Performing Privilege

 

Using selections from the essays created in the first year writing class, acting and directing students were asked to perform them on camera. Students were challenged to perform pieces that contrasted their own privilege, so they could examine their own privilege in comparison to others.

 

Additionally, one collaborative performance is based on a statement provided by Tyler Clementi's mom. Tyler is the college student that was cyber-bullied by his roommate and peers at Rutgers University. He committed suicide in 2010 by jumping off the George Washington Bridge as a response to the ridicule he received. 

 

See Writing Privilege for the
full versions of the essays.

 

Course Information: 

Course: Acting & Directing for the Camera

Semester: Spring 2015

Professor: Aaron Walker, Assistant Professor

Department: Communication, Film

School: University of Tampa

 

Learning Objectives: 

Students will be tasked with creating and (appropriately, ie, non-ironically) interpreting the experience and reflection of other individuals with whom they do not share a personal background, in order to deepen their empathetic responses, challenge their central assumptions, and reflect upon their own various privileges in life. 

 

This exercise’s various objectives include: deepening textual analysis for performance; personal investigation and research required toward crafting a short character-based performance (as the students encounter the concerns of the individuals in the text they must re-evaluate their specific concerns in a manner similar to the original author, they must identify positions of shared experience, and they must attune themselves to the specific anxieties, fears, and concerns of people with whom they may in no way agree); developing communication skills as a director in collaborating with another student’s performance in addition to their own. Students will also evaluate the performance after its capture to video.

 

Assignment: 

Students are tasked with the filmed performance of a pre-existing text. They must interpret a pre-existing text (in this case, the texts provided by “Writing Privilege,” with many interesting elements. Students may choose any text, meaning they may interpret material authored by individuals of completely different backgrounds, economic strata, gender, race, or sexuality as themselves) and research, develop, and craft a single performance, not more than 3 minutes in length, directly from the text provided.

 

Students will work in teams of two; each Performing one character while the other adopts the role of Director to guide, assist, and capture their partner’s performance on film. After the workshop period, the class will critique the performance, and the work will contribute to an overall written reflection of the student’ work over the semester, concentrating on the relationship of their expectations and intentions compared to the legibility of those concerns in the final performances.  

 

Assessments: 

The 2 - 3 minute video will be workshopped and evaluated solely on performance (no technical, ie, camera/sound grading will occur. The purpose of this exercise is to concentrate as narrowly on textual interpretations and performance and not on technical matters of videography.) In-class workshop includes comments and feedback from the remaining classmates and a close examination of the nuances of the performance.

 

Comments: 

This exercise was overall a grand success, but it is crucial that the exercise remain simple. The central problem we encountered with this exercise has to do with the re-writing of the text for the performance itself. I left this task entirely to the students due to time constraints, but this simply left most of our time then occupied with concerns of textual revision and discussion of certain elements of the texts, and time that was squandered from perhaps more important arenas, such as rehearsal and memorization (Memorization itself is not a tremendously negative concern: students learn important elements of process by NOT succeeding at the full memorization of the text, including an increased awareness of their stress levels and those effects on the performance).

 

The workshop review is a crucial element in terms of process, which is essential. I asked students what their central values were for the exercise in crafting their performance: ie, what elements of the text proved most meaningful to them in pursuit of the performance. Most students reflected upon their personal experiences in relationship to the concerns of the initial text, and realized that in order to create these “characters” they must indulge in both their own versions of what the text discussed as well as deepen their empathy, not judgment, for the authors.

 

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