Teen 2 Teen Video & Theatre, an Alamance County production group, is giving teenagers a chance to showcase their creativity, with help from a Queens University of Charlotte alum.
Katie Farrell, who graduated from Queens in 2019, said she was searching for a job when she found an opening at Thataways Youth Center that closely matched her major, a Bachelor of Arts in multimedia storytelling. She first worked for Teen 2 Teen’s summer film lab.
The lab is a weeklong workshop where students learn skills such as scriptwriting, casting, directing, acting and videography. This year’s lab will take place the week of July 20 at Impact Alamance in downtown Burlington. It costs $90 for the week.
This week, Teen 2 Teen is filming a video titled, “Trivial Trivia: Ex’s Edition” — a spinoff of the game show, Family Feud. With her position at the youth center, Farrell films, positions and helps clean up the scripts the teenagers have written. She said her favorite part is interacting with the students.
“Being a teenager is hard,” Farrell said. “Middle school was hard, high school was hard, and I enjoy seeing them grow and watching their confidence grow.”
London Sibley, a seventh grader at Hawfields Middle School, is playing Cleve Marley, a spinoff of “Family Feud” host Steve Harvey, in the latest film. She said she likes the group because of the opportunity to engage with theater and switch from character to character.
“That’s what I find the most fun about it,” Sibley said. “You can really just get into imagination, really just do whatever you want.”
Sibley said she loves the films and community the group has brought her.
“They really just bring me joy, like the people and the place,” Sibley said. “It just makes me so happy. This is one of my favorite parts of the week.”
Teen 2 Teen meets every Monday night at 7 p.m. at Thataways Youth Center in Burlington.
Farrell starts before students arrive, setting up the camera and backdrop if the group is filming.
“If we’re just brainstorming, then it’s just a matter of setting up tables and getting enough chairs for everyone, and we get everyone signed in at the beginning, and then we just jump right in and get started,” Farrell said.
The group’s director, Robert Kearns, spent 20 years in Los Angeles working on projects such as The Steve Harvey Show, Blue Velvet, Pet Sematary and Good Sports.
Kearns has been involved with Teen 2 Teen for 13 years. Originally, the group produced videos about issues facing youth, such as dating violence and teen alcohol abuse. The program is funded by the City of Burlington Recreation & Parks department, but Kearns said the budget is small.
“We’re in the process of getting a new laptop, because our previous laptop is gone kaput, and we’re getting a new Dell with a new Adobe Premiere Pro,” Kearns said. “We’re catching up because we were using Final Cut Pro on the Macintosh.”
Kearns said the group shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic. Afterward, it reformed and began creating more lighthearted videos.
“The kids started writing their own fictional scripts,” Kearns said. “Tonight, we’re doing a little takeoff on Family Feud.”
Students will spend three or four more Monday nights completing the filming process, and the final pieces are published on their Facebook and YouTube pages. Kearns said he loves seeing the growth of the students, especially those who used to refuse being on camera.
“Two years later, I can’t keep them off camera, so it’s good to see them come out of their shell,” Kearns said.