In this episode of Fresh Art’s Fall 2020 Student Edition, University of Miami students Ben Vinarski and Reese McMichael venture to an abandoned hotel in North Beach to go behind the scenes of an immersive theater production. Inside a room designed as the well-equipped kitchen of an upper-class home, actress Maggie B. Maxwell has just rolled out a pie crust while introducing her visitors to the city’s Black history.
Immersive Theater individualizes each audience by extending the stage into their physical space. The Broadmoor Hotel in Miami Beach served as the setting for Juggerknot Theater Company’s 2020 Miami Motel Stories. This vivid example of the art form was designed to take audience participants back in time, to experience Miami in the 1960s. Maggie B. Maxwell, who studied theater and political science, plays the role of a domestic worker in the production. In this conversation, she talks about the realities of being Black in Miami then and now.
Maggie B. Maxwell 
Miami Motel Stories North Beach 
Maggie B. Maxwell in conversation
Producers: Reese McMichael and Ben Vinarski/Miami Moves Me, Jahné King/FreshArtINTL
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio
Related Episodes: Miami Moves Me/Maggie Maxwell’s Motel Story, Fresh Art Student Edition, Fresh Voices Miami, Black in America
Related Links: Miami Moves Me, Fresh Art Distance Learning Resources, Fresh Art Student Edition, Juggerknot Theater Company, Miami Theater Review
Fall 2020 Student Edition
Featuring stories produced by student podcasters from the University of Miami
In January 2020, Fresh Art founder Cathy Byrd began to introduce podcasting and South Florida’s cultural landscape to a small group of students at the University of Miami. They explored the city to record and produce their own podcast: Miami Moves Me. Due to the pandemic, at mid-semester, field expeditions came to an end and classes moved online. UM podcasters met the challenge—producing eighteen episodes based on their research, field recordings, and interviews. Fresh Art’s Giselle Heraux and Jahne King introduce our Fall 2020 Student Edition, with six stories from the Miami Moves Me archive.
Miami Moves Me creators: Diana Borras, Gretchell Cano, Luz Estrella Cruz, Kurt Gessler, Melissa Huberman, Kristian Kranz, Reese McMichael, Jonathan Raskauskas, Ben Vinarski
