hesherman1.substack.com: School Violence Awareness Week at Ocean County Vocational and Technical School’s Grunin Performing Arts Academy in New Jersey will come and go this month without one of its tentpole events, performances by students of The Wave (aka The Third Wave), a play designed to show how easily societies – and high schoolers – can fall under the sway of Fascist ideologies.
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There is a lot of discourse on the internet about the emotional abuse that happens inside high school theatre departments and how fashionable and expected it is to cry and break down about every horrible thing that has happened to you in your 16 years during the famous ‘cry circles’. I do think my version of this in highschool did a great job of really teaching script analysis and connecting it to our own lives. I wonder if the students in this production also had this experience. I also think it’s interesting that no students have spoken out about this situation. One time our show almost got cancelled due to a snow day, and it was a blood bath. Perhaps the fact that the kids are outraged is a sign that they feel that this show needs more time. I also would like to mention that both the play and the primetime afterschool special are based on a novel from the 80s that I read in middle school, and I didn’t even know the other two adaptations existed.
I found this article to be very intriguing. I think it’s an interesting problem to debate - the value of performing such a politically charged show, versus the importance of making sure its company is ‘properly educated’ about the context of the play and the issues it brings up. I think that, especially in our political climate, where the fear of fascism resurging is quickly becoming more and more prevalent, it’s important to be able to create and perform art that brings up important issues and brokers discussion about the subject. For this same reason, however, I can also understand why the school found it so important that the kids be properly educated to work on the show; however, completely cancelling the production was definitely the wrong move. I think it’s great that they found a compromise - the school delayed the performance instead of cancelling it, and created an entire courseload for its performers, meant to educate them both on the show itself and the historical context surrounding it.
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