Director/Producer & Creator or Co-creator
Developed over the course of six months to a year or longer, these projects are created with groups of people whose life stories are close-ups on the history and culture of their time. With director and creative team, a script is developed from writings and discussions, telling the individual stories of those involved and a bigger story of the collective experience. The result is a live theatre production with the participants, and a stage-and-film documentary of the event. These projects create community, and encourage ideas about the future by exploring how the past became the present.
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Acting Our Age
Voices of the Times
Created by Lyndall Hare and Steve Umberger with the casts
Directed by Steve Umberger
Director of Photography Jay Thomas
Music Fred Story
Series developed and produced by The Works (Playworks Group)
2019-2022 projects sponsored by Aldersgate, Charlotte
2024 project sponsored by Plymouth Harbor, Sarasota
2018-2024
One Century Seven Voices (2019)
Voices of the Pandemic (2021)
Using Our Voices (2022)
Voices of the Harbors (2024)
A series with people whose life stories show how history was made
"The collaboration between director and gerontologist turns decades of memories into a collective whole." Observer
Acting Our Age series developed by The Works and sponsored by Aldersgate & Plymouth Harbor, non-profit organizations, to recognize individual lives in historical context.
Each Acting Our Age edition is 60-120 minutes long.
Watch the 5 minute trailer for the 2024 Acting Our Age
and scroll for more information.
Call Me By My Name
A StreetsmARTs Project
Project developed by The Works (Playworks Group)
Created and directed by Steve Umberger / Director of Photography Jay Thomas
Developed 2018-2022 / Recipient of NC Humanities Council Development Grant
StreetsmARTs Program created and project sponsored by First United Methodist Church
A project and film about the creativity of the unhoused community
"The experience has been profoundly positive - and one that has cultivated growth socially, creatively and consciously." QC Nerve
Some of what audiences have said
"This is an example of how we can save the world - conversations, empathy, engagement." Patron Rosemary Monaghan
"We were at times filled with laughter, other times brought to tears by the shared life experiences. They were able to weave so much history while telling their own stories." Patron Annie M. Brooks
From Steve Umberger
"These documentaries on stage and film give people a very long time to develop trust, and you feel the depth of that commitment in what they do on stage. The audience recognizes their own lives in these real stories. The 'actors' also learn surprising things about themselves. And it's a very, very interesting thing to create a story arc from the collective experience of a group. We can literally watch our own history unfold through their lives."
Interview for ASweatLife/Chicago © 2019