Collision Project Offers Teens Crash Course In Making A Play
Pearl Cleage talks with Lois Reitzes on “City Lights”
For the past five years, Alliance Theatre’s playwright in residence Pearl Cleage has helped metro Atlanta teens plan and perform a play in three weeks. It’s called the Collision Project.
On the first day of the project, Cleage and director Patrick McColery present a classic text to the students. That text will be used as the foundation for all the exercising in the coming weeks.
In the past, they’ve worked with the Emancipation Proclamation, the Declaration of Independence, John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” and the film “It’s A Wonderful Life.”
This year the choice is “Inherit the Wind.” Written by the Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, the play is a fictional account about the Scopes Monkey Trial.
“We wanted to talk about tolerance,” said Cleage. “We wanted to use that play as a jumping off point to talk to them about the kind of intolerance they see around them and what effect it has not only on them but on the community around them.”
The teens have writing assignment and interactions with other artists each day. This year, they did an African dance class with Mamma Yeye, a modern dance class with gloATL’s Lauri Stallings and a music class with singer-songwriter Doria Roberts. They also spoke with a Vietnam conscientious objector on what it means to make a decision of conscience.
“It’s just so energizing” said Cleage. “It gives me such a feeling hope for this generation for their ability to build community.”
The teens will perform the end-result of the Collision Project this Friday at 7 p.m. and Saturday at 2:30 p.m. at the Alliance Theatre.
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