Emerson Students Recreate a Scene From ‘Orange Is the New Black’

Ahead of a special visit from one of the stars of the Netflix series “Orange Is the New Black,” students from Emerson’s school of Theatre Studies, Visual and Media Arts, and Journalism decided to do their own version of the well-known photo used to promote the show.

“We realized that we had seven people who really resembled the characters on the show,” Mary Krantz, one of the students, told Emerson officials. “We started talking about how cool it would be to get a group together for Halloween to dress up as the inmates on the show.”

Last week, actress Laverne Cox, who plays a transgender inmate serving time for credit card fraud related to surgery costs, stopped by the school to engage students on the importance of acceptance, during a talk titled “Ain’t I A Woman.” The discussion, held with undergraduates from the school, was part of Emerson’s first Transgender Awareness Week, “The Authentic Me.”

Cox met with students from the LGBT-community, and later discussed her personal battles with being a person that identifies as transgendered.

After she left, Cox gave students a hat-tip for their creativity, and Tweeted out the re-imagined photo, shot by one of the class members, to her more than 37,000 followers. “Blown away by this recreation of the [Orange is the New Black] poster by Emerson College students,” she said. “Thanks so much for the photo. I love [it].”

Cox did several speaking engagements at other universities prior to her stop in Boston. She recently headed over to Illinois to meet with students, too.

She told Emerson that she is grateful for her role on the show, because it has broken ground for a bigger discussion about the rights of transgendered people.

“It’s groundbreaking on so many different levels,” she said, adding that she hopes her role leads to more trans people appearing on television shows and in movies. “I’ve always believed the more representation you have, the bigger picture [there is] of who people are.”

Below is another photo where students from Emerson got dolled up, using thrift shop clothing, to replicate the shows characters.