Unexpected Company's Yourstories projects encourage participants to express their ideas and experiences on a particular theme through writing and images. The project can be school or community based at a single or multiple locations, but works best when the students are in the same age range (middle school, high school) and have developed some writing skills. The project can be folded into your school curriculum for creative writing and art - The most interesting projects happen when students from multiple schools, neighborhoods, or backgrounds contribute.
The Yourstoriesproject has five parts:
Planning meetings with the teacher(s) or organization facilitator(s) to set up the project and select the theme.
A residency of one or more days where artists have time to work with the students to warm them up to the project, discuss the theme, and set the creative process in motion.
A student creation period - teachers/facilitators work with and encourage students to write and create artwork on the theme. The project can be folded into your school curriculum for creative writing and art by making submission a class assignment. At the end of the creation period, the student work is collected and submitted to the company.
Unexpected Company selects pieces of the student submissions and shapes it into a performance—story, dialogue, scenic elements, music.
The finished work is produced and performed in one of the following ways:
Unexpected Company produces the show with professional actors and brings the finished work back to your school or community.
Unexpected Company artists come back to facilitate a performance with the students performing the work
For groups with limited budgets or located at too great a distance for artists to complete a long residency, Unexpected Company can provide the finished script and scene design. You and your students create the play, and our artists will come back in the final week before production to coach the performers.
This project is based on a successful model developed at Studio Arena Theatre in Buffalo New York. As Production Stage Manager for Studio Arena’s Young Company, Unexpected Company’s Lisa Norris was part of a project that celebrated the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, collecting writing and artwork from students at six Buffalo high schools. The finished production - We the People - became part of the Young Company’s repertory, touring to schools, theatres and other venues throughout western New York state. In 2003, Norris adapted the project, working with a group of Des Moines area high school students to create After 9-11, using group discussion, writing and improvisation to create a performance piece reflecting on the events of September 11 and the growing conflict in Iraq. The students performed the piece, which also included original music, graffiti, mime, and a hip-hop dance sequence.
For more information on the Yourstories program, send e-mail to education@unexpectedcompany.com or call Lisa Norris at 515-288-9163.
Yourstories Project in Process: You Don't Know Me
In the fall of 2009, Unexpected Company crossed boundaries - both figuratively and literally - and embarked on an exciting new project in conjunction with The Imagine Foundation in Jacksonville, Illinois. Thanks to funding from Arts Midwest and Imagine's other generous community partners, Unexpected Company planned to create a new theatrical work with music entitled “You Don’t Know Me”, with material generated in collaboration with students from five Jacksonville schools: Illinois School for the Visually Impaired (ISVI), Illinois School for the Deaf (ISD), Routt Catholic High School, Westfair Christian Academy and Alternative Resource Center (ARC).
Unexpected Company artists Brian Lynner and Lisa Norris spent a week in Jacksonville in the fall of 2009, conducting theatre workshops designed to challenge students to explore both sensory and emotional perceptions and reflect on them in written and visual form. Students from all five schools were to submit artwork and creative writing for the company to thread them together into a performance piece and bring back to Jacksonville.
Unfortunately, the project had some setbacks. An outbreak of swine flu prevented the artists from working with the students as ISVI duirng the residency week. Not enough student writing was submitted to create a complete performance piece, and the Imagine Foundation fell short of the funding needed to bring the company back to Jacksonville. However, Unexpected Company has not given up on the You Don't Know Me Project. We are currently working on a website to post all of the student writing and artwork submitted from the students in Jacksonville, and will invite high schools students from Iowa (and around the world) to contribute to the content. When we have enough material for a show, we'll produce it - and hopefully we'll be able to take that show back to Jacksonville so that the students who were first contributors the project will have a chance to see their work performed.
For more information on the You Don't Know Me project, send e-mail to education@unexpectedcompany.com or call Lisa Norris at 515-288-9163.
