- --Sunday, January 21, 3:00 p.m., Montrose HS (world premiere!)
- --Monday, January 22, 2:45 p.m., Montrose HS (school performance)
- --Thursday, Janaury 25, 9:35 a.m., Brandon Valley Performing Arts Center (Region I-B One-Act Contest... in Rep. Roger Hunt's hometown!)
All performances are free and open to the public. The show lasts just 40 minutes, so make the short drive to Montrose or Brandon and see what our young people can do with some of the serious issues facing South Dakota. Spread the word! Bring your friends! It will be worth it.
Just a note on the difficulty of doing theater in a small town: I went to the shop this afternoon to work on props for the show. I had left a piece of plywood next to some other set lumber. Just to make sure no shop students tried to commandeer my wood for an end table, I had painted "DRAMA" on the plywood. This afternoon, beneath my handiwork, I found someone has added the epithet of choice among the coarser young people of our school: "GAY".
ReplyDeleteDrama... gay -- that's the level of discourse one hears around here. If it's different, if it's not sports, if it's mentally challenging, certain characters label it "gay".
Call me oversensitive, but I would suggest that athletes never face this sort of disrespect or derision. No one hangs a sign on the goalposts reading "homo" or scrawls "queer" on the basketball court (at least no one from the team's own school). And in most parts of the civilized world, children learn not to use such language as insults in the first place. Alas, the civilized world may not be so extensive as I had hoped.
But I will keep trying to extend civilization's reach. Theater is about educating people, helping them understand themselves and each other better. That applies to the actors on the stage as much as the audience enjoying their performance. Perhaps someday the shop-class epithet sprayer will attend a play or even have the courage to participate in one and learn to overcome his own insecurity and accept difference.
Ah, diatribe over -- now back to the issue at hand! We won't let cowardly bigots of any sort stop our show -- don't let them stop you from coming! See you in the theater!
So what's the premise of the show?
ReplyDeleteAn excellent question, Steve! And since you probably won't be able to make the drive to see the show, I'll give you a brief summary. As you've seen from other entries on this blog, last year's referendum on HB 1215 got me thinking quite a bit about what it means to say "I'm pro-life." The show thus addresses how South Dakota's approach to all sorts of issues -- e.g. jobs, health insurance, education, agriculture, drinking -- would change if our politicians and voters sincerely and consistently treated "life" as their primary value.
ReplyDeleteSounds interesting. I hope it's well received.
ReplyDeleteAlthough judging from the earlier comment, it's clear some of the students could care less. That's a shame.
I'm sure our high school drama productions probably received some of the same coarse feedback, although I don't remember anyone ever tampering with our sets like that.
I do remember a headline in the school paper that refered to thespians that many re-wrote to say, you guess it, 'lesbians'.
The first reviews are in for our world premiere on the Montrose stage:
ReplyDelete"Powerful!" says one mom.
"You covered both sides," says another dad.
"Are you going to have a job next week?" says my dad.
We played to a Sunday afternoon crowd of just under a hundred (that's a fifth of the town -- a proportionate crowd in Sioux Falls would be 30,000!). No flats fell over, no platforms collapsed, no kids fell off stage. In high school theater, absence of catastrophe can be a measure of success.
But the kids know I hold them to a higher standard. They aren't on the stage just to recite their lines; they're on stage to learn... and in this remarkable case, to teach, to raise questions and spark discussions about important issues.
It was intriguing and I found myself encompassing many emotions as I watched. At times I became defensive, other times I found myself giggling at the hypocrisy. I was saddened and moved by a couple of realizations that I had never made before. In the end it was entertaining as usual and this year I felt like I learned a thing or two.
ReplyDelete