Young citizen artists in training

Frisch details how he taught the exercise, The Names That Hurt, to his sophomore and junior playwrights/actors. He argues that he began the exercise a little differently in that he asked the class collectively to create a list on the blackboard of every derogatory term they could think of for a human being. Over the course of the next several weeks, his students generated 164 dramatic monologues and scenes based on the specific names they had listed. He identifies that he chose fifty-four pieces from the best writing to be made into a script that the students would eventually perform in a ninety-minute show. Moreover, Frisch opines that the presentation of The Names That Hurt seems to give its participants and the viewing audience permission to openly reveal the widespread and immeasurable negative consequences of name calling in America.