Screening Set For TV Pilot Created By Stockton Professors

GALLOWAY, NJ — A Stockton professor has turned her real-life experiences into a television show, and you can watch it at a screening on Friday.

"Teaching While Black" tells the story of Shayna Black, who arrives at her first teaching job at a predominantly white institution in America's rural heartland, where people pay more attention to her skin than her skills.

Her students don't take her seriously as she's only a few years older than them, and a colleague tries to set her up with the basketball coach - one of the only other Black people on campus.

While the millennial protagonist Shayna Black is not real, the experiences are. The uncomfortable situations, microaggressions and ignorance are based on show creator Professor Donnetrice Allison's life, who walked in Black’s shoes as a young university professor in the 1990s.

"She is navigating teaching, her love life and the politics of getting tenure," Allison said.

The "Teaching While Black" pilot will be screened at 5 p.m., Friday, April 14, in the Fannie Lou Hamer Event Room at Stockton Atlantic City’s John F. Scarpa Academic Center and is open to the public. Watch the trailer.

Allison, professor of Communication Studies and Africana Studies at Stockton University, had long wanted to tell this story and thought it had the makings for a TV show, according to a school news release. As a critic, she has analyzed how Black people are portrayed in the media for years.

After encouragement, Allison began writing the "Teaching While Black" script in 2018.

"I got some books out from the library and started thinking. I was 25 years old when I started teaching at a PWI (predominately white institution), and the story just came from that," Allison said.

Since Shayna Black is a millennial, Allison sought out the perspective of Aaron Moss, assistant professor of Theater/Directing at Stockton, about being a young Black faculty member today.

"I wanted a young professor in this era with social media (as the protagonist), and Aaron had just started at Stockton. He liked it and thought we could do something with it," Allison said.

A creative partnership bloomed, with Moss bringing camera experience, along with stage directing and reading scripts.

Allison, who earned her Ph.D. in intercultural communication at Howard University in Washington, D.C., came to Stockton in 2004. Moss completed a Master of Fine Arts at Yale School of Drama and taught in New York before coming to Stockton in 2019.

"I read the script and thought this was similar to some of my experiences," Moss said. "The power dynamic of being a professor of color in a PWI are very much present. A lot of people of color or women can relate to this."

Allison and Moss knew the story was ready to be told - but things changed. "Then 2020 happened. Black Lives Matter happened. We weren't able to film anything (due to the pandemic) and that gave us a lot of time to dive into the script," he said.

"We submitted drafts to a few contests and got some helpful feedback. We even were semifinalists in a Diverse Voices screenwriting contest. The whole time we were tweaking and waiting to film," Allison said.

"The story touches on a lot of serious, contemporary, racial and workplace issues, but it is not presented in a heavy manner at all. It is still a comedy," Moss said. "People who have seen clips enjoy the levity. It makes it easier to absorb those" serious topics.

"I want people to connect with a character trying to find work-life balance as they join the professional field," Allison added. "There have been a lot of workplace comedies, but we rarely see the experience of professors. That is a fresh take, and tenure can be a really political process."

A casting call with more than 3,000 submissions lead to the discovery of actress Nedge Victome playing Shayna Black.

The pilot was filmed over 10 days in summer 2022, mostly at Stockton's Galloway campus. Current and former students were recruited to assist with the project.

"It was great to be able to provide post-baccalaureate experiences for students who trained with us and are now getting to work side-by-side with us as peers in a professional environment," Moss said.

Two episodes have been written, and Allison and Moss have five seasons mapped out if a producer picks it up.

"Ultimately, we would love to share the series with the world on a major platform like Netflix, Hulu or HBO. The first step is submitting to TV and film festivals throughout the world and also shopping to networks using connections," Moss said.

This year, the dramedy was selected to be screened at multiple locations across Canada during the International Black & Diversity Film Festival and is a finalist for Best Series Plot in the New York International Film Awards.