Tanner Polednak, Week 2

Question Responses

1. The reading from What a Riot was focused around the production Upset! which engaged the youth of east LA as artists and as a voice for civil rights.

2. The play was designed to follow Boalian structures. It started by forming a script based off of dialogue between a group of young people during pedagogical sessions where they chose two historical figures from a list.

3. The teens who worked in conjunction with Mady Schutzman were mostly of Latino descent, which brings up the interesting factor that the people they selected to base the play around were both African Americans who played a part in advancing civil right. This goes to show that the youth can bring more honesty to important issues than an adult bais. 

4. This piece seems to have been organized so that a member of any community, especially in Los Angeles, can take away fundamental values of Boal's practice and the ideas of both the production team and those involved.

5. I think that the production had the most benefit to those involved; educating them about oppressive structures in our world, but to its audience it must have had an effect of giving some humanity to stories that they think they are familiar with.

6. Those engaged by Upset! were in a sort of circle of influence. The stake holders educated the community, who then went on to engage the audience using tactics they had learned. While the script was influenced by the stake holders, it was still centered around the sentiments and desicions made by the community actors who, in the show, were the ones speaking the knowledge to a larger public community.

7. It seems that Calarts was the bigges resource that shaped how the final product would come to be since the connections made through CAP, Plaza de la Raza and Redcat are all Calarts associated spaces.

8. While the idea of an Opressor walking into the show at Redcat and leaving having a greater awareness to the situation at hand would be a blessing, the model of this project was not intended for this type of direct change. I see the education of the teens involved about the important topics that they had selected will plant seeds tha t open them up to having a voice for what they believe in. 

9. Goals were met in this project as it gave personality to otherwise unknown or heavy cases, reached a public crowd, educated youth and created a piece of theatre that speaks beyond its text.

10. Core beliefs that led the project were civil rights, community engagement and humanizing topics that people are often reluctant to talk about due to their nature.