By Joey Simon & Carmen Johnson
The Communicator
Ann Arbor Community HS
1st Place Division 4, News Writing
News Story
JUDGING CRITERIA
- Sharp, attention-getting lead that underscores news story importance
- Uses inverted pyramid
- Emphasizes news elements, i.e. timeliness, nearness, impact, and prominence
- Shows thorough reporting skills
- Effective use of facts/quotes from both primary and secondary sources
- Avoids opinion unless properly attributed
- Sentences, paragraphs of varied length; written clearly, concisely, and vividly
- Proper diction/grammar; use of third person
One night, one show, one day. The thought of performing his take on Romeo and Juliet in front of a real audience frightened Donté Clark. A story involving real people and actual hardships discouraged him from performing that show he had spent the last six months working on. On Dec. 2, 2019 Clark came to CHS and shared his story.
“I appreciate the opportunity to be in front of y’all, to speak to y’all,” Clark said, addressing the audience. “Most importantly to learn from y’all so if y’all have any questions or comments from watching the film.”
Clark wasn’t an actor, director or playwright, but he committed to the play because he felt that the story was important to tell, trying to create peace throughout his town.
Clark’s hometown of Richmond, California is a city split between two main neighborhoods: North Richmond and Central Richmond. Clark was into prose from a young age and used poetry and spoken word to express the hardships he faced living in North Richmond. He said he was forced to read “Romeo and Juliet” in high school, but he hated it. He felt the language and setting were outdated and therefore unrelatable. It was only until after he thought about his own life that he began to wonder if a retelling would be the best way to share his story. He realized the parallels between the novel and his own life: the divide between two families, the divide between the two neighborhoods, the bloodshed rolling over from previous generations of bloodshed, the history of revenge for revenge.
This realization prompted him to decide to write his play under the lens of Shakespeare’s great work, and his play later became his masterpiece documentary “Romeo Is Bleeding.” Molly Raynor, Clark’s high school English teacher, founded a youth arts program called RAW Talent with Clark in 2008. After putting on his first performance with Raw Talent called “From Pen to Paper This is My Redemption,” he realized how much poetry and performing go hand in hand.
Clark was then approached by his adviser and high school math teacher to perform “Romeo and Juliet,” which he thought was “wack, corny and didn’t fit [his] environment.” Clark later re-wrote and directed his own new version of “Romeo and Juliet” that reflected Richmond, California, and how the split between two main neighborhoods hurt a lot of people. Raynor had connections, and her cousin came to Los Angeles to film the documentary, “Romeo is Bleeding,” and since then, the film has been shown in many different English classes across the world.
Though Clark feared backlash from people in Richmond, there was none.
“I don’t think I got too much backlash on anything,” said Clark, who talked with some people who are on the other side, in Central Richmond. “Me and the people in my circle, we love the film, the only thing that we felt was wrong with it, you didn’t have any of our homies in it,” Clark said referring to a Central Richmond resident.
After answering questions from audience members, Clark was asked to show one of his biggest talents.
“Peace of mind, Peace in mind,” Clark said, keeping his eyes closed while he freestyled in front of 150 CHS students in the Craft Theater, moving his hands around candidly. The crowd erupted in applause when he finished, astounded at how the words flowed out of his mouth. Performing took him back to hula hoops and jump ropes; back to classmates that choose to spend their coveted 15 minutes of recess listening to fifth-grade Clark rapping. He’d jump into his lyrics, and it was as simple as that.
“That moment did it for me,” Clark said. “I liked how that felt.”
While that moment wasn’t the start of a rap career, it paved the path for Clark’s big future project: the wildly successful adaptation of “Romeo and Juliet,” highlighting the hostile division in his hometown.