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Sunday EDITION
Volume 2 | Issue 104
oxfordcitizen.com
Sunday, April 17, 2016
Inside 2 News
Kiwanis Double Decker Arts contest a huge hit
4 News
CHANING GREEN | OXFORD CITIZEN
Students Sam Hartnett, left, and Gretchen Bartholomew, right, at a rehearsal for “Inherit the Wind.” The play marks 90 shows under the direction of theater teacher John Davenport.
Oxford High School has officially put on 90 productions under Davenports leadership BY CHANING GREEN NEWS WRITER
Oxford High School’s theater kids aren’t just theater kids. The clique or even stigma of participating in the art form is something that theater teacher John Davenport has worked hard to break down during his 16 years at OHS. OHS just wrapped up their production of “Inherit the Wind,” a dramatization of the infamous 1925 Scopes Trial that rocked the American South and dominated headlines around the country. The production was staged as a radio broadcast, each actor running up to old-timey microphones at the front of the stage to deliver their lines. Two actors sat at a desk on the far right of the stage to provide Foley. There were about 80 kids involved in the production of the play. The students varied in age. They were involved in a variety of different extracurriculars. These kids came from band, football, baseball, choir; they were all there because they loved theater and wanted to be a part of the show. Including this play, Davenport has di-
rected and put on 90 shows during his time at Oxford High School. He runs the school’s theater department –and that’s how it seems to function, as an entire department rather than an afterschool activity– the way theater companies operate in the real world. They put on shows in seasonal cycles. There are two seasons in a school year. Each season has at least four main stage shows and one show that they use for competition. In the upcoming year, Davenport will have produced 100 shows with the school. He is trying to figure out how to mark the momentous occasion. He could do throwbacks to his favorite shows he has directed over the years, the ones that were the most popular with the audience or perhaps the ones that the students loved the most. Or, he’s considering, he could just treat it like any other season and just pick shows that he knows will challenge the kids and teach them more about the art that he has dedicated his life to sharing with them. Davenport grew up in a small town in Central Kentucky. The town had an active theater scene due to the university
that resided there. He spent much of his life being an active member of that theater community and began his college career in the program. He said that he got through his second year at the school when he realized he had learned all he could from that deparment. He applied as a transfer student at the University of Mississippi and was accepted. Besides a short, two-year stint in Michigan immediately upon gradating, he has been in Oxford ever since. Before running away to Michigan, Davenport taught for one semester at the high school. Their theater teacher quit out of nowhere and they needed someone to fill the position. He took the job, and he loved it. Davenport directed a musical that semester and that is when he realized he loved teaching and directing. The satisfaction of it all, of knowing you made a difference and sharing the feeling of having pulled off a performance that everyone has been working hard on for weeks, that’s why, he said, he does it. When it was time to leave that semesTURN TO PRODUCTIONS PAGE 4
University Police Department welcomes two new officers.
11 Sports
Dominating. That’s what the Oxford Chargers and Lady Chargers were in the Division 2-5A track meet held at Bobby Holcomb Field.
12 Sports
Rebels’ Freeze is for a new-look spring game.