Oral Presentations and Performances: Session III
Videocassette Records
Project Type
Presentation
Faculty Mentor’s Full Name
David Axelrod
Faculty Mentor’s Department
Creative Writing
Additional Mentor
Robert Stubblefield
Abstract / Artist's Statement
Videocassette Records is a novella spanning roughly 50 pages focusing on interpersonal familial and congenial relationships. This novella will be a spiritual bildungsroman, exploring themes of identity, love, and loss as Michael returns home from his first year of college to find everything in his childhood home blissfully untouched. His return to familiarity is a welcome one, as the stark change that was college was not the liberation everyone promised. Finding an old stack of cassettes in the garage, Michael will get to see his mother’s childhood--the friends she loved and loves still, and how she coped with the loss of her childhood. Through her memories and Michael’s experience the reader negotiates the ups and downs of growing older, the work of maintaining relationships, and the process of letting people go. Videocassette Records seeks to shed light on the work to maintain the ever important bonds between family and friends, and how, sometimes, we are more a reflection of our parents than we know.
Category
Visual and Performing Arts (including Creative Writing)
Videocassette Records
UC 332
Videocassette Records is a novella spanning roughly 50 pages focusing on interpersonal familial and congenial relationships. This novella will be a spiritual bildungsroman, exploring themes of identity, love, and loss as Michael returns home from his first year of college to find everything in his childhood home blissfully untouched. His return to familiarity is a welcome one, as the stark change that was college was not the liberation everyone promised. Finding an old stack of cassettes in the garage, Michael will get to see his mother’s childhood--the friends she loved and loves still, and how she coped with the loss of her childhood. Through her memories and Michael’s experience the reader negotiates the ups and downs of growing older, the work of maintaining relationships, and the process of letting people go. Videocassette Records seeks to shed light on the work to maintain the ever important bonds between family and friends, and how, sometimes, we are more a reflection of our parents than we know.