One of the best — on many scales — classes I took in the K-12 grades was the ninth-grade English class where we produced a three-act play.Report
one of my happiest memories from high school was when we acted out scenes from King Lear (we were reading it at the time) and my group got the scene where Cornwall pulls out Gloucester’s eyes, and I was like I KNOW HOW WE CAN DO THIS, I’LL BE CORNWALL and we did it by seating “Gloucester” in a chair with his back to the audience, and I palmed a couple of grapes from my pocket, which I then squashed and threw on the floor.
it was deeply satisfying partly because it shocked the other students (I was known as pretty meek in high school)
(We had time to prepare, that was how I knew to have the grapes. I also borrowed an old fur vest from a friend of my mom’s; it looked kind of like a doublet)Report
Ninth grade was the last year of junior high, and our junior high building had a beautiful full theater built during the Depression. The class did everything: speaking and non-speaking roles, costuming, make-up, scenery flats, lighting, props, eventually the programs and posters. The romantic leads were cast by acclaim. Sandy and I had to audition to get the comic relief role(s).
I remember one afternoon where Sandy and I spent the whole period walking across stage repeating our lines while the lighting guys futzed with getting “moonlight on the cruise ship deck” right. The lighting guys were two jocks that most everyone expected to have as much sensitivity as a rock, but turned out to be perfectionists with a good eye.
There were supposed to be two performances: dress rehearsal for the rest of the junior high and an evening performance for relatives. As I recall, we ended up adding two matinees for the high school students and a second evening show for the more general public.
Someone even popped for a modest party after the final performance.Report
My guess is actual pins. My logic goes (1) the kids are playing at production, so admission has to be collected, (2) pins were readily available to kids (ask Mom), and (3) 1912 was well past the time when pins had become cheap to make. The kid on the extreme left “paying” certainly seems to be holding up pins. Think of it as playing poker for matches. You didn’t ever play poker for matches?
Sanity check. The average price of a cinema ticket in 1912 was seven cents. No way is the backyard play production going to be able to charge most of the cinema price for admission.Report
The matches would be a way to keep score. “I won the pot.” It makes sense positionally.
Is this one of those things where 5 pins are, effectively, worthless but 100 pins are, effectively, something you could sell?Report
Possibly. But I tend to believe it’s just a “price” that every kid in the neighborhood not involved in the production can pay. And paying, then going in to sit and chatter and wait for the opening curtain, that’s all part of the game.Report
Also remember that the ‘days of real sport’ ones are nominally set in the 1880s (i.e. nostalgia callbacks from Briggs’ own youth)Report
Apparently, a regular feature of the vaudeville / theater scene in the 2nd half of the 19th century were “Tom Shows” , based on Uncle Tom’s Cabin, some *very* loosely. (the wiki article says that some were just straight up minstrel shows, and in any case most shaved off all the rough edges of Stowe’s moral message”)Report
One of the best — on many scales — classes I took in the K-12 grades was the ninth-grade English class where we produced a three-act play.Report
one of my happiest memories from high school was when we acted out scenes from King Lear (we were reading it at the time) and my group got the scene where Cornwall pulls out Gloucester’s eyes, and I was like I KNOW HOW WE CAN DO THIS, I’LL BE CORNWALL and we did it by seating “Gloucester” in a chair with his back to the audience, and I palmed a couple of grapes from my pocket, which I then squashed and threw on the floor.
it was deeply satisfying partly because it shocked the other students (I was known as pretty meek in high school)
(We had time to prepare, that was how I knew to have the grapes. I also borrowed an old fur vest from a friend of my mom’s; it looked kind of like a doublet)Report
Ninth grade was the last year of junior high, and our junior high building had a beautiful full theater built during the Depression. The class did everything: speaking and non-speaking roles, costuming, make-up, scenery flats, lighting, props, eventually the programs and posters. The romantic leads were cast by acclaim. Sandy and I had to audition to get the comic relief role(s).
I remember one afternoon where Sandy and I spent the whole period walking across stage repeating our lines while the lighting guys futzed with getting “moonlight on the cruise ship deck” right. The lighting guys were two jocks that most everyone expected to have as much sensitivity as a rock, but turned out to be perfectionists with a good eye.
There were supposed to be two performances: dress rehearsal for the rest of the junior high and an evening performance for relatives. As I recall, we ended up adding two matinees for the high school students and a second evening show for the more general public.
Someone even popped for a modest party after the final performance.Report
5 pins == 5 cents?Report
My guess is actual pins. My logic goes (1) the kids are playing at production, so admission has to be collected, (2) pins were readily available to kids (ask Mom), and (3) 1912 was well past the time when pins had become cheap to make. The kid on the extreme left “paying” certainly seems to be holding up pins. Think of it as playing poker for matches. You didn’t ever play poker for matches?
Sanity check. The average price of a cinema ticket in 1912 was seven cents. No way is the backyard play production going to be able to charge most of the cinema price for admission.Report
The matches would be a way to keep score. “I won the pot.” It makes sense positionally.
Is this one of those things where 5 pins are, effectively, worthless but 100 pins are, effectively, something you could sell?Report
Possibly. But I tend to believe it’s just a “price” that every kid in the neighborhood not involved in the production can pay. And paying, then going in to sit and chatter and wait for the opening curtain, that’s all part of the game.Report
I got it.Report
Also remember that the ‘days of real sport’ ones are nominally set in the 1880s (i.e. nostalgia callbacks from Briggs’ own youth)Report
Apparently, a regular feature of the vaudeville / theater scene in the 2nd half of the 19th century were “Tom Shows” , based on Uncle Tom’s Cabin, some *very* loosely. (the wiki article says that some were just straight up minstrel shows, and in any case most shaved off all the rough edges of Stowe’s moral message”)Report