Drama
It all began when I was a little kid, I suppose. But the real thing did not really happen until I got to the States, where I spent a year in Drama class and got to be part of the musical we put on that year (and which happens to be my favorite musical so far) — Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story.
(Un)interestingly enough, I didn’t do much drama after I got back (except for my friends) until I started teaching at the bilingual J. A. Komensky Gymnazium in Kosice. Here I started the Drama Club with some of my eager students.
The first year we did a modernized version of the classical fairy tale - Seven Snow Whites and a Dwarf — my own creation, in which an attempt to clone Snow White ends in a disaster: the machine explodes, killing six of the dwarfs, leaving the last one bossed around by seven high-maintenance beauties. In all of this, I greatly appreciate the help of my American colleague Brenda Krueger.
Next year another American colleague was there to help with the staging of Our Scooby Dooby Town an adaptation of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” where I played (for lack of actors) the role of Mrs. Webb(and enjoyed myself thoroughly in my grandmother’s blue suit).
Free Fall is the name of the play my Drama Club managed to put together in 2004 (I think). It discusses the problems of Adam and Eve as parents and partners following their exile. Anyway, I thought it was a pretty good play, even though it’s not a Shakespeare.
The play itself was written by Drama Club members (they know) and I composed the music and sort of directed it (or, even better, I was the “overseer”). We got some money from Konto Orange for this activity, so we were able to perform in Spisska Nova Ves and Presov in addition to Kosice. That was fun. And one year later, we performed the play at a high school in Brussels (thanks to one of the Drama club members). That was totally worth it.
In case you want to get a taste of our Free Fall, you can check out the poster or click on one of the following links to listen to some music (mp3) from the play.
Enjoy!
Apart from these, we’ve done GJAK News, a short piece performed at the school’s 10th Anniversary celebration and we’ve performed at the annual Drama Festival in Kosice (e.g. with our own piece Lonely People or with Susan Beth Pfeffer’s World Affairs). And even though I’m currently again out of touch with drama for a while, I already have a lot of ideas for the near future. So, just wait and see. I love drama too much to give it up.