Visiting the Boys and Girls Club - Tupelo, MS

A train runs right through downtown Tupelo and it made me and Kenji (who joined me for the last couple of stops on the Southern Circuit) late for our session with the Tupelo Boys and Girls Club.  Pat Rasberry, our host in Tupelo, arranged for us to spend 45 minutes with them, not enough time to show all of TRUST, so we figured we’d show them the TRUST sequence in which David guides the ensemble members through writing recipes for how to make themselves, then talk with them about units of measure for recipes, actions you do in making a meal, give them time to write their receipes and then ask those who wanted to read their recipes to read them to the group. 

 After two years’ work, we are in the last stages of designing the TRUST Teaching Guide and Community Screening Kit – it goes to the printer later this month.  And we are starting to use it in after school and classroom situations - As you can see from these photographs, it was a lot of fun, the kids really got into writing recipes and were really courageous about standing up and reading them.  The group was also very curious about how to make a film, how to become a filmmaker, how they could be in one of our films.  One member of th club wanted to know how to become an actor, and the Boys and Girls Club teachers said they’d hook him up with a Tupelo theater company that has a summer program for teenagers.  That was a real highlight.

 Watch on www.recipesfortrust.com to see some of the recipes the members of the Boys and Girls Club wrote.

Pat Rasberry and Melanie Deas, Executive Director of the Link Centre where TRUST was to screen, took me and Kenji to dinner.  Over dinner, we learned that Melanie attended Yale Graduate School of Drama with APTP Artistic Director and Co-Founder David Feiner! 

And did you know that Tupelo is Elvis’ birth place?  After the screening, Shawn Brevard took us on a tour of Elvis hot spots in Tupelo – Tupelo Hardware where he bought his first guitar and to the shrine at his birth place.  It was just too funny.