Natalie D’Amico – The Roof is Burning – Week 2

I absolutely loved watching this mini-documentary of how this piece was made, especially after reading about it last week. It helped to put in perspective how layered and complicated the project was and how it really took it’s time to develop into full form. In terms of community engagement strategies, I think it was absolutely the right thing to involve student organizers from the very beginning. You could see how essential it was in terms of building the questions and conversation topics for what the teens in the cars would be using. It was workshopped right from the brains of the “performers” and not from an outside lensed placing ideas of what youth is. They also were using performers from the area in which they were performing in, instead of bringing outside actors in. This further amplified the voices in which the project was made for. Who a project is made for is always something that is on my mind when I create. What community is going to see this? What community is going to benefit? But as pointed out by one of the young female leaders of the project, you have to start somewhere. This project started in a place where conversation was needed greatly and further got national attention. I’d say that’s a pretty good start. In producing the show, I think the outside adult artist engagement strategies were very off because they seemed like they were talking AT the students instead of as before, with them. It seems like something they adjusted for the day of show – but I question how even a group of artists working on a piece against a problem could simultaneously be contributing to it. It’s a dichotomy I think we face more than we realize.