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Samuel Proctor Oral History Program

Voices from the March: A Multi-Media Performance

 

 

 

SPOHP intern Elisabeth Rios-Brooks delivers the final line as the play comes to a close. (Photo courtesy of Aleksandr Wilde)

On Saturday, January 27, we debuted our multimedia play, Voices from the March. The play is a product of our Fall 2017 Social Justice Initiatives internship. SPOHP visiting scholar Jeffrey Pufahl directed the play as well as the play-writing component of the internship, and was joined by SPOHP staff and volunteers who went on the 2017 Women’s March on Washington Experiential Learning Fieldwork Trip—a collaboration between SPOHP and the UF Center for Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Research. The play headlined the 2018 UF Social Justice Summit, and this April we will be taking the play to the 2018 Southwest Oral History Association Annual Conference, hosted at California State University, Fullerton.

 

SPOHP Staff

SPOHP staff member Aliya Miranda recounts her experience documenting the Women’s March on Washington. (Photo courtesy of Aleksandr Wilde)

 

The play weaves together first-person narratives from researchers who went on the fieldwork trip, including SPOHP staff Aliya Miranda, Holland Hall, and Brenda Stroud, as well as UF Acting MFA, Matthew Bratko, who volunteered his time to share his story with our play. The three joined Jeffrey Pufahl and Fall 2017 interns to share their stories and contribute a critical analysis of the presidential inauguration and Women’s March on Washington. Jeffrey Pufahl partnered with our digital humanities production coordinator, Deborah Hendrix, to create a multimedia element to the production utilizing archival footage and images collected during the original fieldwork trip.
 

SPOHP Interns

SPOHP intern Xander Herrera shares a monologue he wrote for the play. (Photo courtesy of Aleksandr Wilde)

 

As part of our Fall 2017 Social Justice Initiatives internship, SPOHP interns retrieved oral history interviews that our research team collected in January 2017. These interviews were carefully pieced together with text sculpted by our interns and staff. The play-writing track interns included Zachary Brown, Xander Herrera, and Elisabeth Rios-Brooks, all who significantly contributed their own narratives regarding the 2016 presidential election and the Women’s March on Washington.
 

College of the Arts Collaborators

Actors from the College of Arts joined us in our performance debut. (Photo courtesy of Aleksandr Wilde)

 

We were joined on stage by a fabulous cast of actors from the UF College of the Arts: Brittney Caldwell, Dahlia Johnson, Andrew Prescott, Elise Selah, Marissa Secades, and Ryley Valenti. These actors helped bring some of our additional characters to life, as well as representing the voices of our archived interviews from the Women’s March on Washington.