If you've read some of the more recent postings on this blog, you'll see I talked about writing a short theater script about Flag Day - or to be more correct, the history of the flags of different countries, namely America, Canada, the United Kingdom and Russia.
We finally performed the play last Thursday and from what I was able to gather, it was pretty well received. We added one additional scene to the actually play and that was a short scene of Betsy Ross sewing the American flag according to the request of George Washington. Since we had a student who was willing to play a female for the play, we figured, "why not?" It turned out to be the best decision we made this term in theater as this scene was probably the best, and funniest, scene. Watching my student shout "Husband! Help!" after having sung "Red stripe. White stripe. Red Stripe. White Stripe." almost made me die from laughter like the rest in the audience.
This picture is from our brief reenactment of Francis Scott Key writing his famous poem "The Defense of Fort McHenry," which would become the lyrics of America's national anthem. It went well acting wise and I think the audience understood what was happening as we wrote a short slide explaining the action in Russian. The part that had me most worried was when I had the student playing Key start reading his poem and fade out as I gradually introduced the anthem being sung (I used a version performed by the US Military Academy choirs). I really hoped that playing the whole anthem wouldn't make the scene drag and in the end, I don't think it did.
You may not be able to tell but this is the Canadian scene. Since Canada's "Great Flag Debate" occurred in the 1960s, it was hard to find appropriate costumes. I actually did pick out some vests from our small costume room that they could wear (the kind of vests you can wear with a suit jacket), but the students essentially wore the closest thing on hand. This scene had a small hiccup as the students shouted "aye" and approved the wrong flag...
And here's our very brief presentation about England. To represent how King James of Scotland accepted the English crown, united Scotland with England and became King James of Great Britain, we had a bishop crown the 'King' while I read the section that explained how the UK flag is a combination of the flags of Ireland, England and Scotland.
Our King did look as if he was mourning the death of Queen Elizabeth I. His surprising somber yet semi-royal look surprised some audience members into chuckling.
After the play was probably more chaotic than the play itself or even the final last-second preparations before the play. This was mainly due to me having organized a small barbecue of sausages, juice, kvass and cookies. I purchased 56 sausages for people, expecting about each could have at least 2 sausages. However, my students devoured them within minutes (not joking, I would put the sausages on my little grill and have just enough time to sear them before the students themselves pulled the sausages off to eat them).
Next year, we won't be doing English theater, but since the soon-to-be 7th class will be going to England for its study trip, we'll spend most of the year preparing for England and learning about English culture. I've already started researching the topic and I'm devising a lesson plan which I hope will either be fun or interesting enough that the students won't have a problem focusing.
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