Lehman Brady Visiting Professor, documentary performer and playwright, Mike Wiley in the CDS Library performing Dar He: The Story of Emmett Till.

Our class had the pleasure of a visit from Mike Wiley last week. I’m sure I wasn’t the only student in class wondering what a documentary performer actually did. I mean, it’s not as obvious as film making, photography, oral history, etc. I’ll admit, I even had somewhat of a “really?” outlook on Tuesday’s class. That instantly changed when Mike began to share about the kind of work he does, how he works, does research and interviews, and ultimately performs his work. I was blown away by the whole process. We were then treated to a roughly 10-minute performance of part of Dar He: The Story of Emmett Till. It was incredible!

Mike’s work includes Blood Done Sign My Name; Life Is So Good; Tired Souls: The Montgomery Bus Boycott; Dar He: The Story of Emmett Till; Jackie Robinson: A Game Apart; Brown v. Board of Education: Over Fifty Years Later; and One Noble Journey: A Box Marked Freedom.

Mike’s Web site is here.

One of the things I’ve appreciated the most about this class has been our exposure to so many different forms of documentary study. As a photographer, it’s easy to have a narrow field of view on documentary work. I’ve always liked documentary films, so that was easily adaptable to my relatively short list of what documentary studies were. For whatever reasons (and I’m sure there are many), I never really evaluated all the other forms of documentary work (most certainly not documentary performance). Throughout the six weeks of class thus far, the variety of assigned readings, and the exposure to the incredibly generous visitors we’ve had (thanks to Joy, our fearless leader), so many doors have been opened and I’ve begun to see an interconnectedness I was unaware of. Perhaps I’ll write more about that later.

For homework this week:
“Knowing Your Rights” legal terms overview
“Is It Legal?”
“Concerning Releases”
Prepare a five-minute presentation about our project.