Senior Leadership

It's time that our seniors step up, take the lead, and set the tone for MANN SHOW 2008.

Each year, our club adapts its name to honor our graduating seniors. Last year we were MANN SHOW 2007. This year we're MANN SHOW 2008. Next year, we'll be MANN SHOW 2009. This year's freshman class will graduate as members of MANN SHOW 2011. Because of this, each graduating class bears the responsibility of leaving a worthy legacy.

I've met with most of the Class of 2008. I've told them that I am looking for their leadership on all matters related to our program. Thus far, four MS2008 seniors have contributed an amazing original play for our spring production. Several seniors are doing exceptional work in the Drama IV Honors play (THE DINING ROOM). One senior, Jocelin Lehner, auditioned for a college theatre scholarship this weekend. But...I'm looking for more.

This coming Tuesday night is our annual parents meeting. I want to see all of our seniors' represented at that meeting. Karen Young will be in town in just two weeks. I want to take several of our seniors to her Saturday workshop. I want to see our seniors working with the Drama II students to help build a packed house for the upcoming Show of Plenty.

I want the seniors to set our activity schedule for November. You guys tell me what local plays you want to go see...what films...what events. use this forum to comment and suggest ideas. But do it quickly. I post the activities list on the first of each month. That means I need your suggestions by Wednesday night.

Come on seniors, step up and make this club what you want it to be. You only get one shot at being a Mann Show senior. Make your shot count.

Tuesday at CCES

FROM GUIDEWRITE.COM

Der Besuch der alten Dame ("THE VISIT of the Old Lady") premiered in Zurich in 1956, when Friedrich Durrenmatt was 35. It was such a success that productions sprang up in England and America over the next two years.

Durrenmatt called this story "A Tragic Comedy." More than any other of his plays, this story of an old lady who returns home to wreak an exact and merciless vengeance on her former lover intimately joins comedy and tragedy to support each other in nearly every scene.

The play really has three major characters: the old lady, Claire Zachanassian; her former lover and object of her ruthless justice, Alfred Schill; and the people of the town of Gullen, who make up a kind of composite representation of society itself. Through these characters, Durrenmatt is able to give the audience a darkly comic, breathless, and in the end, unanswerable debate about the nature of justice, redemption and community.

Claire is a hodgepodge of patched-together artificial limbs, held together only by her hate. Since her betrayal at the hands of Schill and the people of Gullen, she has spent her life in a single-minded vengeance. Her justice is god-like. Across all of Europe, she pursues the two men who lied about her in court like a fury; they are castrated and made her slaves. Durrenmatt compares her to an ancient idol. She is like the statue of Justice - eternal, something out of myth. When the townspeople first refuse her offer of a billion marks for the life of Alfred Schill, she says quietly, "I'll wait," and you can imagine her waiting centuries.

Amazingly, we find ourselves cheering her on; as the play begins, she is the only character who speaks the unadorned truth. In The Visit, characters use language to hide their real intentions. As Durrenmatt writes, "Today man lives in a world which he knows less than we assume. He has lost his image and has become a victim of images." In The Visit, he puts the preconceptions that get us through day-to-day life under the microscope.

Although Durrenmatt decried symbolism ("Misunderstandings creep in, because people desperately search the hen yard of my drama for the egg of explanation which I steadfastly refuse to lay."), it is hard not to see the poverty of Europe during the Depression and the slow growth of fascism in-between the lines in The Visit. With the ashes of World War II still in their mouths, the people of Europe in the 1950's faced the growing Cold War and the shadow of the atomic bomb. The question of how a man can hold on to his ideals in the face of grinding poverty was still a strong one. Many saw Claire Zachanassian as a symbol of that desperate fear, but Durrenmatt was steadfast: "Claire Zachanassian represents neither justice nor the Marshall Plan, nor the apocalypse; let her be just that which she is, namely the richest woman in the world who is enabled by her money to act like the heroine of a Greek tragedy, absolutely, cruelly, perhaps like Medea..."

Aren't some of you working on this?

TELL US ABOUT IT!

Anyone up for a filmmaking contest?

Really great math teacher, Mrs. Ballard wonders if there are Mann Show 2008 members willing to represent J.L. Mann in this video contest.

The contest aims to convince South Carolina high school students of the importance of healthy living by getting them to make pro-health television commercials. You know the deal: teens eat all this awful "food" and never exercise...and so there's this national obesity epidemic and growing rates of chronic disease. I mean, some people think it's even more serious than global warming!

Just imagine: the most unhealthy teenagers in America—video geeks—will be making films to teach the rest of us how to be, well, healthy.

So...anybody want to do this?