Historical Story: Jordan Hall

The assignment:

"Students will work in pairs to write a 4-6 page film script that takes place around some historical event (which took place before the students were born), and focuses on a character(s) who is either based on someone they know OR of their own creation (BUT is NOT a famous historical figure). Scripts are to utilize standard screenplay formatting. Artist statements should include a discussion of the dynamic between character (attitude, belief, behavior, etc.) and context (cultural practices, political climate, etc.). Students must reference at least 2 legitimate historical sources in their artists’ statement, discussing how the information they gathered in their research informed the creation of their script (including dialogue, scene descriptions, etc.)"

Read Jordan Hall by Brenna Empey and Jeffrey Hein

http://hostingmusic.tumblr.com/post/110602695270

http://hostingmusic.tumblr.com/post/110602580215

Philip Zimbardo’s infamous Stanford Prison Experiment has been reimagined and documented in countless ways throughout the past forty years, most recently in the form of a historical fiction film by director Kyle Patrick Alvarez – a film Brenna had the opportunity to see at the Sundance Film Festival. A day later, she was twenty pages deep in Zimbardo’s book The Lucifer Effect, and would later come across clips from the documentary Quiet Rage: The Stanford Prison Experiment with me. These somewhat morbid discoveries of ours led to a screenplay that closely follows the actual events of the experiment. In writing this screenplay, we thought it was particularly important that the dialogue and action feel as raw and natural as possible, because we are dealing with a historical event notorious for its disturbing truths. Although our writing includes events that did not happen, every line of contrived dialogue was intended to be an artistic representation of this history. To give the screenplay as much impact as possible, we hoped that keeping most situations authentic would allow the experience to be engaging and compelling without subtracting from what happened during these six days in the windowless basement of Jordan Hall.

“My biggest mistake was that there was no one supervising me. We [the professors] became part of the experiment and there was no one stopping us,” says Zimbardo in Quiet Rage. We thought that one of the most compelling ways of telling this story would be through one character, perhaps a “supervising” character, but also a character that does not fit the demographic of the white males propelling the story. Rather than fake or dramatize the experiences of real individuals, we used Lucie as an outside observer and a polar opposite of Zimbardo, Haney, and all the test subjects. As we are readers of history, Lucie mirrors our experience as people learning about this event — she barely sees anything, only hearing unnerving snippets of what is actually going on. Everything she hears while in the basement of Jordan Hall was taken directly from the prisoners’ real screams and pleas, which were transcribed by Zimbardo in The Lucifer Effect. This restricted sort of experience reflects the way almost all historical events are perceived. Perhaps the most important aspect of Lucie’s polarity, in this context, is that she is an inherently good person confronted with an experiment literally intended to study the human capacity for evil. Although neither Zimbardo nor his test subjects were “evil,” per say, Lucie’s presence as a good person throws off the balance of the experiment, and incites questions about the actions and intentions of its participants. This screenplay is an intentional discussion of what would’ve happened if the “evil” Zimbardo studied in that summer of ’71 was interrupted by unanticipated “good.”