Some of the gang has been at this long enough to merit lifetime achievement awards. Tom Alessandri of Bellarmine College Prep, San Jose, has been directing theater there for over 22 years, while Linda Felice has been doing the same at Jesuit College Prep in Dallas since '81. Ann Moyles at Scranton Prep can boast of 22 years, while Peter Devine has just stepped down after 25 years of directing at St. Ignatius College Prep in San Francisco.
The veteran of veterans, however, is probably Bill O'Malley, SJ, who has chalked up about 50 years of theater work at Fordham Prep, McQuaid Jesuit, and, as he puts it, while incarcerated in Jesuit formation.
Others, like Kathy Kane at Kansas City's Rockhurst High and Ross Pribyl, SJ, at St. Ignatius College Prep in Chicago, having each survived their first two years in the business, bring the enthusiasm of newcomers to the conversation.
These directors will tell you horror stories—of sets collapsing, fires erupting on and off stage, costumes malfunctioning, lights going out, and other stage nightmares. At Brophy Prep in Phoenix, one actor's performance in The Pajama Game was described as "daring" and "brilliant" because he had a fever of over 103! At a Dallas Jesuit College Prep performance of Hamlet, the Gravedigger failed to show up to provide Yorick's skull. Without missing a beat, the high-school Hamlet gestured to the empty grave and said, "Horatio, seest thou yon new-made grave? It remindeth me of a friend—long dead now. Yorick was his name," and went right into the "Alas, poor Yorick" speech without benefit of skull.
 Company magazine has run many articles about Jesuits and theater, including one on Fr. Jack Warner's teatro la fragua, a Honduran theater group; another about St. Omers College, a seventeenth-century French Jesuit school in France that had a strong drama curriculum; articles by actors Fr. Gerald Walling, SJ, and Paul McCarren, SJ; and a long list of other Jesuits in the performing arts. Just go to www.companymagazine.org and type in "theater" in the search engine. |
Tevye, in Scranton Prep's Fiddler on the Roof, entered his house by pushing a door instead of pulling on it. The entire wall of the house began to fall forward. As the stage crew responded speedily, the young Tevye called out to his wife, "Golde, call the carpenter!" The audience went wild.
The range of offerings in these Jesuit high school programs is wide, as you might expect, challenging artists and audiences alike to "find God in all things." Shakespeare is represented, of course, everything from Hamlet and Twelfth Night to The Tempest. Loyola High in Los Angeles put on an original musical version of Macbeth, called Motown Macbeth, and director Walter Wolfe says people still talk about it "as their favorite show of all time" with "some movement toward having it produced professionally."
American dramatic masterpieces such as Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest are balanced by farces, including Noises Off and the familiar comedies of Woody Allen and Neil Simon. Some schools have successfully mounted such daunting theatrical epics as The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby and Les Misérables.
The great American tradition of the high school musical lives on as well at Jesuit schools, many of which have put on the standards, from South Pacific and Hello Dolly to West Side Story and Godspell, to name just a few.
Other musicals often considered too challenging for a high school or not well enough known to attract an audience—from A Chorus Line to Batboy: The Musical—have also succeeded at Jesuit high schools around the country. Musicals will continue to appear on high school stages, if John Craig, director at De Smet Jesuit High in St. Louis, has any say. "I'm of the opinion," he says, "that musical comedies hold the meaning of life."
Several schools have used musicals to reach out to the community. After 9/11, New York's Xavier High, which suffered the loss of alumni, parents, and family in the attacks on the World Trade Center—which was within sight of the school—performed Bernstein's On the Town. The adventures of three WW II sailors on leave in the Big Apple was true to its reputation as a valentine to New York. When Jesuit High in Portland staged The Music Man, it also conducted a used instrument drive for a group trying to keep music education going in the public schools, which were facing budget cuts.
