art/vision/voice - Maryland Institute College of Art

case study: columbia college chicago 35
students met separately. The college students worked with Brian and Ron
to articulate their individual artistic philosophies and develop a curriculum
to bring to Association House. Simultaneously, the high-school students
worked with Luis to learn basic acting and writing exercises based on
Free Street’s training approach and to become more comfortable with
the idea of theatrical production and performance, as many of them
had no prior experience with this.
After three weeks, the college students traveled across town to put
their new skills to the test in the community setting of Association House.
Each Tuesday afternoon, the student teachers led the teens through warmup
exercises and activities they had discussed and developed with their
instructors. On Fridays, Luis led the teens in ongoing acting and writing
exercises, flowing out of the exercises provided by the college students,
and Brian and Ron provided critical feedback to the college students on
curriculum development and teaching skills.
As the semester progressed, the combined group revisited themes,
movements, and written dialogue that emerged from the exercises,
revising and reworking them to form the script for a play that eventually
emerged from this organic process: Merging Into You, a visceral, abstracted,
collage-like narrative based in the experiences of the youth participants
which invited the audience to sense this experience rather than having
it directly dictated to them.
Merging Into You was performed at semester’s end by the Association
House students for family, friends, and community members. The production
was well received, and the students were proud of their work. But when
interviewed for this case narrative, all of the participants expressed more
interest in the process than the product, they cared more about the journey
than the destination. The narrative that follows describes that journey.