Julliard School, located in New York City, had forced students to partake in an event called “Slavery Saturday” where they pretended to be slaves while listening to sounds of chains, whips, and the selling of a black woman for about 30 minutes.
Marion Grey, a student of the drama school who is of black descent, describes the workshop as a “traumatizing” experience. She posts her thoughts on social media platform, Instagram. In the video, she explains that there was a segment that included “auditory imaginative experience,” and she dubbed it as “Slavery Saturday”.
The workshop had taken place last September 2020, when classes were being held on Zoom. Grey’s video had brought attention to the prestigious school and apologized, calling the workshop “ill-conceived” and a “mistake”.
In the beginning of the video, it warns viewers before going into details for the next 27 minutes and 53 seconds.
Grey had included a segment of the sounds being used, no visual was given. The sound has an individual selling off a woman, there is a gavel in the background and a voice says: “Gentlemen, gentlemen.
Calling your attention to the first item we have for sale. She’s a fine black pearl in dead. She’s in fine condition. She’s young. She’s supple. She’s strong. She can wash, weave, plow, and slow. A good investment, gentlemen.
And she’ll raise you a fine littler of picaninnies.”
The voice was followed by an influx use of the N-word, Grey then returns to her own dialogue.
She said that she and her black classmates had their cameras off, but had been texting each other in distress during the workshop. After it was over, the white participants said they were moved by their experience, but Grey could not hold back how she was feeling.
She comments, “There are wounds here, and you don’t get to just explore someone’s history and culture with them– that is earned, you don’t just get that.”
It was not discussed for several months because she did not feel “supported or respected of valued. I don’t have any belief anymore in this school… Black lives matter don’t matter here.”
Damien Woetzel, the school’s president, had stated in an apology statement that “it is our responsibility as artists to tackle difficult topics in our work but we must ensure that we do so in a manner that respects and protects the members of our community.”