Young Voices Project completes first tour of ‘When They See Us’ production

Lakesha Green posed four questions to the high school students she was mentoring: “What is purpose? What is your purpose? Why are you here? Are you living, or are you existing?”  

After reflecting on the questions, the students journaled their responses, and the Young Voices Project instructors and mentors compiled the students’ journal entries. It was these entries that helped create the production titled “When They See Us” that incorporates poetry, monologue and dance. 

The Young Voices Project is a partnership with Hillside Family of Agencies and the education department at Redhouse Arts Center. After performing at Redhouse on Dec. 6, the group of high school students took the production to four middle schools in Syracuse, completing their final tour date on Jan. 23. This was the first time that the Young Voices Project went on tour. 

 Green, and Alice Olom, the Young Voices Project instructors, chose the production’s title, “When They See Us,” before inviting the students to reflect and write. Green said she was inspired by the Netflix series of the same name that tells the story of the Central Park Five. 

 The “When They See Us” production differs from other types of productions because the performance started out open-ended, and the students wrote it themselves, Green said. 

 “We made it a safe place for them to be able to share their experiences because everything that was in the script is real,” Green said. “It came from a real place, so we created that environment for them to do that.”  

The Young Voices Project didn’t plan to take its performance on tour, Green said. Marguerite Mitchell, the director of education at Redhouse, proposed the tour because she felt that more students needed to experience the production, even if they couldn’t be part of the process of creating it, she said.  

Green said the tour gave the students an opportunity to mentor other students who may have faced similar experiences and challenges. It allowed the high school students to pose the same questions that they asked themselves to other youth in Syracuse, Olom said.  

“We wanted to give the high schoolers a time and a space to be able to voice out what they have been going through and why they are the way they are,” Olom said. “Especially because in high school – that’s the time that they start to show what’s been going on in their life, in their persona.”  

Olom said that the performance served as an outlet for high school students to express their own challenges and experiences.  

Moving forward, Mitchell said the Young Voices Project plans to continue touring in future years. The group hopes to expand its program to include tours and productions in both high schools and middle schools during the fall and spring semesters, she said.  

“The mission of the education department is to attempt to break down barriers and make sure that everybody in Syracuse believes that art is for them,” Mitchell said. “And that coming here is for them. It’s for everyone.”  

The students had to adapt their performances for each of the different spaces in the middle schools. At the last tour performance, the students had to adapt in other ways too, as they had to split the lines of one of the lead actresses because she was on a college visit.  

“It was it was a great journey. I mean, as much as they went through a process, so did we,” Green said. “We were right there with them. And there were moments that they uplifted us through it.”