Heyo, it’s me. Back with another blog post. This time on the wonderful time that was the 50’s. Ah yes, good times. Dancing, beat poetry and the constant looming fear of communism taking over.

So we got to do a project on that time. We studied a lot, on things such as McCarthyism. McCarthyism was pretty much a period where a guy called Joseph McCarthy put a whole bunch of people on trial because of the Red Scare. Everyone was being accused of communism for tiny things, and a lot of people lost their jobs.

Our project was simple (not). All we had to do was create a walk-through exhibit showing off important bits from the 50’s, while also relating it back to our research on The Crucible and also also relating it back to today. The experience had to be interactive with the audience, and we had to save a minimum of five stations, making the whole experience 40 minutes. Simple, clearly. The best part was: we had two and a half weeks.

It started with plotting out the ideas for each of the six stations we had to do. Our final plan was this:

Scene one: President Eisenhower gives a speech addressing the people of America and talking about the threat of communism

Scene two: An American household. The husband has just returned from the war, the wife is the classic housewife with one child on the way and a baby already there. They talk about how the GI Bill has helped them so much, and how much consumerism has affected them

Scene three: The guide and the Audience go to a Street, where there’s a rally for pro-communism. They talk about how the government is bad and how they shouldn’t arrested. They move on quickly.

Scene four: The guide and the Audience run into a scene of military officers trying to recruit a veteran to go to the Korean War. They explain the point of the Korean War was to fight the Communists over there so we don’t have to deal with them here. The guides low-key get accused of communism and its revealed they were drafted for war and dodged the draft.

Scene five: Hollywood, Baby. The guide gets cast in a Hollywood production of The Crucible, with A Wonderful Person as the cameraman. They explain what the blacklist was, and why Hollywood was especially affected. They shoot a bit of the film, until the police come in and make the guide stand on trial on the grounds of being accused of communist practices.

Scene six: The court scene. The audience have been given pieces of evidence of how the guide is a communist. They face Joseph McCarthy, which eventually leads to the guide being set free.

Then there’s a video relating back to today, and how Trump is going on a Russian witch-hunt, much like it was back then.

We wrote the script, though we were still editing days before the exhibition. People worked a lot on props, such as making a white picket fence and doors:

Then it was performance day. And… the wall broke. See, the gym has a mechanical wall that separates it. Super handy for our thing, but… we couldn’t use it. We had to improvise, using barriers and curtains and the backboards for the wall and to make it easier the move around without exposing everything.

We hadn’t had the chance to do a full runthrough of our lines, but we were pretty sure it was fine. I got to shout at people for being late, call people idiots. Good time.

We actually have a video of our preformance that you can see here:

Overall, this exhibition was a great way to learn about the time period. We really had to use our historical perspective and go into roles of people who maybe didn’t believe what we believed. We had to immerse ourselves in the culture, and learn about every side of the story. I would definitely do this project again, it helped me learn a lot more than I would have normally

That’s all,

Read you later!

Sincerely, Parker