NORFOLK, Virginia (WAVY) – As we continue to celebrate Black History Month, some students are reliving their experiences of colored teens in America and turning them into performances.
Teens With a Purpose will perform on Saturday at the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk with songs, dances and poems.
They have the light, they have the camera, but you have to wait until Saturday to see the action.
“We’re going to stage a multimedia production called OTU,” said Deirdre Love, founder of Teens With a Purpose.
Teens With a Purpose is a creative youth group that uses its voices and skills to fight social ills and raise awareness through acting, poetry, music and the arts. They are doing just that with their performance on Saturday.
“This is a story about a woman from this region who did something amazing,” Love said. “We will reveal its history through visual art, through poetry, through movement.”
Love wanted to keep the theme of Saturday’s performance a secret, but her story and others like it underlie the teaching of young people of color people a story that may have failed.
“Where young people come face to face with the legends of the African-American Hampton Rose community and they can see their stories and reinterpret them in poetry, music, dance and art and bring them to the stage … we can keep stories alive and make them immortal “- said Love.
“So people should expect not the show but the opportunity to participate,” Love added.
And the guests are waiting to convey forgotten historical stories in modern ways.
“When they take these stories and turn time into poetry, it keeps them alive for another generation, just as the other generation studied,” Love said. “So they have something to tell. They can keep our history alive … It’s critical. “
The performance will take place on Saturday at 11 a.m. at the Chrysler Museum.