Local students use ‘Rachel’ as inspiration for art education project

Posted 2/27/20

By Kate Dolan For the duration of Quintessence Theatre Group’s run of “Rachel” at Mt. Airy’s Sedgwick Theater, an exhibit hangs on a back wall in the historic lobby displaying the work of …

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Local students use ‘Rachel’ as inspiration for art education project

Posted

By Kate Dolan

For the duration of Quintessence Theatre Group’s run of “Rachel” at Mt. Airy’s Sedgwick Theater, an exhibit hangs on a back wall in the historic lobby displaying the work of 9th-grade students from Parkway Northwest High School for Peace and Justice. 


Some of the artwork by Parkway students on display at the Sedgwick Theater. (Photo by Kate Dolan)

“The exhibit features student work as 'propaganda' to end racism,” said Adrienne Derstine, the Partnerships Coordinator and PHENND Fellow through the AmeriCorps VISTA program. “When the play ‘Rachel’ was first published, the NAACP used flyers from the play as propaganda to end racism and discrimination against folks of color, so our students did the same thing with their original work.”

The exhibit’s posters range in content and message, calling out for unity over division and extolling humanity’s beauty while others challenge the audience to look directly at a stark reality. One poster, just a pair of eyes, reads, “See what you want, But don’t believe everything you see.” Others display the statistics of racial inequality, lament gun violence and police brutality and feature graphic depictions of bloodshed and cruelty in tidy comic strip squares. 

“Rachel,” written by Angelina Weld Grimke in 1916, is an intimate portrayal of an African American family living in the north in the early 20th century. The first play written by an African American with an all-black cast to be performed before an integrated audience, the NAACP commissioned Grimke to write “Rachel” as a response to the 1915 film “Birth of a Nation,” a film which propped up the Ku Klux Klan, American racism and white superiority.

“The goal of the exhibit is to bring awareness to all the work that is yet to be done around the topic of race and racism in the United States,” Derstine said. “Even though ‘Rachel’ was published long ago, the work is still relevant and necessary in 2020.”

The project at Parkway links the subjects of .U.S. history, social justice and art and theater. Students read “Rachel” in the classroom and then attended a performance of the show at Sedgewick Theater, exposing them to theater and rounding out the project. 

“It is a connection to material from the Jim Crow era,” said Jordan Zotter, a School Based Teacher Leader at Parkway. “Our students study a time period and then get to see it come alive at the theater. Needless to say, this is vastly different from reading a play in a classroom.”  

The project was made possible by a $5,000 grant from the Picasso Project, awarded to the school by Public Citizens for Children & Youth (PCCY), a non-profit organization in Philadelphia which advocates for youth healthcare, family stability and education. The Picasso Project is a PCCY initiative aimed at bolstering art curriculum in schools and over 18 years, the organization has awarded $809,466 to 105 Philadelphia schools.

“Students and teachers at Picasso Project schools use their projects to advocate for funding for school arts programs at both the local and state level,” said Ellie Seif, a member of the Picasso Project Committee. 

PCCY has awarded the grant to Parkway NW three times, and Seif has served as the liaison between the Picasso Project and Parkway each time. She has seen firsthand how the project benefits the students.

“When children have access to arts in school, there is research that shows they become more creative thinkers and better students,” said Seif. “They learn to work together on projects and understand how the arts integrates with content areas they are studying.”

For each Picasso grant awarded, Parkway has partnered with Quintessence, doing projects based on the theatre group’s productions of  “Waiting for Godot” and “Awake and Sing.”

“The response from students has been tremendous,” said Zotter, who has been the main teacher for Picasso Projects. “Our students also get to have actors from the theater come to Parkway to work with them both before and after the play. It's all about creating experiences that students will carry with them. Students do not simply learn about a time period and then forget it when they move on to the next unit. This has been the major push at Parkway.”

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