On Friday afternoon I participated in Marc Bamuthi Joseph's workshop held at the Avery Institute. Accompanying me were four members of the Academic Magnet's "Slamposium" Team: 9th grader Harriet Boatwright, 10th grader Kristen Martore, 10th grader Jacqueline Calloway, and 12th grader Megan Wilson. Also joining us was Katie MacNeil who graduated from the Magnet last year and is currently making a splash in the poetry slam scene here in Charleston. The six of us did not know what to expect, but two intense hours later we found ourselves blown away by the awesome talent and infectious creative energy of Marc Joseph.
Members of the AMHS "Slamposium"
WORKSHOP HIGHLIGHTS
The workshop was a mixture of movement and word. Here are some of the highlights:
Performance: Joseph began with a performance that used movement and words to tell his story about his experience in a hospital watching his grandfather die three times. It was a piece our group had watched on YouTube already but it was quite powerful to have Joseph move around the outside of our chairs performing the piece around, beside, and even through us. Here is the clip on You Tube. Watch it and imagine experiencing what I did. Joseph stopping beside your chair, pausing briefly in his story, and staring directly into your eyes before gyrating back off into his story. It was very powerful. (note the piece we saw begins 1:30 into the clip)
Categories: Joseph wrote the words "hip hop" on the white board and asked us to share our definition of the words. participants to tell him what they thought was their meaning. I quickly raised my hand and gave the typical Literature teacher's response: "Well in your performance you moved your hips and you did a lot of hopping". Other participants added their definitions of the phrase. Joseph also added that one possible origin of the word is that it was a phrase used by party hoppers in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance. Joseph then concluded by stressing that there are no wrong answers to how "hip hop" should be defined. In the end Joseph made a great point that one should not be limited by definitions and categories.
Words: Joseph wrote the following title on the board: For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf
He then rewrote the title as follows:
For______ _______ Who Have Considered_______when the _______is Enuf.
He then instructed us to rewrite the phrase by inserting our own words into the blanks.
Finally he created a "word bank" on the white board by recording the answers volunteered by the workshop participants.
Movement: Joseph led the participants through a series of dance moves. He began slow enough with the demonstration that even I, the world's most inept dancer, could follow along through the first seven moves. This was enough for me to experience the same movement that Joseph uses during his performances. In fact there were a few times during his Spoleto performance the next day that I noticed the same moves that he had taught us in the workshop. This use of movement as a partner to the spoken word is certainly something I plan to use with my slam team as well as in my Creative Writing class.
Words: Joseph asked us to think of a time in our life that we were most uncomfortable in our own skin. He said for us to picture our entire skin covered in this time. He then asked us to boil that time down into four words. Joseph then asked us to do the same for a time in our life when we felt the best about ourselves. Here are my best and worst of times described in just four words each:
worst: "plastic blue air freshener"
best: "orange African moon rising"
Joseph then returned to the white board at the front and pointed to the words that had been written earlier. He then instructed us to complete a written piece that used our phrases and the words on the whiteboard. He then gave us 15 minutes to compose our piece.
Performance: Finally Joseph returned us to the dance floor and instructed us to create a piece that combined the words with movement. The presentations were quite interesting.
