Modern Poetry Visualized – #1
Due January 15
In this Challenge, students are presented with three modern poems that have been published in a major literary magazine within the last few years. Each poem offers up a visceral vision that, like many quality poems, can be interpreted and enjoyed both on a universal and personal level.
Each team must choose one poem, study it, debate it, and find its lyricism, meaning and ambition. Then, create a visual video interpretation of their select poem to accompany a recitation of the poem. Music may be used to underscore the work.
Dystopian Drama – #2
Due February 15
Brave New World …1984 …Fahrenheit 451 …The Hunger Games …The Handmaid’s Tale …The Giver. These novels offer their readers a dystopian view of society. In this haunting Challenge, your team is asked to create the basic parameters of a dystopian society, and then write and shoot a scene that takes place in this dystopian society.
The Odyssey and the Mythological Photographic Storyboard – #3
Due February 15
One of our most popular Challenges comes back from last year: the mythological storyboard. But there is a new option for those studying The Odyssey.
Option 1: This Challenge asks you to explore the myths of cultures other than Greece and Rome – Egypt, Ireland, Scandinavia, Babylon, and China for example. You may also choose to research a Native American myth. Then, re-tell this myth in a fully–produced, ten to twelve-panel, photographic storyboard.
Option 2: Odysseus and his men will have one more adventure to overcome – an adventure that your team will imagine, write up and storyboard. It’s as if a lost chapter has been discovered…except that you are creating it! In the style of Homer’s The Odyssey, invent a new island that harbors a new creature – or God or Goddess – that tries Odysseus’s patience, knowledge and courage just as Scylla and Charybdis, the Sirens, Circe and a host of others do throughout his journey.
Then, re-tell this chapter in a fully–produced, ten to twelve-panel, photographic storyboard. The accompanying text must be written in the style of Homer (or whatever your translation is): two to eight lines per panel.
Team Moth – Personal Stories – #4
Due April 15
In this Challenge, your team will create a video of your entire team telling a true story in ‘Moth style’.
What is a Moth? A Moth is the telling of a true story that happened to the presenter. But the story must be told extemporaneously, which according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary means, “carefully prepared but delivered without notes or text.”
The Moth format comes to us from National Public Radio (NPR). But our Moth is a little different. For Meridian Stories, you have to present a ‘team Moth’ and the deliverable is a video of the team performance. Teams will respond to prompts taken directly from the 2013 – 2014 Common Application that many students use to apply to college.
Literary Speed Dating – #5
Due April 15
The blind date is a situation that evokes a wide range of emotional, literary and linguistic possibilities: tragic, comic, awkward, passionate, tongue-tied or verbose.
The speed date smashes all of that into a condensed reality that lasts just three minutes. This Challenge asks you to take two famous literary characters, of your team’s choice, and put them together in a speed-dating scenario. Imagine Holden Caulfield (Catcher in the Rye) and Elizabeth Bennett (Pride and Prejudice); Huck Finn and Hester Prynne (The Scarlet Letter); or Esperanza (The House on Mango Street) and Junior (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian).
A speed-dating situation also begs for humor: the situation is artificial; the mix of characters is surreal; and the explicit desire for romantic attachment (otherwise, why would you be there?) is a tad awkward. Be sure to look for ways to create humor out of the dynamics that define the circumstances.