On Thursday, October 24, VPL’s Associate Director Keith R. Huff began a residency in partnership with The Chapin School, an all-girls independent day school located in New York City’s Upper East Side neighborhood in Manhattan. In collaboration with Chapin history teachers Ellen Baylor and Emily Feder and Chapin drama teachers and VPL affiliated artists Sarah Bellantoni and Robert Thaxton-Stevenson, VPL has developed a dynamic plan to engage with the learning goals of two Senior History Seminar classes.
Over the course of the residency, students and facilitators will dynamically investigate archival materials from VPL such as The Serena Williams Project, in addition to artifacts circulating the current mainstream media such as a recent statement from Ellen Degeneres.
Students will engage in learning diverse steps of the VPL process from transcription and coding of a media artifact, to the unique acting style required of an ethnoactor creating a verbatim performance. Throughout this process, activities will focus around themes of embodied close reading and critical thinking in an attempt to “separate the message from the messenger.” Through this active investigation, students develop skills useful for their lives as emerging adults in the broader world and as artists working in the style of verbatim performance.
Post by Lilly Stannard