“Carver kids perform 'Exit the Body' - Abington Mariner” plus 1 more

Carver kids perform 'Exit the Body' - Abington Mariner

Posted: 15 Jan 2011 06:17 AM PST

It wasn't until the very end, when the cast of the Carver Drama Club's production of the murder-mystery farce Exit the Body was taking their bows, that audience members truly knew what was going on.

The audience had clearly enjoyed the show, laughing at most of the right places, guffawing where guffaws were clearly called for and surprised when it was their turn to be surprised.

But until they caught a glimpse of the smiles on the faces of their friends and family, the cast members, as they took their bows couldn't have realized what a good time was had by all.

Backstage pass

If the play was a farce – with slammed doors, screams, bodies appearing then disappearing and a wealth of loud-mouthed characters – it was Saturday Night Live backstage.

While there is the temptation for drama clubs to choose serious productions, Exit the Body seemed perfectly suited to that mix of irreverence and earnestness that exemplifies young adults.

In other words, they had fun.

They had fun getting their makeup on.

They had fun parading about in clothes that their parents would shudder to remember actually wearing out in public.

Even as the lights dimmed and the audience hushed and they stood about in the darkness behind the façade of the set waiting for their queues, they seemed less nervous than giddy.

Not that there was nothing to be nervous about.

There were really very few small roles in this play. There were several instances when there were five, six, and even up to 10 actors on the stage (or rushing on and off).

The cast and the crew are to be praised for managing – with very few unintended pratfalls – to maneuver about the crowded set, carrying the right props and reacting to the right sound and lighting queues and such.

Certainly there are more challenging roles for actors, but the success of any play or musical is equally dependent upon the management of the stagecraft, and from a stagecraft perspective, this farce was very complicated.

And yet everyone involved in the production, from Co-directors Moe Fuller and Tom McLean to the stagehands, seemed to revel in that complexity, convincingly climbing imaginary stairs to never-built second floors, changing clothes on the fly in the dark. And by the end of the final act, the audience seemed to be in on this inside (or backstage) joke.

Loose ends

It was a farce, though, with the traditional confusion between the good guys and the bad guys (and between guys and girls). Some things, however, did come to light.

For example, Jenny, the ditzy maid, was in fact – oh, my gosh! - a Pinkerton investigator.

And one of the dead bodies that later got up and walked and, even later, was suffering from amnesia was also (what do you know) a detective, too;

And the oversized, overstuffed character of Helen the real estate agent turned out to be "the boss."

But again, the biggest revelation that tied everything together and made the night worthwhile was the realization that no matter how much work goes into a production like this, no matter how many lines are flubbed or finessed, if the actors and crew are having a good time, the audience will share in the feeling.

Special Marks

Among the standouts that deserve a bit more praise for their work is…the entire backstage crew.

From the back, even in the dark, the work that went into the set is very apparent. And it not only has to look good, it has to work well. And it did.

Special praise is also deserved by the hairstyling, makeup, and clothes crew, which included Fuller, Shannon Jablonski, Tracy Perkins and Peg Blackwell. They were working on the actors' "looks" hours before the curtain went up and, in some cases, long after.

In order of their appearance,, the actors were Liz Dunlop, Makayla Silva, Kevin Weldon, Andrew Lauzon, Ava Nardullo, Emma Perkins, Andrew Somerville, Tristan Marshall, Michael LaChimia and Justin Knuth.

Lauzon, in the critical role of Helen, stood out in several ways: his outfits, his voice, his (her? The entire look was convincing) hair.

The only disappointment on this opening night was the attendance, but then you have to take into consideration that in the same school complex that Friday evening there was a basketball game and a gymnastics competition going on.

Here's hoping that everyone at those events had half as much fun.

