The Play's The Thing

 

In the first few weeks of school, I had my first student ask, “Can we do a play?” 

“Do you want to?”

“Yes!”  Head nodded enthusiastically all over the room, and the seed was successfully planted.  Later that day, I asked the VP if it would be okay and he too was enthusiastic about the idea.  I decided to start small with something in my reading class, a mixture of 5^th and 6^th graders.  They read a highly abridged version of Tom Sawyer and loved it so much I expanded the lesson plans.  To wrap up the unit, they wrote their own play, performed for our Reading Buddies in 2^nd grade.  It was more of a Reader’s Theater since none of the actors knew any of their lines and the narrator basically stood there announcing each scene like “Now we will do the scene where Tom talks the other kids into painting the fence” or “Now we will do the scene where Tom kisses Becky.”  This particular scene caused some consternation because the kids playing Tom and Becky are cousins.  So we utilized that old theatrical tradition “kissing behind a screen but not really kissing because no one should kiss their first cousin.”  It was actually very sweet.

 

The experience was so great for everyone, I committed to doing an actual full blown production.  After searching in vain for anything in Yupik, even asking my Yupik Cultures professor from UAF if she had any suggestions of culturally responsible plays, I chose a dumbed down kid version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  I hoped that the fairies would make it fun and the lover scenes are minimal. 

I explained that each student was required to participate but those who didn’t take roles would be doing other play related jobs, like Stage Manager.  Only one student took me up on it, until the very end.  Casting was pretty easy; no auditions.  I put kids in the roles I thought they were best suited for and was pleasantly surprised at how wrong I was.   

With the help of my para-professional Lynnette, we transformed the grimy beige stage into a fairy wonderland with a waterfall of paper and fabric found in the staff room, Roman columns borrowed from the prom decorations, paper flowers large and small, cut branches from alder trees covered with yet more paper flowers.  It looked so great I was asked by many staffers if we could leave it up for prom and then for last week’s graduation and promotions (Ks and 8^th graders get their special day too).  It made a beautiful backdrop for pictures.

On performance day, there was some concern since the kid who was supposed to play a combined role of Oberon and Theseus didn’t come to school, and the girl who was Hermia was also absent.  But other students came to the show’s rescue and agreed to fill in, much to the delight of the Stage Manager who thought he might have to do it.  And to me, because I remember my own 8^th grade play when the boy playing Black Bart was late getting back from a track meet and the director of the play, George H., seemed a little too keen to fill in.  I wasn’t going to scar my students the way he did me, so there was no discussion of me understudying.  Besides, I’m too tall to play Hermia.

Early in our rehearsal time, I showed the students a technique I have learned from Portland’s wonderful theater company Original Practice Shakespeare Festival of using on-stage scrolls.  Since actors in The Bard’s time had to perform upwards of 5 different plays every week, they carried their lines on rolls of paper on stage with them in case they got lost.  Hence, an actor’s part is called a role!  We spent an inordinate amount of time creating the rolls and learning how to use them but when two actors was called upon that day to fill in unfamiliar parts, scrolls were a life saver.

All in all, the play was a mixed success.  From my perspective, the transitions took forever (mostly due to the understudies needing to change costumes between scenes), only one or two were loud enough to be heard in the echo chamber that is our school’s Commons, it never got dark enough for the glow sticks all over the stage to show, most actors just read their lines with very little emotion or character development.  Everyone decided it was best to stand in a line as close to the back wall as they could.  I realized later this was because every one of them had stage fright.  After all, most of the school was there in the audience, including the "big kids" from the middle and high school, plus a few parents and elders from the village.  But the audience really seemed to appreciate the effort and I only heard good comments from everyone.  A few classes left near the end because their schedules are so tight but they didn’t disturb the action as far as I could tell.  Within an hour of the play wrapping up (fifty-six minutes on the dot), I was asked if I was going to do one again next year, and it wasn’t with any kind of negative tone but genuine interest and some hope.

This year's Puck, next year's Benedick?
 

A few days before our performance, we had the traditional World’s Worst Rehearsal When The Director Has To Lose Her Temper and Yell At the Cast.  No one knew their lines, or their entrances. I couldn’t hear anyone.  Everyone complained about their costumes-too small, too long, too ugly.  After I yelled at the kids, they got it and went back to working hard on making the play not suck.  That night, I realized that I had been holding them to a higher standard than was realistic.  None of these kids had ever been in a real play, and few of them had ever gone to see one.  They literally did not know what it was supposed to look and feel and sound like.

Now they have some idea.  Next year they will learn a little bit more.  On tap, Much Ado About Nothing.  Seems fitting.

Moving Day

Moving D

Today, with help from neighbor’s Monty and Carol, and Greg the shop teacher who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, I switched apartments and moved upstairs. The only thing I didn’t like about my apartment this year was the lack of view. While I was able to see the changes in the tundra from rusty-green to white to brown and now back to greeny-rust, my best view out the windows was of the berm that surrounds the back of our building. Not too inspiring.

