ACTIVIST IMAGINATION

NU STORY NU HISTORY

investigations & multimedia projects 

self as witness & actor, director & dramaturge shaping a Nu Story &
Nu History from the hometown soil

designed to engage history directly through body/memory experiences, research, and creative experimentation

voiced history spoken word
documentary art

pilot project/LIVING HISTORY Cleveland, OH

The Hillsboro Story
multi-media storytelling
for classroom & stage

I was invited to Cleveland School of the Arts for a two-week residency (2019) to engage students in performing scenes from The Hillsboro Story and writing their own monologues of witnessing injustice. The pilot integrated Language Arts, History, and Art, using the book to engage Civil Rights history in the current reality.

Students gave voice to the people in the book, created scenes with the music soundtrack by David Ornette Cherry. They brought history and memory alive through many bodies—black, white, trans, brown—speaking languages from the street, heart, eye, mind. They created a version of this history that was fresh, hilarious, poignant, and personal.

They took landscape photographs with cell phones, wrote 2-minute monologues from their lives, performed for each other. They were stunning! I couldn’t thank them enough. “What did you learn?” I asked. One student said, “My state has a big history.”

“As a high school teacher, I have used The Hillsboro Story as a tool to inspire my students to explore their own stories, to see how their stories relate to history, at the same time deepening their understanding of the Civil Right Movement.” —John Porter, social studies teacher, Cleveland School of the Arts

video interview with John, 11 minutes
student monologue – 2 min. video
student monologue — 1:20 video

I want students to know their lives and real experiences have value, that they have gifts to share through their stories and storytelling, that they have a history and standing and a voice and they can use it.

The Young can learn from the Old can learn from the Young can learn from the old.
—mural, Cincinnati