Spring 2003 Pathways

The Wallpaper Project is uniquely qualified to organize From Here: A Century of Voices from Ohio. The Wallpaper Project is the only ongoing oral history-based performance program in Ohio. The Ohio Humanities Council has supported the project since its 1997 inception, and the National Endowment for the Humanities funded the original study that determined the feasibility of the statewide project.

Since 1997, this arts and humanities effort has gathered interviews from 350 longtime and lifelong residents of Auglaize County, using the collected information in a variety of public programming. Undoubtedly, its most popular event is the annual oral history-based dramatic production. Each year, local residents flock to Auglaize County’s turn-of-the-century opera house for the newest Wallpaper play in which a cast of thirty high school students and adults shares the stories of the community with the people of the community.

The Wallpaper Project has partnered with organizations throughout Ohio to grow their arts and humanities initiative into a project that will tour almost forty communities between

March and December 2003. The tour is visiting major cities in Ohio, as well as a cross-section of small and medium-sized towns. All programming in the 2003 tour is based upon oral histories—gathered in interviews with more than 800 of our fellow residents across Ohio—and will include:

	An original dramatic production, created by award-winning Cleveland playwright Eric Coble, directed by Cleveland artists Maura Rogers and Jacqi Loewy, and presented by professional theater personnel and local residents at each host site;
	Student matinees of the production, with curriculum materials for teachers;
	A lobby exhibit at the performance site;
	Post-show presentations at nursing homes and similar facilities for persons unable to attend the public production; and
	Story circles (cross-generational roundtables) designed to engage the entire community in the process of sharing the stories of their lives.

Like few other approaches, oral history has the capacity to educate and empower the communities it reaches, and performance is a highly effective method for sharing the information gained through oral history collection. Converting personal narratives into drama makes history accessible and interesting to wide-ranging audiences. People of all ages and backgrounds become engaged in the performance when they realize that