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Some of the high school drama programs have dared to go where no high school has gone before, courting controversy among parents and audiences. Peter Devine is proud of St. Ignatius's (San Francisco) "adventurous" production of Jesuit playwright Bill Cain's Stand Up Tragedy, set in a Nativity-type school in the inner city. "Challenging material, if it supports our values, is very appropriate," he says.
As challenging were the productions at St. Ignatius in Chicago and Xavier High in New York of The Laramie Project, a documentary play about the hate-crime murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student in Wyoming. Ross Pribyl, SJ, reports that there was "nary a dry eye at any performance." A few days later, at the start of Pribyl's English class, a student who had apparently made a homophobic comment was told by a fellow student, "I can't believe you could say that after having seen the show."
Chris Derby, SJ, whose plans to produce the play at Xavier provoked some threatening telephone calls, said that the play inspired some "personal best" performances from his actors and an article by George Anderson, SJ, in America magazine. And, as a beautiful example of art meeting life, Tom Alessandri tells of a student who played the part of a Laramie teenager named Jedediah Schultz in a Bellarmine Prep production of The Laramie Project. The student went on to study at Yale and was cast opposite the real-life Jed Schultz in a play.
Mike Wilkinson of Bellarmine Prep in Tacoma provides one of the most touching accounts of a controversial production. In 1995 his troupe presented Steven Dietz's play, God's Country, a piece about the white supremacist movement in the Northwest and the murder of Jewish radio talk-show host Alan Berg.
To deal with the considerable negative reaction the play encountered, the cast held a forum after every performance. At one of the discussions, an audience member stood up and yelled at the company, "Why on earth would you want to be involved in a production like this? That was an awful thing to see." Wilkinson remembers that amid the audience applause that followed the critic's outcry, "a small older man stood up and quietly took off his sweater and unrolled his sleeve. He showed the students a tattooed number on his arm and said, 'This is why you're doing this play.' "
Presenting powerful social messages is only one of the goals of good high school theater. When asked what they want to see happen in their drama programs, the directors' various answers kept returning to the same themes. Most were insistent that they did not see themselves as primarily preparing students for careers in theater, though all can name graduates who have gone on to succeed in film, theater, and television. True to the Jesuit tradition, they kept returning to the language of character formation. They spoke of making students more self-confident, more focused, more disciplined, more aware of their specific talents and skills, more willing to take risks and stretch themselves, learning the value of commitment, and desirous to do their best in whatever they undertake.
As Paul Buckley of Gonzaga College High in Washington, D.C., puts it, theater should teach students that "through hard work, dedication, and sacrifice they can create a magical experience for the people involved and the people watching."
Likewise, these directors see theater as an unforgettable experience of community for young people whose need to "belong" can lead them in much less positive directions. Sometimes the experience of the group is quite specific to the theater. Bill O'Malley speaks of a mix of confidence and vulnerability: "I want them to realize, inwardly, that when they let go, we'll catch them—and that they have to catch one another—be there on cue, improvise when somebody screws up the lines, yield to one another, and find out how strong they really are."
Dead Man WalkingAn Opportunity for Jesuit Schoolsby Gene Sessa, SJ | 
| Sr. Helen Prejean, CSJ | 
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About two dozen Jesuit high schools and universities will be the first to perform actor Tim Robbins's play Dead Man Walking. He derived the play from the movie he wrote and directed that was based on the book of the same name, which was written by Sr. Helen Prejean, CSJ, about her experience of ministering to a death-row inmate. Robbins made it a point to invite Jesuit institutions to be the first to produce the play. "Tim has chosen Jesuit schools," says Prejean, "because he has high regard for the way Jesuit schools emphasize social justice as integral to Catholicism." Oscar-winner Robbins hopes the play will "widen the circle of public discourse on the death penalty." He calls his play a work in progress; he wrote it because "raising questions, promoting public discourse is what theater is all about." Participating schools are also asked to provide Robbins with suggestions on the play, which he will consider as he writes the definitive script for publication. Gene Sessa, SJ, teaches theater at Jesuit College Prep in Dallas | |||
Chris Derby adds, "Being part of an ensemble is an extraordinary experience of cooperation and trust among the actors and with the creative leaders. Young people learn that they have gifts and that turning themselves and their talents over to a group is a liberating and challenging experience."
