The John Carroll School 703 E. Churchville Rd. Bel Air, MD 21014
Volume 44. Issue 5. April 2009
the production of
Senior Tony Marzullo, as Jewish police officer Jakob Gens, directs the people of the Wilna ghetto in senior Rachel Weinberg’s play. Hers was the first project to be presented to an audience, on March 27 and 28. (Photo by Katie MacDonald)
O T T GHE
Emily Burdeshaw
Photo-Design Editor
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INSIDE
enior Project has certainly caused contention over this past year. While it seems like just another thing on top of college apps and visits, SATs and other senior year anxieties, it can offer a chance to explore a subject of interest. While Senior Project is a graduation requirement now, it doesn’t have to be a burden. Take senior Rachel Weinberg for instance: “Senior Project was the way for me to finally have the opportunity to finally try my hand at something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time.” Weinberg’s project involved directing a play. Louise Geczy, Senior Project Coordinator, brought Weinberg a script concerning the Holocaust, and, from there, Weinberg was off and running. After going through a massive anthology of plays on the Holocaust, she settled on playwright Joshua Sobel’s “Ghetto,” a chronicle of life in the Jewish
ghetto in Vilnius, Lithuania. She directed the play mainly because she wanted her project to include “[her] love of theater and the history of [her] family.” “I announced the dates for my auditions at ‘Bye, Bye Birdie’ and also during chorus. Anyone who wanted to come in and audition could do it, and I did it that way because I didn’t want to exclude anyone who wanted to [participate] in this project,” said Weinberg. Auditions were spread over two days with students reading for different parts. She cast the show over the course of Christmas break. After completing that task, she had to cut the show from three acts to two acts, changing the play in the process. But how does one direct a play portraying such a horrible time in history? “That was definitely the hardest part of the whole thing,” she said, “As a director you are supposed to give your actors something to relate to and it was especially hard because [‘Ghet-
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3
to’] is a historically accurate play, depicting actual people, and you don’t want to mess that up.” She immersed her actors and actresses in graphic images from the Holocaust: “I needed them to understand the true horror of what happened,” she said. “When it started, the moods in rehearsals were a lot lighter, but after the Holocaust speakers and the Holocaust museum, it actually hit, especially for the seniors, what they were portraying. After that, it was finally concrete enough that they could become their character.” So, Weinberg fulfilled her dream, but her project extended beyond the ‘simple’ direction of a play. Geczy, with her many connections in the Holocaust community, gave Weinberg’s play publicity. Through email updates, announcements, Principal Paul Barker’s blog, The Aegis, local synagogues and the Baltimore Jewish Center, news of Weinberg’s play spread. As she put
it, “It kinda snowballed into this huge thing.” More than a dozen Holocaust survivors, as well as several students, teachers, parents and grandparents, attended the Friday performance of Ghetto. Word spread even further about the play after the first round of people saw it, and, on Saturday, about 400 people attended the performance. Before her first show, Weinberg was shaking with excitement and nervousness. But, as she pointed out, “You really have to trust your cast to get the job done. That is a major, major factor in directing… you have to trust the other people to be committed to it, and my cast has been absolutely fantastic. They have been phenomenal.” From every person that attended the play, the same adjectives have been used to describe the experience of “Ghetto”: “gripping,” “powerful,” “impressive.” Several of the Holocaust survivors who attended the Friday performance expressed to Geczy and those involved how impressed they were
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with the play. One of the survivor’s families actually lived in the ghetto portrayed in the play and, as Weinberg recalled, was reduced to tears over the accuracy with which it was portrayed. Senior Project has the ability to be the doorway to greater things. Kelsey Hagan is giving makeovers to battered women and Katie Kiriazolgou will create a memorial healing garden. She gained inspiration from Health teacher Tess Gauthier and “was initially going to make it in honor of cancer survivors.” You can also have crazy fun (yay for eccentricity) like Keith Sneddon and Ryan McGrath. They are trying to break various Guinness World Records, including the longest handshake, most seats sat in 24 hours, fastest time to duck tape a person to the wall (an odd thing to watch), most eggs broken with your forehead in 1 minute and the longest waterballoon toss. Continued on page 6
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