Audio Library - Radio Theater
NPR's Frank Stasio produced these 4 radio plays with students.
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Making A Difference
I worked with the 8th grade class at St. Luke Elementary School in McLean, Virginia in 2003 to help them write and produce March Toward Freedom. This story looks at the non-violent civil rights story as it developed after World War II in the American South. The story they wrote is based on research they did in their social studies class with their teacher, Mary Ellen Sawyer.
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Nelly Bly
I worked with the 8th grade class at St. Luke Elementary School in McLean, Virginia in 2005 to help them write and produce Nelly Bly. It's a fictional biography about one of America's first investigative journalists. The story they wrote is based on research they did in their social studies class with their teacher, Mary Ellen Sawyer.
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Prisoners
Prisoners is a collaborative project with the ESL students of Marvine Stamatakis, Laurie Gable and Lisa Dohm at the Interlochen Academy for the Arts in Interlochen, Michigan in 2004. I worked with the students via video teleconference to help them understand the principles of Audio Drama. They studied the work of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi. Then they interviewed Egyptian human rights activist Saad Edin Ibrahim about his arrest and imprisonment by the Mubarak regime in Egypt. I met with the students again via teleconference and asked them what they had learned about human rights issues as a result of their studies and interview. Based on my conversation with the students I wrote "Prisoners." In one last teleconference I directed them in an audio production of the play.
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...But Not Our Souls
Professional writer and composer George Zarr and I worked with the ESL students of Marvine Stamatakis, Laurie Gable and Lisa Dohm in Interlochen, Michigan in 2005 on this original play about the role of art and the artist in the struggle for human rights. Each student wrote an essay about a contemporary human rights activist. George and I met with the students in Interlochen and discussed their research. We guided the students through a process in which they developed a plot outline for the play that George and I would write. We wrote the play and two original songs. The students then took charge of the production under our supervision and performed the play before a live audience at the school.