The People’s Voice is an experimental course that partners teens from a juvenile detention facility with UC students. Together you re-write the Odyssey of Homer using your own life stories. You’re encouraged to develop your own unique voice supported by a network of university and community contributors including a mask maker, poet, storyteller, martial artist and hip-hop choreographer.  This year, we’re also hoping to bring up well-known rappers from LA to conduct workshops. The course culminates in a performance at a local theater.  The class seeks to demonstrate how artistic cooperation transcends class, racial and social barriers and how art with rehabilitation serves as an alternative to incarceration and penalty. The project is social change in action: it provides a democratic blueprint - a level playing field between teens in the juvenile justice system and UC students. It promotes leadership roles for youth through a creative process that serves as a teaching tool for life.  It empowers and honors both groups by encouraging self-determination and choice making abilities with positive outcomes. A documentary, The Odyssey Project, is currently in pre-production.  It examines the efficacy of this creative collaboration as a model for social justice and life affirming transformation. The documentary will also focus on the issue of mass incarceration and how it affects young men of color. We will film the documentary this summer centering on the class.

 

Course: The People’s Voice Theater 143

Summer Session A: June 23 – August 3rd.

Credit: 4 units

Instructor: Michael Morgan

Meeting Times: Monday - Thursday 2PM - 5:50PM

Meeting Place: Studio Theater

Requirement: Interview with the instructor

No prior acting experience is required for this course.

E-mail: mmorgan@theaterdance.ucsb.edu