Patrick Chan,

For this project we started with the topic of race discrimination. Then as we brainstormed and branched out ideas revolving that topic we narrowed it down to Stop and Frisk. As we started to do research, I didn’t know how common the Stop and Frisk policy was used on people. Then as we researched more on the statistic it surprised me that a lot of the reported cases the victim was innocent. Now as we did our performance I was nervous at first to approach people until I saw how my other partners did their performance. After seeing that I was more comfortable and able to speak to other students about the Stop and Frisk. Also the students we talked too were also surprised about the statistics of Stop and Frisk. From the responds we got from the students with darker complexions they would say that they would have to be cautious around police because they feel just because they have darker skin they would be a target for them. Another thing I realized when we were trying to record a video once the person sees that they are being record they start to give short answers. But when they didn’t realize they were being recorded they would open up a little more with their answers. Overall this project was to get us out of our comfort zone and learn to utilize the space we have access too. Others didn’t see it as a big problem but I did only because I don’t like to do public performances unless I am with a big group of people I know.

Aylin Cruz,

Overall, this project was interesting. At times it was a little uncomfortable. However, the preparation that we worked in classed help to have the performances. The questions that we wrote in class we a guide to when we had to talk to a person. I thought what helped me the most to be comfortable was wearing the shirt. Since I had a question on my shirt, I was able to feel at the conversation was more interactive. There is something that I would change about this performance. For example, maybe hiding the phone to videotape better. Some people change their reaction when they notice there were being recorded. Since we wanted a genuine response hiding the phone better, we would have gotten better results. I was surprised that no one didn’t have a big reacting to the topic of stop and frisk.If we went along the first option of asking people to empty there pocket I believe we would have a more responsive reaction.

Tyne Hazel,

This project was very different then what I had anticipated. At first I was a bit skeptical to do the performance but once we practiced a few times in class, it seemed much more interesting and even entertaining than I thought initially: I started to get into the swing of things. In class and as a group we decided that City Tech’s cafeteria would be a great setting to have our group performance because a swarm of people hang out there and we thought it would be easy to gain the attention of the people there to practice on. But not knowing how to start our approach amongst strangers in a loud area we opted to go to a more familiar surroundings–to the architects in the group–the architect and engineering building. The setting was much more quiet which is what we wanted, but it was obviously quiet for a reason which totally slipped our minds. Some students were studying considering finals coming up and coming up fast. We didn’t want to intervene so it was slightly difficult when picking a prey. And when we finally managed to scope out people it was hard to stay in character and even more difficult to capture good videos/documentation (i.e the speaker’s voice being too low, or maybe a certain section of the building was just too loud.) and content of those videos because we were unaware of how people were going to react to the questioning. It was weird the first few times, but ultimately it had gotten easier throughout the day.

Francis Kwok

This project was out of my comfort zone. The practices we did in class and the preperation with the questions we prepared with different approaches helped out alot. We went through many steps to get to where we are. We first planed on doing two different situation like a good cop, bad cop but we ended up just doing the good cop questions because we felt like the bad cop questions will make things even more uncomfortable. One way of helping me calm down was wearing the #ENDSTOPANDFRISK shirt. The shirt is like people who wear a mask in performances in which they become another person. In my opinion; there were things we could have done to make it better like hiding the phone in which we used to record the performance and doing the bad cop situation to some of the people but it was really out of our comfort zone. Due to the fact that some angles got the people to noticed that they were being recorded and so we didn’t get a genuine response from the people or they started to get really shy and not answer anymore questions.  The choice of New York City College of Technology was a good choice as many of the people who get stopped on the streets are of ages 24 and younger. We planned on doing it in Namm building at first but we noticed as we all got together, that were all totally unfamiliar with the area and the environment was really loud which was uneasy to appoach people and do a invisible theater. That in mind; we decide to go to Voorhees which is quieter and is very familiar to most of the people in our group. The performance started and we noticed some people wasn’t even sure what stop and frisk was until we explained it to them; even though they have never experienced it; they said they would be embrassed to be stopped in front of their friends. People who experienced it actually don’t have a reaction to cops as they see them in their daily life but are afraid to walk the streets as they never know when they get stopped, They were also worried that if for any reason the cops decided to arrest them for no probable cause that it would look bad on their records. Our questions were configured to respond to them. I didn’t expect them to even respond to us but with the way we asked and talked with them helped open up the atmosphere. We also tried invisble theater a few times which came out to many different outcomes. One invisible theater we did which started off as a cold conversation to ourselves’s the speakers until one of our plants decided to say something of their own experience and ask other students that were around in which we created a atmosphere in which people started talking about their experiences. I didn’t expect it to go that well but the second time we did the invisible theater; it ended up as a big fail since people started putting on their headphones to do their own work. Overall, this project was a good experience and helped get me out of my comfort zone. I started off being very quiet and kept zoning out but after a few times; I became more relaxed and responded quicker due to the research and similar questions to the ones we prepared before. I wished we had more better responses as alot of the responses wasn’t what I wanted and expected.