What a Riot!

Its really important to be educating kids about the history of racism in the country – however I’m not sure if I understood the route that they went in the article. Like the article said, some people were worried about the manner in which Schutzman was placing her beliefs in the script. Playing every character and experiencing every angle of the story is a good way to learn and understand more about the situation and humanity itself, and then in turn apply that to their own lives. I agree that “young people can handle difficult material and non-conventional staging”. They didn’t need to be babied, but they do need to understand the process and the importance of what they are doing. I may be misunderstanding, but Schutzman states that the kids participating in the program never really grasped the script or the process. If the main goal for the program is to reach the kids, shouldn’t the ultimate goal be their understanding and not their ability to say the words without fully understanding them? Schutzman quoted Dodge who said “We are indeed practicing propaganda if we don’t inform [the actor] what she is saying, who said it first, why she’s saying it. That kind of educational responsibility is indigenous to this program”. So if the goal is not to release propaganda, and instead to make sure that the participants fully understood what was going on, then that should have been what they were aiming for in the outcome. I appreciate Schutzman’s choice to not “dumb-down” the script but then the main goal should have been to make sure once the complicated material was introduced, the kids knew what they were doing and why they were doing it.

Jenny Curtis