Upstairs in Cam the Counselor’s former apartment, I get mountains, hills, tundra, water and most of the village. On a clear day like today, I can even see the next village over, Twin Hills. This unit does not have a burbling toilet, so only time will tell if I grow to miss that particular white noise. I can see more of the runway, and in my time here am actually getting to know which plane is which. There was a huge commotion in my classroom a few weeks ago when we all heard a much heavier plane than usual coming in. "It’s the Coast Guard!" one student screamed. "Search and Rescue! I wonder who got lost?" It was rivaled in excitement among the kids only by the Everest plane that brings in big supplies. No disrespect to the Coast Guard who do such an important job, but I favor the Everest plane since it usually has ‘a little somethin’ special just for meeeeeeee.’

The furniture in this apartment is miles better than downstairs. My couch there was missing a full section, and I never used the recliner because it has so many springs poking my gazitska. I thought I liked the heavy country-kitchen table and chairs until I faced the prospect of swapping with the lighter Mission-style. I decided angles are more my style than curves, body-type notwithstanding. I have bookcases upstairs and sturdier dressers. There’s some kind of weird flat lamp thing in the bedroom that I hope is a sun lamp for the Dark Time. Plus, another bedside lamp-bonus! Now maybe I can go back to reading in bed (again, in the Dark Time, because last night the sunset wasn’t until 11:02 so night reading was not a problem).

Unfortunately, it wasn’t until Cam brought down all his leftover food, freezer and ridiculously large television set that it occurred to me to move into his space when he left. I had thought to move directly above to Nancy’s place but one look at D4’s view sealed the deal in my mind. Plus it gave me an entire extra week to move my stuff. Other than the heavy totes and a few large boxes (thanks again Carol, Monty and Greg!), I packed with my limitations in mind. Many trips with manageable loads rather than further injury (I banged up my ankle last week, more on that later when I write about the play) has worked out pretty well, and I am pretty sure by Monday I will have buns of steel. But having to move Cam’s supplies back up after he brought them down just a week ago is a bummer. A heavy bummer. Dude left enough food for a year!

To make the move more fun, and because I have the sense of humor of a fourteen year old boy, I labeled the boxes things like "severed human heads" and "sex toys." "Einstein’s brain" made it up okay as did "proof of alien visitation." Did I mention the sun is up until eleven pm? It makes people weird, I tell you.

Night and Day

 

A few months ago, my friend Lindsay sent me a list of topics she wished I would write about, including Living Where It’s Dark All The Time. For me, the dark wasn’t as much of a problem as Living Where It’s Light All The Time. Growing up in Seattle, there is a fair amount of darkness in the fall and wintertime, and the spring is often rainy and dreary so I feel like the Dark time wasn’t that big of an issue. My Portland apartment has great sunlight in the bedrooms but the living room is often a dark tomb. Who knew what a help that would be for me!  I like the dark.

When I moved here in August, it was light all the time. It was fun and exciting to see the sun up after 11pm during my training time in Dillingham, and when I moved to Togiak everything was awesome so it didn’t matter that the days were sixteen hours long.

Now that it is past spring and inching toward the Summer Soltice, the days are stretching out. When I get up, the sun shines into my kitchen. When I go to bed, the sun shines into my bedroom. I recently rigged up my version of "blackout" curtains by hanging the World’s Worst Blanket (probably a relic of the Civil War era made with compressed felt and the tears of Confederates) using thumb tacks and heavy paper clips over my Eastern-most window, but all that does is filter the golden sunlight into a light blue.

Sometimes I still have that sense of wonder when I am getting ready for bed, and see the incredible light shining down on the village. The pink clouds scudding next to the purple mists above the increasingly green tundra marvels me. But, by now, I am less enthralled by the constant light. Constant light means days stretch out. If it is a weekend, and I all I have to do is clean my apartment it seems to take so much longer when the shadows never seem to move. It’s like paddling against the current. I do stuff, I pass time but I never get the satisfaction of really feeling time pass. One night, I was starting a new book and found myself startled to find it was hours past my bedtime, because I had no visual clues that it was getting so late.

My students are feeling this excess of light also. I would wager that not a single one goes to bed before eleven and none are actually asleep before midnight. But they still have to get up and be in school awake and ready to use their brains at 9:30 in the morning. Some sleep through the morning, literally in a few cases. Some show up right around lunchtime. One doesn’t bother to come at all. The sunlight has somehow made him forget how to follow the rules and he spends more time under suspensions than not so his dad pulled him out rather than have to come and get him every day.

I find myself waking up in the middle of the night, usually around 3 am when it is truly dark. Or at least as dark as it’s going to get with the parking lot flood lights that never turn off. But from the living room, I can see all the way into the village and the amber street lights lining up the one road toward the school. Occasionally, there will be a car driving up the road. If it comes into the school lot, I know it’s the local cops doing their regular rounds. It is dark and nearly silent but for the hum of the freezer and fridge and the burble of the toilet. It calms me and I never have trouble falling back asleep when it is truly dark.

In less than two weeks, I will be in Seattle where the days pass, the shadows move and I can sleep at night because it is dark. Before midnight. What a thing!