Ross Pribyl says, "I hope my students find their second family . . . I hope to provide them with an environment where they can gather with peers and in an artistic and creative manner, explore the human condition . . . a place where they feel they 'belong' and feel supported by others." Jeff Hall, who along with Elaine Kloser handles theater at Jesuit High in Portland, describes his program as "centered on collaboration and story and service . . . theater is service to your fellow players, to your audience, to your community, and ultimately to a story." Scranton Prep's department website, www.theprepplayers.com, offers a summary statement with which all might agree: "Like the early followers of Ignatius, the word company has special meaning for the members of the Scranton Prep Players."
Meanwhile, there is much to learn about the art of theater itself. According to Fairfield Prep's drama director, Trevor Fanning, "high school theater should not play down to an audience but strive to give the most professional theater experience for everyone involved."
Other directors expressed their hope that, at the minimum, students would develop into avid theatergoers. Tony Braithwaite, at St. Joseph's Prep in Philadelphia, tries to instill a love for theater in his students by arranging trips to shows in Philadelphia and New York, posting theater-related articles on a bulletin board, bringing in guest speakers, and more.
Faye Ryan at Loyola Academy in Wilmette, Illinois, speaks of "the arts as a primary path in the human journey to truth, with theater as one of the most visible, communal, and accessible of those paths." Dorothy Dunnion, theater director at Brophy Prep, sees theater as a way to expose students to "new ideas and people and ways of learning." No wonder that Walter Wolfe concludes, "As it was five hundred years ago, the theater at a Jesuit institution should be a synthesis of the student's entire learning experience."
They also shared their dreams and plans for the future. Loyola Academy's drama department participated in a theater festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, as will Rockhurst High next summer; Rockhurst and Portland Jesuit are two of the many Jesuit high schools involved in the Dead Man Walking Project [see box story, page 30].
While many of them are buoyed by the support of faculty colleagues and administrators—even in the crucial areas of facilities and budgets—some also shared their hopes for additional faculty and school policies that would offer them the same status as the athletic programs enjoy. Yet, with all the demands and limitations, they kept repeating words like "fun" and "joy" to describe their involvement in high school theater. Ann Moyles asked, "Can you tell that I love what I do?"
 Michael Tueth, SJ, associate professor in the Communication and Media Studies Department at Fordham University, has worked in high school and college theater and has extensive experience in television production. His study of television comedy, "Laughter in the Living Room," is scheduled for publication this fall. |
Peter Devine is convinced that the continued involvement of our high schools in theater is a sign of our Jesuit character. "Everyone forgets," he says, "the great Jesuit tradition in European drama and the Jesuit invention of the art form of ballet. The early Jesuits understood the need to engage both the heart and the mind in an expression of God's love. That is slowly coming back into Jesuit education in the United States."
Devine sees this as a corrective to an over-emphasis on competition in academics, athletics, and social status in our schools and also in society at large. "This is not only a Jesuit or Catholic issue, but a major American cultural issue. We need to be the leaders in a more counter-cultural 'voice,' and the arts, particularly theater, is a great venue."
As it has for almost five hundred years, Jesuit theater continues to be an agent of change. Tony Braithwaite speaks of "a visceral sense that theater—if done well—has amazing powers. It can change people's lives." Ann Moyles confesses that the student comments that have meant most to her are messages like, "Thank you, Mrs. Moyles. The Players changed my life."
Mike Wilkinson, however, dares to envision not only change but also creation. "I dream that we can get caught up by the fire in the play, be it laughter or nostalgia, sweeping choreography or dark shadows. That we can, each time, believe. And create a real world out of that belief together." 
Page maintained by Company Magazine, editor@companymagazine.org. Copyright(c) 2004. Created: 11/16/2004 Updated: 11/25/2004