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.