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The Bilingual Department's Drama Class Takes Center Stage


                                                                                    Bilingual Department Ms. Jamie Rhein 

 On  March 23,  literary greats such as Sophocles, Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams visited    
     NEHS as the  Bilingual Department's Drama elective students took to the stage. Compressing 
     more than 2000  years  of Western  drama  history into an hour and a half play, the 33 drama 
     students performed roles that ranged  from  the Three Witches in Shakespeare's "Macbeth" to 
     Walter, Travis and RuthYounger, members of an African-American family trying for a better
     life in 1950s inner-city Chicago in Lorainne Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun." 

  Conceived and directed by Bilingual  teachers  Sarah  Meek  and Jamie  Rhein,  "The Western 
      Drama Retrospective" treated parents, students and faculty to a series of  12 separate  scenes 
      chronologically linked with historical  fact.  Starting  with  Antigone  by  Sophocles from the 
      Golden Age of Greece and ending with  James  McLure  The  Day  They Shot John Lennon. 
      from the early 1980s. The retrospective presented a pattern of  narration followed by scenes,  
      each  complete with  changing  stage  settings  and  backdrops.  Not  only did the audience 
      become transported to the living room scenes of Ibsen's , A Doll's House, Moliere's Tartuffe, 
      and  Wilde's  The  Importance  of  Being  Ernest,  they  also  learned  about  the playwrights' 
      influences. Like when Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible, not only was he portraying the lives 
      of the Puritans in Massachussetts during the Salem Witch Trials; he was making a commentary 
      about the McCarthy era trials in 1950s America that were  designed to "expose"  Communists. 
      Other  plays  like,  Igmar  Bergman's The  Seventh Seal,  and  William's Orpheus Descending 
      examined  issues  of  the  meaning  of  life  and relationships while Fools, by Neil Simon was 
      simple light-hearted fun.

   To create such a project,  the  students,  ranging from ninth to twelfth grade, learned lines and   
     practiced their parts both in and out of class for two months. Many took on the roles of people 
     older or younger than them and, due to the lack of female parts, many of the girls artfully took 
     on the roles of men.   As well as the students' dedication, the good graces of the Experimental 
     side of the school  led  to  the  play' success. Offices and departments like Student Affairs, art 
     and the principal's lent furniture and props, while others lent us keys to use the auditorium, as 
     well as let items such  as  a  couch and wooden stumps share the stage (for what seemed to be 
     weeks on end).

   To  all  those  who  helped make the Bilingual Department's "Western Drama Retrospective" a 
     hit, a heartfelt "Thank-you!"

      

Artigone A Raisin in the Sun

The Day They Shot John Lennon

Orpheus Descending