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OK kids, it’s time to say your prayers - Chicago Sun-Times

Posted: 14 Jan 2011 03:58 PM PST

OK kids, it's time to say your prayers

Neil steinberg nsteinberg@suntimes.com Jan 14, 2011 09:24PM

If you go to certain Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods and glance up, you might notice an enigmatic wire strung across poles. It isn't a power line, it isn't a phone line, it's an eruv, a wire intended to create a symbolic enclosure in order to get around religious prohibitions against devout Jews carrying things outside of their homes on the Sabbath.

It's a rather arcane corner of faith, and might strike the non-believer as odd. If you truly felt that God didn't want you to carry your keys out of the house on Saturdays, you would contrive not to do so. Stringing a wire seems a curious dodge; if you are nimble enough to cheat with the wire, why not ignore the don't-carry rule altogether? You can always atone for your lapse come Yom Kippur.

Such collisions between the airy abstractions of following a faith and the practical demands of navigating the real world are returning to an unexpected venue — our public schools — as the 7th Circuit Court on Thursday lifted its injunction against "The Silent Reflection and Student Prayer Act" and the Illinois Board of Education immediately announced that it expects all schools to begin enforcing this strange ritual immediately, on the first morning of school next week.

"This period shall not be conducted as a religious exercise," the board announced, quoting the law, "but shall be an opportunity for silent prayer."

As before, the board gives individual schools flexibility as to how long a "moment" should be. Readers might recall that when the law was enforced in 2007, I visited Greenbriar Elementary in Northbrook and found that their moment of silence was five seconds long — they had considered 10 seconds, but the kids were impatient. Some schools had a three-second moment of silence, a little symbolic sliver of time to satisfy the Illinois Legislature, not too far removed from a wire to placate the God of Deuteronomy.

The actual 7th Circuit ruling was issued last October, and I waded through its 52 pages as best I could. The court's thinking is that the silent moment's religious implications are OK because there is also practical value in a mandatory silence to "calm" students — an unproven assertion made ridiculous by the length of time. If being hushed for five seconds had any pedagogical value, teachers wouldn't need an act of legislature to do it. You could just as easily argue that a moment of silence uses up a bit of the limited supply of endurance that children have for the frequent tedium already imposed by public education.

If the Illinois Legislature required all public school students to spread a prayer rug and genuflect toward Mecca five times a day, that would also have practical benefits — yoga-like stretching, a brief lesson in cardinal directions and geography come immediately to mind, but I'm sure there are others.

But nobody would legislate a mandatory kowtow toward Mecca, even disguised as a "Silent Gesture of Obeisance" or whatever.

What can't be said too many times is that students are already free to pray whenever they like. They can recite Hail Marys as they walk down the hall, they can read the Holy Bible during study hall. Nobody stops them. What this effort is all about is Downstate legislators chafing at secular society. Unsatisfied with practicing their own faith in their own church, they long to flex their muscles, crafting this moment of silence sham to do it.

Opposing this is not hostility toward religion. If you feel that an eruv is vital to your faith, and the neighbors don't mind the eyesore, go for it. The glory of this country is you can shave your head and join a monastery, you can put a bowl of fruit in front of your pumice statue of Ganesh. I'll have your back.

But for those who have their hands on the levers of power in government, even a reviled, ridiculed body like the Illinois State Legislature, which recently reached into our pockets — believer and atheist alike — and grabbed more dough to finance their fumblings, for them to press this symbolic bit of empty piety on the public schools is just cruel. Teachers are in a battle, principals are in a battle, students huff and struggle to learn this mass of information — Henry Hudson and volcanoes and calculus. Into this epic struggle rides our bowl haircut legislators, with their little boutonniere of symbolism — a wilted carnation, a bit of ribbon — they want to pin to the chest of every student, every day, like it or not.

No, the schools won't crumble, at least not more than they already are. And maybe students will learn a valuable lesson: that their parents are idiots, some of them, hypocrites eager to impose their beliefs on others in a way they'd denounce were it done to them.

Kids Clothing

Saturday, January 15, 2011