Not So Sweet 16

By Claire Giannosa & Anna Humphrey

Our birthdays are one day apart. Last year, we celebrated by seeing a movie together—right before COVID-19 hit. Our 16th years were shaped by two events that changed the world, and our lives, forever.

Process

When we came up with potential ideas for our pair piece, we both realized major events defined our 16th years: 9/11 and the coronavirus pandemic. We initially gave ourselves time to free-write and explore the topic, and then shared our writings with each other. We soon realized our individual themes, images, and syntax correlated closely to each other, and decided we should portray our work in a way to demonstrate that. Using our interconnected messages and similar sentiments, we weaved both of our pieces into one cohesive script. Eventually, we read our work aloud and recorded it, then edited the videos together to replicate our script. Our 16th years looked vastly different, but while watching the video, one can hopefully see the connections—the national and global events that marked our adolescence.