. The overlapping of lines to change characters was really clever and from having scattered monologues that are kind of just bits and pieces of what Franklin St is like to having these same monologues put together, tied by the underlining story of how a person on Franklin can die and people can move on with their lives rather quickly, I feel very accomplished. This experience made it a great freshman seminar class where I not only got to know my classmates better but also a whole community. What makes the Franklin St play special is that it really gave my group a chance to get to know Chapel Hill in a much deeper level that other first year students may not have known.

I don’t believe much knowledge have to be shared to the audience for them to understand this play. Because it is based off of a place that everyone is so familiar with, it is highly relatable to each person. Some might have been there to witness the scenes presented in the play because everyone is part of the Chapel Hill community and everyone goes on Franklin St. For others, this play might spark inspiration to go about Franklin St searching for more interesting stories.

UNC Wake County Blog Post #4

When Alex first proposed that we do a play about wake county schools, I was on board. It was an exciting and controversial topic that was going on the county right next to us. This was a pretty heated issue. This topic had something the other proposed topics lacked: controversy. People involved in this issue really cared, and people on all sides were willing to get arrested to stand up for what they believed in. I thought if we were going to do a play on some local event, we almost had some kind of responsibility to make one about the Wake County bussing controversy, so we could understand this situation better.

I think the biggest challenges I faced were simply finding good interviews. I’ve never been to Wake County, so I don’t know anyone from there. I began asking everyone I knew so far at UNC if they were from Wake County, and I eventually I came across two people who were familiar with the issue. Another problem I faced was informing myself of this situation. Being from New Jersey I was kind of out of the loop. From Day 1 people were throwing around the names of school board members and well-known student activists that I had of course never heard of before. So from the very beginning of working on this play I was tasked with dealing with other people who were much better informed than I was. I think the biggest opportunity that this play provided was simply learning more about this issue and getting the chance to participate in this movement.

If we could somehow inform the audience of several important events that have occurred, I think that would be helpful. Like maybe we should include a timeline in a play program. Brennan thinks we should list the characters of the play in the program, and I agree with this.

-EJ Harrison

WK-Reflection on Entire Process

Creating this play has served and will serve many purposes. It has not only expanded our knowledge regarding the bussing issue in Wake County, but also given us the skills to research and construct a documentary play in the future. As first-year students, we have become involved in our surrounding community and are more in tune with local issues that impact many people around us. We have also gained many valuable skills that are needed to be successful college students, which includes learning the basic format of an interview. We  now have experience contacting and speaking with people that we do not know in a formal setting, transcribing the resulting interviews, and turning them into monologues.

A major challenge we faced was getting “prominent” figures to allow us to interview them, particularly those on the “pro neighborhood” schools side of the controversy. I believe that we could have created a more well rounded play if we had these voices to incorporate along with our current monologues. Also, our limited budget and time-frame have held us back from perfecting this play. I believe, however, that we have done very well given our resources. Like I said before though, time has been a particular challenge because we have been very rushed in putting together the play, leaving us with limited rehearsal time. These challenges aside, the creation of the play in and of itself has opened many new doors and given us students the opportunity to create a meaningful piece of artwork all on our own.

Given more time and money, graphics would be the first thing to add. Picture and text slides would help the audience connect to the issue and clear up certain aspects of the play. For example, pictures of the real school board location and arrests would help reinforce the magnitude of this issue. Also, the introduction of characters and their involvement in the controversy would clear up confusion that audience members may experience with the current lay-out of the play.

WK Play-Reflection

Because this class focuses on Documentary Theatre, the purpose of the Wake County play, Backlash, should be to represent the issue from both sides, using pre-existing documentary material such as newspaper articles and reports, but personal interviews as well. Since there are some in the class that have not had personal experience with this issue, it was imperative that the play be based mainly off of interviews from people directly involved in the issue. This play should present both sides opinions, even if they are biased, so that the audience has a chance to choose for themselves what side they want to be on.

One unique challenge that I had working on this performance was the ability to find important people to interview. I sent countless emails with no response and even set up a meeting with a woman only to have her cancel after I sat and waited for thirty minutes. Although I had some difficulty, I eventually had the opportunity to talk to a very influential member of the Wake County community. My interviewee was just a regular parent who decided to stand up and do something about her child’s education, and she ended up co-founding an organization and eventually taking her case to the Supreme Court! She showed me that if you believe that something is wrong and take a stand, you can make change happen, and if you don’t try you’ll never know what you could have accomplished. It also provided me with the opportunity to learn about a very important issue, not only for the students in Wake County, but for the rest of those that could be impacted by this decision in the future.

Because our time and resources are limited, we are not able to include many multimedia effects such as pictures, music, videos of news reports or rallies, etc. I like Anwuli’s idea about listing major events so the audience can put them in order and “connect the dots.” It also might be helpful if we give each person watching the play a program that lists all the characters of the play, with a short description of them and their role in the issue. Also on the program we could put a brief overall summary of the issue for those who aren’t familiar with the Wake County controversy. This would help to reduce confusion and add to the overall effectiveness of the play. This has been a new and exciting experience for me, and once this is over I can proudly say that I helped write and perform in a play for the first time!