Spring 2018
Remembering the past, celebrating the present & recommitting to the future.
In this project, University of Richmond and Armstrong High School students collaborated to perform The Spirit of Armstrong, a documentary drama highlighting the history of Richmond’s Armstrong High School. Students from both groups researched archives, listened to oral histories and produced original poetry to write and perform a play about the school’s history as Richmond’s oldest predominantly black high school.
We had performed an iteration of this play the previous semester, and Armstrong officials had approached us to see if we could have an encore performance so that school board members could have a chance to see it. This time around, students focused more on the history of the school—and the disconnect between Armstrong’s storied past and its difficult present.
Project Details
“Armstrong! Armstrong!
guiding light to all,
If on land or sea we wander
We will ever heed thy call.
Armstrong! Armstrong!
Alma Mater dear,
May joy be yours,
May peace be yours,
Throughout the years.
”
01
Research & Writing
Meeting ALP Students
We spent a couple of weeks researching in preparation for our first meeting with Armstrong Leadership Students. More than sharing the archival research, our gatherings with ALP students were about learning from them, about their experiences, their dreams, their aspirations, and the lives they live.
The Writing Process
The previous semester the students had gotten to know a group of Armstrong alumni from 1966. After the ALP students spent more time with their elders, we had many discussions about the story they wanted to tell. We wanted to make sure that the voices of Armstrong students today are not only heard, but understood. We wrote together, read our drafts out loud together until we found something that we were comfortable with.
Armstrong High School Time Capsule, 1952.
02
Time Capsule & Pop-Up Exhibition
When the old Armstrong building was destroyed, a time capsule was uncovered—a surprise to everyone. With the support of the Mayor’s Office and the Valentine Museum, we worked with Armstrong alums to support their planned time capsule-opening ceremony.
The alums, energized after the first performance of The Spirit of Armstrong, banded together to paint the cafeteria and hallways of Armstrong and repair every broken chair in the auditorium, in preparation for an event that drew hundreds of Armstrong alums and students.
In a moving ceremony, Lucille Brown, both an Armstrong alum and first Black superintendent of Richmond Public Schools, opened the capsule. Afterwards, during the reception in the cafeteria, alums and current ALP students hosted side-by-side exhibitions on the school as each group experienced it. The ALP students’ exhibition included a personal journal, a bandanna, poetry and other items that expressed their feelings about their Armstrong experience.
03
Bookmaking
We worked with Jen Thomas in the Book Arts Studio to create commemorative hand-made books incorporating Armstrong student poetry, excerpts from alumni oral history interviews, and performance stills from the previous semester’s documentary drama performance at the school. At the close of the docudrama, each of our students presented a hand-made book to an Armstrong Leadership Program student, offering words of reflection on the time the two of them had shared.
04
Docudrama
Collaboratively written and performed by students from Armstrong Leadership Program and the University of Richmond along with alums Dennis Harvey and Reverend Josine Osborne, The Spirit of Armstrong Encore put the history of Armstrong High School in conversation with the experiences of Armstrong students today.
Written and produced at the request of Armstrong principal Dr. Willie Bell, in order that our work could be seen by members of the school board and other city officials, and directed by Brooklyn Art Exchange’s José Joaquin Garcia, the production asked: How did Armstrong go from being an academic powerhouse in the Jim Crow era to a chronically underfunded high school struggling to survive?
