For our XONR8 Theater project, we were put into small groups of three or four people. These groups were given the task of forming a verbatim play based on oral interviews about the criminal justice system and anything related to it. A verbatim play is when all of the lines in the show have been taken from a source of information like interviews, or news articles. This project is not about giving information to the audience, but telling a story that people have not heard before. You can find our final script here.
After we had conducted our interview, we had to do an interview map. What is an interview map? An interview map is a document where we take all the important pieces and we record them on a time table. Say for example, we get this juicy information at the 2 minute mark. We would then record that at the table. We aren't recording everything that happened at that point, but rather it is our own information guide for our interview. We could then go back to that point later when we were transcribing.
After we had completed the interview map as a group, each person in the group had to create their own individual script outline. What I wanted for my script outline was to cover the whole story. Most importantly, I wanted the main characters to be the lawyers, because I felt that the story would be better presented that way. When I finished my script outline, I showed it to my group members and they really liked it. They suggested to use my outline as the ground zero for our script. After that, it was all transcribing. Since this is a verbatim play, we had to use the exact words used in the interview. There were a few exceptions where we had to change the sentence a little because it didn't make sense. Overall, transcribing requires a lot of creativity otherwise it would look like a bunch of copy and paste.
After we had completed the interview map as a group, each person in the group had to create their own individual script outline. What I wanted for my script outline was to cover the whole story. Most importantly, I wanted the main characters to be the lawyers, because I felt that the story would be better presented that way. When I finished my script outline, I showed it to my group members and they really liked it. They suggested to use my outline as the ground zero for our script. After that, it was all transcribing. Since this is a verbatim play, we had to use the exact words used in the interview. There were a few exceptions where we had to change the sentence a little because it didn't make sense. Overall, transcribing requires a lot of creativity otherwise it would look like a bunch of copy and paste.
I would say the moment that summed the entire project for me was presenting our story to the audience. It just felt really breathtaking to share a story that many people do not know about. The story we shared was very gruesome and involved chopped body parts. I just felt really proud to be able to take part in this project.
In my opinion, I would say that I contributed my part to the project. Everyone in my group contributed their part equally and it was a honor to be apart of that group. I would say I contributed most was transcribing the interview. Transcribing took a long time, and we had the whole group working on it. When I finished my part, I wanted to add more stuff to really connect the story and that is what I did. Nothing bad happened. It ended up being useful to the play and I congratulated myself for going out of the way to add more.
What I am most proud of from this project was to be able to work on this project. Every year, the projects at HTHCV get more and more interesting. The fact that we get to do this, signifies a strong trust between our class and my teachers. I know for a fact that there will be more projects in the second semester, but I can't wait to accomplish them.
The lesson I have learned throughout this project is to think outside of the box. Before the project, we had a workshop that was led by an actor at the Old Globe Theater. At the end, he said something that really struck me. He said, "Why would I go to a play if I could just read the topic online in 5 minutes." That quote surprised me because that meant our plays had to be extraordinary to everyone. Because of this. I had to think differently for transcribing. What I decided to do then was to combine our play with quotes from articles to make it better. I felt this was an important lesson to me because this is a crucial skill that separates people from thinking alike.
In my opinion, I would say that I contributed my part to the project. Everyone in my group contributed their part equally and it was a honor to be apart of that group. I would say I contributed most was transcribing the interview. Transcribing took a long time, and we had the whole group working on it. When I finished my part, I wanted to add more stuff to really connect the story and that is what I did. Nothing bad happened. It ended up being useful to the play and I congratulated myself for going out of the way to add more.
What I am most proud of from this project was to be able to work on this project. Every year, the projects at HTHCV get more and more interesting. The fact that we get to do this, signifies a strong trust between our class and my teachers. I know for a fact that there will be more projects in the second semester, but I can't wait to accomplish them.
The lesson I have learned throughout this project is to think outside of the box. Before the project, we had a workshop that was led by an actor at the Old Globe Theater. At the end, he said something that really struck me. He said, "Why would I go to a play if I could just read the topic online in 5 minutes." That quote surprised me because that meant our plays had to be extraordinary to everyone. Because of this. I had to think differently for transcribing. What I decided to do then was to combine our play with quotes from articles to make it better. I felt this was an important lesson to me because this is a crucial skill that separates people from thinking alike.