PaliHi’s ‘Humankind’ Project Unites Campus and Community

By MATTHEW MEYER | Reporter

Palisades Charter High School students turned the tables on this reporter last month, sitting me down in a recording studio and asking me the questions for a change. Mine was one of nearly 100 interviews conducted by students from PaliHi’s advanced drama class as part of “Humankind,” a multimedia storytelling project that will culminate in a weekend-long event in late April.

Drama instructor Nancy Fracchiolla explained that the year’s divisive political and social climate had left her students feeling like PaliHi—and Pacific Palisades as a whole—desperately needed to focus on our common, human experiences rather than our ideological differences.

Inspired by StoryCorps—a nonprofit that sets up intimate interviews between regular people, some of which air on NPR each week—Fracchiolla pitched an idea to her small, advanced class: a project based around interviews with people of all walks of life, including students, faculty, community members and, yes, even Palisadian-Post reporters.

“We needed to come together as a people,” Fracchiolla told the Post. “We see the humanity in people when we hear and share our stories together.”

Her students took to the idea immediately, and “Humankind” was born. The production’s exact shape is still forming, but student-conducted interviews will serve as the core. Many will be transcribed and adapted into the script for a play, performed by the class at the final event.

But Fracchiolla hopes “Humankind” will become much larger than that, drawing in creative students from all over campus to create short films, art installations, music or even podcasts—all based around the human stories unearthed in the interviews.

All the final products will be on display at a festival on campus during the last weekend of April, where community members will be welcome to bring food and come together to enjoy the creative outpouring.

Interviews were conducted over the course of two weeks in February. For a recording studio, “Humankind” hauled an airstream onto campus. Retro-fitted with sound equipment, the shining, metallic trailer served as a cozy, private environ for the interviews.

Interviewees answered five simple questions, designed to unearth unique stories from common threads of humanity. The prompts were intentionally open-ended: “When did you realize the world wasn’t perfect?” and “Who has been the most kind to you in life?” for example.

Student interviewers gently guided the discussions; an experience that they said opened their eyes to the incredible, unique perspectives of the people all around them.

“Everyone’s an individual person with individual thoughts and feelings and experiences that [are] separate from the big-picture stuff,” said junior Martha Ward, who added that she particularly enjoyed hearing the stories of adults from on and off-campus.

And the interviewees relished the chance to share their stories, too.

“What’s so great about this project is, there’s not many ways for students or staff to open up or have their voices be heard. And we’re allowing that,” said Russell Cohen, a junior and my own interviewer. “People want to be heard.”

While the interviews were all uniquely personal, students said they revealed more similarities than differences.

“This project focuses on what brings us together instead of what tears us apart,” said sophomore Zoe Atlas. “We put all the political stuff to the side and focus on these questions, because everyone has an answer to these questions.”

“There are little bits of every single [interview] that I can relate to,” added senior Greg Havton. “We’ll be able to take those pieces, and put them into the play that will be formed in April. Once we present it, hopefully the whole audience … will really understand that it doesn’t matter what’s happening right now. This is who we are. We’re all in this together.”