volume X X XVII
October 2011
issue 3
Tiger Times s e o u l i n t e r nat i o na l s c h o o l itigertimes.com
Drama Club to perform ‘Sweeney Todd’ on Halloween By Mark Kim
A deranged barber slits his unexpecting victims’ throats and dispatches them to the basement through a revolving trapdoor. Upon stripping the dead corpses of any valuable items, the barber bakes the their corpses into meat pies and sells them to unsuspecting customers. From Oct. 31 to Nov. 5, the Drama Club will reenact these blood-curdling scenes from “Sweeney Todd”—a play about one of the most famous and brutal serial killers depicted in Broadway history. “[The play] is going to be gory,” said John Rider, director. “It’s going to be as gory and bloody as we can make it, which is why we are not having a [performance for the] middle school. The opening night is Halloween, and there is a reason for that.” This is the Drama Club’s first attempt at a melodrama, a play with dramatic and thrilling events that attract the audience. “Sweeney Todd” will be performed specifically for high school students. The Drama Club will incorporate horrific elements that high school students are interested in; gory scenes such as blood spurting out from a laceration caused by a sharp razor and the terrifying screams of hapless victims will be common in the play. Ju Hohn Lee (12) will play the role of Sweeney Todd, a psychopath who seeks revenge against the man who killed his wife. This will be Juhohn’s first leading role in his acting career at SIS. “It’s very pressuring and I’m very nervous because this play is heavily centered around the main
Photo by Stephanie Song
While rehearsing a scene for the play “Sweeney Todd” on Oct. 19, Sarah Yim (12), Mrs. Lovett, confronts Ju Hohn Lee (12), Sweeney Todd, with a knife. Drama Club actors and backstage crew members rehearse weekly and will perform the production for audiences from Oct. 31 to Nov. 5. character,” said Ju Hohn. “But at the same time, I’m anticipating [a good peformance] and I’m very, very excited to have this opportunity.” Contrary to the casts of previous productions such as “Cinderella Ella Ella” and “Juliet and Romeo”, the cast of “Sweeney Todd” will consist of only nine actors and eight backstage members. Nevertheless, Mr. Rider expressed his confidence
in the success of the play. “I think [the play] is going to be nicely different,” said Mr. Rider. “From a director’s perspective, it’s a smaller cast, which has its benefits [and] disadvantages. It’s going to be challenging, but it’s a nice challenge in terms of the scenery as well as the technology we are going to be adding. My expectations are that [“Sweeney Todd”] will be different
to anything high school students have seen before.” In addition to acting and conducting special effects for the play, Drama Club members will also be responsible for illustrating the backdrop paintings for the play. To prepare for the opening performance on Halloween, members meet and rehearse every week on Wednesday lunch breaks.
“I’m honestly curious about [whether the play will be well received],” said Ju Hohn. “This is the first really mature and disturbing Halloween production, and I think that the response will be extreme. Either some people will love it, or some people might hate it. We will have to wait and see, but I hope it entertains them because that’s the goal we are all working towards.”
New teacher introduces interactive online testing to Chinese classes By Helen Song
According to the Journal of Language Learning, the most difficult parts of learning a foreign language are pronunciation and sentence construction. As a result, many students, including those who are efficient readers and writers, struggle to converse fluently in the language. To address this problem, Kenneth Dee, Chinese teacher, introduced an interactive examination he used at his previous school: students converse with native Mandarin speakers via 25-minute Skype calls. All Chinese students, includ-
ing middle school students, took this test as a quarterly assessment on Oct. 13 and 14; students will take this exam again after third quarter. “The goal of a language class is to be able to speak to the native people of that target language, but you can’t truly improve your language skills unless you continually do so,” said Mr. Dee. “There aren’t as many opportunities for students to converse in class, so I think this assessment was a good chance.” Students were given a list of questions in advance to study from. On the actual examination, students had a conversation with native speakers based on these questions in
a question-and-answer format. The examiners then graded each student based on the specific rubrics the teacher provided for them, which were used as the students’ grades. “It was my first try, so it didn’t go as smoothly, as there were problems on the first day with the internet connection and some general confusion,” said Estella Duan, Chinese teacher. “Still, the student average was an A, and the next time, I know to run the test more smoothly as I learned from my mistakes this time.” Students had to pay 12,000 won to take the test because the examination was provided by an online Chinese tutoring company based
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in Beijing. This expense was a major source of students’ complaints. “It’s really confusing and frustrating that we have to pay for the test because we already pay a lot of tuition that should be covering these kinds of things,” said Kelly Cho (10), Chinese III student. “Students are already reluctant to take tests, and making them pay for it makes the test even more undesirable.” However, Mr. Dee claimed that this test was helpful because the general feedback given by the individual examiners was more objective than his, as both the student and examiner were hearing each other for the first time.
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“I listen to my students all the time, so I can tell what they’re trying to say even if they’re not speaking correctly, but other Chinese speakers aren’t able to do so,” said Mr. Dee. “They will be able to see the students’ speaking level more objectively and accurately, giving me a better idea of what we need to work on in class.”
Photo by Linda Heeyoung Park
Revamping SISIL: Commitment issues spur change in intramural league. Page 10