As projects for two courses, two summer internships, and a series of independent studies, my students devised and finalized the script drawing from verbatim historical sources, contemporary news sources, and oral histories. Students in the Spring 2023 Community-Based Theatre class, the Maymester 2023 Producing the New Script class, and the 2023 summer internship prepared the first version of the script. In the project’s second year, a team of four core artists worked under my direction to revise and expand the script and to prepare the May 2024 performance at Penn Center: Yuliia Kabina, script supervisor and writer, Aslean Janelle Florence, performer and writer, Nala McCamy, director, and Noel Corbin, designer. Kabina and Florence interviewed community members who knew the late Dr. York W. Bailey, a key figure to the island’s histories, whose story is only sparsely preserved in the archive. We realized this project in partnership with the Morning Glory Homestead Farm and De Gullah Shipp. The partnerships enabled us to obtain feedback from the community on the script, including the representation of the Gullah Geechee people, and to work with local youth: as drummers in the performance in 2024 and incorporating local youth's art work and poetry in 2023.
