Athens Middle School collaboration with Tantrum Theater and Invisible Ground launches historic walking tour on Nov. 16

An ongoing partnership between Tantrum Theater, Invisible Ground and Athens Middle School has once again brought history to life for Athens through research, media and exploration of local cultural assets.

Invisible Ground is a “multimedia project utilizing audio, augmented reality, visual elements and place-based storytelling to engage people in the history of their communities,” according to the project's website. The project was created by Brian Koscho approximately three years ago and aims to tie together the history of Athens with community engagement.

Koscho originally developed the augmented reality historic marker celebrating the location of the former Hotel Berry on Court St., which allows users to see the former hotel overlaid against the modern backdrop of today’s Athens using Invisible Ground’s app.

This work led to a partnership in 2021 with Tantrum Theater and the Andrew Jackson Davison Club (AJDC) at Athens Middle School to produce podcasts on the history of the hotel in tandem with Tantrum’s world premiere of the commissioned play “Hotel Berry,” written by Jacqueline Lawton.

Athens’ first Black lawyer, Andrew Jackson Davison, tied the collaboration together as the namesake of the middle school’s club focused on preserving local history, a regular subject for Invisible Ground’s local historic work, and a major character in Tantrum Theater’s play.

The partnership’s newest work that celebrates local history will be presented starting Nov. 16, through a West State Street Cemetery Walking Tour - this time with storytelling led by the AJDC.

Image

The club selected the West State Street Cemetery as their project with Invisible Ground to research and create an immersive walking tour of the site to preserve the history being worn away by time and weather. The final product will be an online self-guided tour, as well as a printed map of the cemetery for people to use while walking around the area.

Part of the research process was a panel of interviews, including voices from the Mount Zion Black Cultural Center, Southeast Ohio History Center, Athens Deputy Service-Safety Director Andrew Chiki and Ohio University departments.

“I’m a big believer in bringing in a lot of different brilliant people, especially with kids, to work with as much as possible and give them a chance to see their community and the stories through a different lens,” Koscho said.

According to the Tantrum Theater Director of Education Rebecca VerNooy, the theater has been involved in the project in a funding and supportive capacity. By running the drama club at the Athens Middle School, in addition to many other programs, Tantrum Theater hopes to encourage a creative and community-focused outlet for students.

“It’s a little bit like immersive theater where they’re learning by doing,” VerNooy said. “The history of their community is really important and it’s hands-on. Brian’s done a lot of work with them that’s been incredible…showing the kids that they’ve taken this project from an idea to fruition…(and) they can do these things out in the world.”

For this project, members of the club are broken into different groups with different focuses within the cemetery, from Revolutionary War veterans to Black history and environmental factors. The project puts students in a position of agency to do their own research and tell stories through their unique lens, something Koscho has enjoyed witnessing.

“They have such a different way of looking at it and they become invested in it very, very quickly,” he said. “...it became very cool to watch them take ownership of these stories. They get upset about injustices that have happened in the past, they get bothered that more people don’t know about whatever it is that they’re learning about and there’s something really important about that.”

Image

Koscho hopes the project brings the cemetery into perspective for community members, many of whom interact with the space daily but know very little about its approximately 200 years of history.

“There’s some really amazing stories of … people just like us who lived here and cared about Athens too, so seeing the kids carry all that forward, you can’t help but see the really cool thread and timeline to the whole thing,” Koscho said.