Our iMovie project is centered around the New York City Subway. The subway is the great equalizer. Everyone takes it, from your local schoolteacher to businessman or nurse. It’s a necessary part of everyone’s New York experience, and thus a melting pot of both people and experiences. If one just takes a second to look around, you can notice a lot. Who just took a shower 10 minutes before getting onto the train; their hair still glossy wet. Who is off to work at a hospital, their scrubs on or in a bag. You notice those who are impatient, constantly checking their watch or shifting their weight from one foot to another. Sometimes you can get some silent fashion advice from those who put themselves together well. So much can be seen. But I’m not out to glorify the subway. It can be fantastically useful, even fun at times when a good performer comes on to the train. But often you just want to be alone, not crammed into your seat, or while standing, jostled around by the hundreds of people coming in and out of the train at every single stop. The smell of sweat when some asshole decided not to put on deodorant, and just keeps his arm raised the entire train ride. A performer steps on that really shouldn’t be performing anymore, their voice and musical skills are not quite there, and you end up listening to screeching strings through your morning headache. Or maybe you have one of those scary moments, where you’re alone in the train car at night, and some creepy guy comes on, and you can’t help but let your imagination run wild. All in all the subway is an urban space rich with experiences, one we take for granted, but is certainly there for us each day.

The 1996 production of Sam Shepard’s play, Buried Child, is certainly a shocking one.  The production reels in the audience, as it portrays a somewhat-realistic living room inside a house with a family.  The stage is set up with dim lighting and old, rundown furniture, as the setting of the production is in a poor, rural household in the 1970s.  This is evident through details; the couch is worn-out with cotton sticking out and the blanket on top has holes.  The play’s employment of realistic detail and intimate lighting really lures the audience in to a dark production.  While the setting of the play may seem grim, the themes and characters of the play are even darker.

The 1970s was a decade of recession in the United States, particularly affecting rural homes.  Clearly, this family was affected, as it seems to have low financial status and doesn’t take care of its home. The American Dream is a concept that in America, it is possible to achieve anything you want and make as much money as you’d like, as long as you work hard an maintain a strong work ethic.  One theme of the production was how this family gave up on this dream.  The play begins with Dodge and Halie literally screaming at each other from different rooms, though they are not fighting.  Halie is seen doing this all throughout the play.  She yells at every character (most of them her own children), yet presumes that the entire family is psychotic while she is the only sane one.  Dodge is then seen drinking from a flask that he attempts to hide.  It’s pretty clear that Dodge is an alcoholic and doesn’t do much besides sleep and sulk on his couch all day.  Within the first ten minutes of the play, the audience sees that the patriarch and matriarch of the family are mentally unwell and have constructed a fairly dysfunctional household.

Throughout the production it becomes more and more evident that this family has moved away from the traditional American family.  The father figure, Dodge, is not fulfilling his duties as patriarch; he sits and drinks and does not go out to provide for his family as the American Dream requires.  And, it’s inferred that Halie is having an affair with the local church reverend!  The traditional American family holds religious values; this family shatters these values.  It is even implied that Halie had an incestuous experience with Tilden, their son, which in turn produced Halie’s grandson/son.  Tilden (who also appears mentally unstable), seems to take care of Dodge, even though– in a traditional family– the father tends to care for the son.  Although he’s bullied by the family throughout the play, Tilden yearns for approval and love following the death of his son, whom Dodge murdered.  He brings in corn from the field, which Dodge claims was stolen since he hasn’t grown crops there for years– another sign that he doesn’t provide for the family.

Watching the production was far different from reading Shepard’s play, though the themes remain constant.  The detail such as the tattered cloths, furniture, and intimate lighting is something I wouldn’t paid attention to as I read the play.  Buried Child is both a shocking and depressing production, with dark twists and surprises in every scene.  It shows the downfall of the American Dream in a particular family, a theme best portrayed in a theater rather than on paper.

For my group’s project, we chose the African Burial Ground National Monument. It is often easy, in such a modern city, to forget the centuries of history that have passed through New York, shaping its public spaces, culture, and people. Oftentimes we look towards art, statues, and monuments to remember and memorialize the individuals, events, and places that have sculpted our collective past. The African Burial Ground National Monument is dynamic in that it not only attempts to preserve history, the site is one of a recovery of history – where black slaves and freemen were buried from the 17th to 18th centuries, relegated to forgotten soil until a construction project in 1991 uncovered the bodies which prompted the city to find a way to preserve the previously lost history. One particular aspect of the African Burial Ground National Monument that I found extremely fascinating was the inclusion of dozens of religious symbols on the walls of the monument, ringed by the burial sites. Although my image doesn’t do it justice, this includes symbols that are instantly recognizable to us such as the Cross or the Islamic crescent but also includes symbols from places as what is now modern-day Ghana, a former significant source of African slaves in the Atlantic Slave Trade. This was significant to me because it represented how colonialism and the experience of slavery painted the diverse African continent as a monolith, a source of labor and nothing else. This feature was touching in that it appeared to cut through the stereotyping of Africa, in respect of the massive diversity and differences in experiences of not just black slaves in American but the African-American experience throughout American history in general. One part of the experience that wasn’t part of the monument that truly made me appreciate the historical value of the monument wasn’t in the picture or part of the site itself, was that during our time examining the beautiful structure, a tour guide led a group of what appeared to be kindergarteners, as he explained the history behind the monument. Their eyes gaped with wonder and they were eagerly asking questions about the space, and in that, I could see the prominence and importance of the monument – in producing a physical connection and bridge between today and the crucial history that has passed where we stand.