Paradise Creek students see words come to life

Each year English teacher Cyndi Faircloth has a group of students read serious literary works and conduct an analysis, usually focusing on the writings of William Shakespeare. This year Faircloth decided to take a different approach with her students at Paradise Creek Regional High School in Moscow.

After reading through a few acts of Shakespear's "Othello," Faircloth asked the students to identify some of the major underlying themes. As with most tragedies, the play was heavily centered on betrayal, hatred and death.

She then asked each student to write a five to 10 minute play based on the themes. As students worked through each draft of the play, fellow students would act out the work in front of the class, and the writer was able to evaluate and edit along the way. For the grand finale, the students will be seeing their plays performed by actors within the community on the stage at Kenworthy Theater in downtown Moscow. The event, "One Act Plays: Inspired by Shakespeare's Othello" will take place 1:30-3 p.m. Thursday and is free and open to the public.

Local actors Cathy Brinkerhoff, Joseph Erhard Hudson, Kelly Quinnett and Roger Wallins will be taking turns performing 13 plays, all written and produced by students.

"It is a way to take the class a step further," Faircloth said.

Faircloth, along with teaching artist Judy Sobeloff, applied for grant money from the Idaho Commission on the Arts and the Latah County Arts and Culture Committee to get the project started at the alternative school. They were thinking of a way to get the students to write plays and thought if they were going to write them, someone should act them.

What Faircloth wasn't expecting was a class full of boys and one lone girl. She said boys tend to learn differently than girls, which has created a challenge in a class that leans heavily toward one gender.

"Boys find the creative side more challenging unless they are big readers so this has been a stretch for quite a few of them," Faircloth said.

She said one of the biggest hurdles is seeing the small details through, such as stage direction and physically writing in when it becomes a new day in the play. She said the details seem to be harder to visualize.

Faircloth said having the students act out the plays and having the actors rehearse with them has allowed them to "hear when the language is too stiff" and help them change the language to be more natural for the actor.

"I am putting kids already at risk out there and hoping it is successful," Faircloth said. "It is not routine and I hope it works well."

Senior Robert Knight wrote his play, "The Office Devastation," about an assistant working to get back at his boss. The assistant switches out the boss's wife's medication for poison, killing her and framing his boss for the death. In the end the assistant realizes he is not liked by many in the workplace and ends up shooting himself.

"It is a major tragedy," Knight said. He said he took the basics from "Othello" and turned it into a more modern story.

Seeing the actors rehearse his play "made it come alive so I could actually fix what I had. I am really excited for Thursday to see how it goes down."

Knight said he had many problems writing essays and getting through the thesis and the body but playwrighting came much easier to him. An actor himself, he reads many playwrights and had the opportunity to combine the two which made the project come together for him.

Junior Alvin LeSarte took a more comedic approach with his play "Lies in Disguise." In his play a girl likes a boy who does not feel the same. The boy strings her along but in the end she finds out he has been cheating on her for quite some time. The catch? No ones dies. Actually, he said, it is pretty funny. He said he prefers to write plays over essays because "it is easier to make it how you want and it has been pretty fun acting them out."

Sobeloff said at first she had reservations about doing a dark, grim play such as "Othello" but it has worked out great. She said seeing the students act out the plays has been hilarious and she is excited that every student has produced a play that they are willing to have performed. She said there is a lot of heart and humor in each student's work and she has seen emotional depth in many of the stories.

"It is a huge confidence booster to have these actors perform their plays and have an audience," Sobeloff said. "They get to write something and it comes alive."

Sunny Browning can be reached at (208) 883-4639, or by email to sbrowning@dnews.com.