Morgan Stevenson (Senior) Theater
Disciplines of interest: Theater and Urban Studies
I am currently writing my senior thesis which is a critical investigation of the research methods necessary for creating my original Documentary Theater play about the Baltimore Uprising that occurred last spring. In my preliminary research I have chosen to reread two texts I was assigned in previous courses at Lang.
The first critical work I have revisited is Ping Chong’s Undesirable Elements series. I studied this play series during my second year at Lang in my Theater of Social Action: Documentary Theater course and it exemplified ways in which a theater artist can use their artistic expression in order to amplify the voices of marginalized peoples in society. Chong narrowly focuses on the lives of six young immigrant citizens and how that part of their identity impacted their coming of age. He produced this play through a research method I have chosen for my own research, using verbatim interviews from subjects.
This connects to my second critical work, Verbatim: Contemporary Documentary Theater, in which the main thesis is that verbatim theater is used to reach the truth. These two works correspond with my views as a theater artist, many of these views developed in my course work at Lang. Ultimately I am referring to these sources in order to produce an accurate portrayal of the people of Baltimore who were defamed by mainstream media.
Tell us what you’re reading – Click here to submit your reflection.
