Week 4
By Megan Schy Gleeson
Last week, the teens brought many elements together: ideas around social justice issues and how to manifest those ideas in physical form (be it a short play, a dance or original music composition), understanding the intricacies for collaboration and incorporating new dance/music/acting technical skills for performance – while concurrently creating and learning how to facilitate workshops that are taken into Boston communities - furthering yet more collaboration across all three disciplines!
For the acting specialty, each group brainstormed topics regarding human rights they felt most strongly about, worked through outlining a story and then creating a short play. I was super impressed by the care each group gave for their play development. Given there are so many topics within human rights, the groups bravely developed their plays through an intersectional lens.
One acting group focused on developing a play advocating for the rights of immigrants, the effects of interpersonal racism, redlining and climate issues. Another group focused on creating a play advocating for disability awareness and allyship. The third group chose to create a satirical play poking fun at corporate greed, economic disparity and climate hardship. The teens, as advocates for human rights, needed to show solutions for problems each play brought to light. So many of the solutions the teens presented were based on what one or two people can do to begin the process of making change in the world.
With great excitement, at the end of the week all workshops took their first round of tours! Hooray! It was clear from the stories I heard from the teens that all their many efforts for collaborative art-making and facilitating workshops were heartfully embraced!