Outreach

IN-SCHOOL MEDIA LITERACY PROGRAM

Given that HARDSELL (the play by Rick Miller and Daniel Brooks) will not be touring until 2011, the only way to take in some of its content is through Miller’s in-school workshop/performance, adaptable to middle schools, high schools and university programs.  Using an entertaining and sophisticated approach to 21st century media literacy, Miller takes the audience on a wild ride through the tangled world of the HARDSELL.  Although certain excerpts from the stage play will be performed in schools, the intended result will be very different – a complete mirror image.  In the play, Arnie uses Rick as a model of hypocrisy and compromise.  In the workshop, however, Rick uses Arnie as a model of cynicism and detachment.  There is no clear ‘right’ or ‘wrong’; students are encouraged to create their own ‘meaning’ and make their own choices.  The major themes of the play will still resonate: consumerism, selfishness, neuro-marketing, corporate brainwashing, and the desperate war for our attention (and our dollars).   

If any teacher or student would like to use excerpts from Machomer for educational purposes, Rick Miller would be happy to send hard copies of the full published script.  For more, please contact us.  

“Between the unsettling interaction of the two brothers and the cold and calculating assault on our very existence, HARDSELL is another Miller/Brooks opus that fascinates like a cobra. Hypnotized, we can’t look away... I’m still thinking about the show the next day.”  - Classical 96 FM

PUBLISHED SCRIPTS

If any teacher or students would like to use excerpts from HARDSELL for educational purposes, Rick Miller would be happy to send hard copies of the published script.  For more, please contact us.