Washburn High School Blackbox Magic
Class always started the same. Walking through the doors, into a classroom filled with upbeat music. A greeting from Ms. Spring and my fellow classmates every day. From an introductory Theater 1 class to the touring group of Theater 3 every day I walked through the doors of the Washburn Black Box Theater classroom, I was my happiest. I felt like I finally belonged somewhere.
My final year in this classroom was my senior year in high school.
As a class, we traveled to Duluth High School to work with their theater program, had a documentary made about our work by TPT, and performed in downtown Minneapolis (see photo below). During all of these amazing experiences, I saw how elated, excited, and proud Ms. Spring was of us. Those were the moments I knew exactly what I wanted to do when I graduated. To teach outside the “norm” and open opportunities to more youth in the future.
Where can you find this magical classroom? Washburn High School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is home to Black Box Social Justice Theater. Students from all grades can join this class, as I did, as an art elective starting with Theater 1 (beginning theater). This basic course teacher theater skills, gives students an opportunity to write a poem about someone important in their life, and create sculptures of important words to them. If they continue through theater 2 they choose important topics to them and create a play based on them. The final step is Theater 3, which is the advanced, touring theater class. As a class, they create one big play about experiences they have gone through, problems they see in society, and/or tell another person’s story.
This program has been at Washburn High School for 10 years running. The space was originally a weight room. Ms. Spring stepped into take over the program as a new graduate from the University of Minnesota.
The room now is painted black, and lined with wooden boxes and stairs painted black. It has blue, orange, silver and white graffiti painted walls. As soon as you walk through her doors you are greeted with signs stating “Safe Space” and “A voice for the voiceless.” These are two mottos that all the students of her classes live and breath inside and outside blackbox. Artists from around the Twin Cities (usually former students/ interns of Spring) visit to help students gain skills: writing, building stronger movements for their plays, and sometimes dancing and just having fun.
“If I had had an outlet like this as a young person, it would have benefitted me, it would have helped me,” says Spring. “And then as I got older, I discovered theater outside of the school setting. And expressing felt like a relief in some ways.”
High school is a hard period of time for students. They may feel heard, but not listened to. Kids from all different backgrounds, races, cultures, religions, and sexualities come together in these classes and enjoy being there. The environment Ms. Spring has created shows them that they have power in a world that can feel so big, and a voice in spaces where it feels like no one hears you. There is no judgement in this Safe Space.
I have experienced this classroom in two ways: as a student and performer, and as an intern with the HECUA Art for Social Change program. Helping the students discover their own artistic abilities, helping them find their own voice and someone they can look up to gives me one of the greatest feelings. These experiences combined have helped my realize that I want to be a college or university professor. Students of color need teachers/professors of color to influence and mentor them.
Ms. Spring started this program and opened her door to different artists of color to be in class and help her run classes in recognition that she is a white woman. Even so, she gives power to the students regarding what to talk about and issues they want to discuss and address. Our schools need more teachers like her.
This piece is part of a series written by college undergraduates enrolled in off-campus study programs through the Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs (HECUA). HECUA programs offer students a chance to think deeply about the issues that matter most, and we’d like to share a piece of that experience with you. Every student post on the HECUA Medium page considers a theory or reading that intersects with that student’s lived experience. For more information about HECUA programs, click here.
