{"id":384,"date":"2015-11-19T16:20:26","date_gmt":"2015-11-19T21:20:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/acutabove.wpengine.com\/?p=384"},"modified":"2015-12-03T15:35:30","modified_gmt":"2015-12-03T20:35:30","slug":"from-ten-mile-to-six-mile-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/?p=384","title":{"rendered":"From Ten Mile to Six Mile Road"},"content":{"rendered":"

Liam Loomer<\/strong>
\nThe Wildcat Roar
\nNovi HS
\n1st Place
\nDivision 1, News Writing
\nPersonal Narrative<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In all honesty, it was eerily similar. Stepping out of the bus, carrying with me the small load of props necessary for the imminent show, I was greeted by an almost familiar brick facade – but the large green text on the side of the building read \u201cNorthville High School.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was in enemy territory.<\/p>\n

Being raised in Novi, I had been brainwashed into believing that Northville was some sort of quasi-bizarro town, where physics didn\u2019t apply and the students were really birdmen from Venus.<\/p>\n

Yet, I could have mistaken their high school for my own.<\/p>\n

I walked by a student as he held open a door to the main entrance for me. He definitely wasn\u2019t a birdman, or wasn\u2019t showing signs.<\/p>\n

The social issue theatre troupe (awkward pause\u2026) had been invited to perform for a few classes and talk in depth with Northville students about our mission to inspire thought and provoke social change.<\/p>\n

Walking under an arch and into the performing arts wing, I took note of how massive it seemed. The troupe passed a choir room, several instrumental music rooms and a variety of other classrooms until we made it into a shabby ensemble performance space.<\/p>\n

This venue was the first hint I received about something strange happening at Northville. Our schools had been, up to this point, very much alike; something was lurking that was quite different.<\/p>\n

Ashleigh Bowne, a Northville student teacher, former (awkward pause\u2026) member, and Novi alumna, had led us through the halls to our \u201cstage,\u201d and informed us that we had about 45 minutes before our first show.<\/p>\n

The troupe began its work by\u00a0blocking out an area for the stage, figuring out lighting for the show (which ended up being just a pair of light switches to turn lights on and off), and ran pieces.<\/p>\n

The show came together miraculously and quickly. There wasn\u2019t exactly time to iron out the kinks, but we were more prepared than we had been before arriving.<\/p>\n

Eventually it was showtime.<\/p>\n

About 30 students who were led into the space sat on a couple of risers. The small audience made the space feel all the more intimate.<\/p>\n

The first run of the show was smooth and efficient. For me, the real interest came during the talkback process, or the dialogue the troupe holds with the audience after every show.<\/p>\n

In the midst of the show, the students stayed relatively reserved, but for the talkback they talked more than an average Novi audience.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy did the boy cry after he\u00a0dropped the phone?\u201d one girl asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy did you decide to sing a Disney musical?\u201d asked a boy.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo the monologues come from personal experience?\u201d another student asked.<\/p>\n

After the large group dialogue, we broke up into smaller groups to have more direct talks. The group of girls I spoke with wouldn\u2019t have seemed out of place here, and that was one of the strangest things of the whole trip – I would\u2019ve sworn that I went to school with two of them.<\/p>\n

Looking around at the Northville students I noticed that, if circumstances were only slightly different, I could be their classmate.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s so weird. I felt like I was transitioning into the Twilight Zone.<\/p>\n

Our second and final show at the \u2018Ville was more solid than our first. The new, generally older audience comprised of more seniors, was even a bit more talkative and\u00a0offered more feedback.<\/p>\n

After half an hour or so of talking, a low, ominous, droning tone sounded (one very dissimilar from Novi\u2019s high-pitched bland bell), signalling the end of the school day. Our audience made its way out, and the troupe was left to wait for the bus.<\/p>\n

Difference, then, finally decided to rear its head. In making small talk with the Northville drama teacher, I was told how their black box theatre was turned into a book depository. I saw what I construed as sadness in his eyes.<\/p>\n

As a theatre student, I spend a preposterously large amount of time in our very own black box theater. Indeed, the mainstage (awkward pause\u2026) shows are performed in that space every year.<\/p>\n

The thought of my own black box becoming a book depository made me feel grateful toward Novi – something that had not happened in a long while.<\/p>\n

He elaborated on Northville\u2019s lack of funding, explaining that it was in part due to the city being just over the border into Wayne county. Being in Oakland county, our school is in a completely different fiscal situation.<\/p>\n

Northville\u2019s money woes caused their beautiful performance arts wing to be left partially unused for its real purposes. The high school, as it turned out, only had two theatre classes, and they\u2019re held in normal classrooms with projectors suspended from the ceiling for use as mock stage lights.<\/p>\n

That situation, let me tell you, is unfortunately wholly inadequate to stimulate any theatrical learning – and it wholly contrasts our great facilities and comparative wealth of classes for theatre arts.<\/p>\n

The short discussion drove me toward another realization: If I only lived just a short way down the road, I might never have become involved in the area I love the most. Northville\u2019s theatre department isn\u2019t nearly as easily accesible as Novi\u2019s, and if I had lived there, I may never have taken up acting – my future college major.<\/p>\n

A twinge of Novi pride came across me, if only for a second.<\/p>\n

Then I thought of all the students I had talked to. I felt as though, in some strange way, they had been wronged.<\/p>\n

The two schools\u2019 only difference was, in my eyes, a greater creative injustice at Northville.<\/p>\n

I left the school that day more knowledgeable of how lucky I am – yet I also wished for their students\u2019 sakes that they had the opportunities I have had.<\/p>\n

After all, these Northville kids were human, and they deserved as good of a chance at success as I had in Novi; they only suffered from the unfortunate consequence of living down the road a little way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Liam Loomer The Wildcat Roar Novi HS 1st Place Division 1, News Writing Personal Narrative<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,62],"tags":[48,20],"class_list":["post-384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-nw","category-personalnarrative","tag-48","tag-division1","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Kelsey Parkinson","author_link":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/?author=3"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6K0n6-6c","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}