A collaboration with drama teacher Richard Browder of Blackman High School in 2025, this residency guided a class of Drama 3/4 students through a Narrative 4 Story Exchange to ground explorations in sharing true, personal stories. From there, students worked with a partner to create a character using Uta Hagen’s 9 Questions, write a monologue for that character based on the same story prompts used in the Story Exchange, add embodied, non-verbal storytelling, create transitions, and put them all together in a devised theater work. This residency was made possible by a grant from Tennessee Arts Commission.
This is just one example of a residency I can bring to schools in Tennessee. Each residency is custom-designed to fit a school’s or teacher’s needs, but if you are interested in a similarly-structured residency, that is also a possibility. Watch the short video below to see the process of the most recent Blackman High School residency.
This residency was funded through Tennessee Arts Commission’s Student Ticket Subsidy grant program.
This is the third residency with Blackman High School students, and they make a positive impact on students. One student reflected that the residency was the most meaningful project of his senior year.
I feel like the Story Exchange did a really good job of paving the way for writing the monologues — getting deep and talking to your partner was really helpful to create a story. ~ Bella
I think the story exchange helped get in the mindset of drawing from your own personal experiences, but also looking at others’ experiences and drawing from each person’s. Every monologue we created was deeply personal, but it was also universal. ~ Murray
