After School

From Through the Eyes of a Child: Karina, A Venezuelan Story

Sound, Video, and Scenic Elements. 

2026

Ericka R. Navarro

MFA Interactive Arts

After School is an immersive cinematic installation that tells a narrative through physical space.

Set in La Guaira, Venezuela, the work invites the audience to step out of their own world and enter the memory of another. The environment, sound, color, scent, objects, and atmosphere come together to create the feeling of stepping into a live-action film—one that unfolds not only on a screen or stage, but around and within the viewer.

The installation is based on the true story of Karina, a girl growing up in Venezuela whose life takes unexpected turns at a young age. At fourteen, she becomes a mother while still discovering the world herself. Through her story, innocence slowly transforms into awareness, and childhood becomes intertwined with responsibility, faith, wisdom, resilience, and care.

After School focuses on one scene from Karina’s larger narrative: a moment where much of her journey quietly begins. Set within a Venezuelan school environment, the work uses light, texture, sound, objects, costume, and movement to echo the emotional and cultural textures of that memory.

This work explores how storytelling can move beyond the screen and become something the viewer can enter, feel, touch, and hear. It invites the audience to become part of the story. This idea comes from imagining a space between film and theatre, where narrative becomes immersive, physical, and emotionally present. Through this approach, the viewer is invited to experience Karina’s story more closely—not from a distance, but from within the world she inhabits.

The space is meant to welcome you with comfort and freedom as you move through it.

Through the eyes of a child, this story remembers grace, strength, faith, and wonder inside someone very young.

Even in uncertainty, she was never truly alone. Something greater walked with her. God protected her, guided her, and opened paths as she faced life each day.

This is based on a true story.

About an amazing mother, raising her children alone.
About a child, raising other children.