Commentary Thoughts on Sports Banquet Page 2
Features Holidays Around the Globe Page 3
Arts New Year’s Eve: Miss it! Page 4
Community 21 Days of Giving Page 6
Sports Lady Hoopsters clinch tourney Page 7
Wilbraham & Monson Academy
TLAS
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Volume IV, Issue 3
By ISSA BEST ‘13 Staff Writer
The Global School ®
December 18, 2011
Veni, Vidi, Vici on TV
was initially broadcast on a local station WWLP-22. However, for the past five Who was president in 1788? years, “As The answer: George Washington. Schools This was just one of the questions Match featured on the Springfield MasWits” has sachusetts game show “As Schools been coMatch Wits.” The Wilbraham & produced by Monson Academy team was hand WGBY, the selected by advisor Mr. Kelly, and local public consisted of Nick Jalbert ’12, Cath- TV station, erine Liang ’12, Nora Harrington and West’13, and Jackson French Robitaille field State ’14. On November 20, the quartet campus. “We got there, we met the traveled to Westfield, MA for the other team, then we went into the taping of their first round competi- recording studio, and we had our tion. mics set up and did sound checks,” This year’s team, led by said Robitaille. “We then introveteran and captain Jalbert, beat a duced ourselves individually to the determined team from New Leadcamera and the woman who hosts ership, a charter school in Springthe show, Beth Ward, came in. She field. The program will air on said hi to everyone and asked us Saturday, January 28 at 7 pm. what we wanted to talk about when The program, which pits she did the live interviews.” teams from competing high schools The program starts out in a half-hour televised queswith a Challenge round. The two tion and answer contest, has been teams are asked questions from around since 1961. The program any of the six categories (Math &
Science, Popular Culture, History, Literature, and General Knowledge) for 10 points each. Ward, the moderator, asks questions from any of the categories and the contestants hit their buzzers (like in Jeopardy) to get a chance to answer the question. The team receives 10 points for each correct answer, but the other team gets a chance for the points if the first team answers incorrectly. The Challenge Round is followed by a Capitalization Round. In this round, a team picks a category and a point value from the board, just like in Jeopardy. To determine which side goes first, both teams are asked a qualifying
Wilbraham, MA 01095
question. The first team to answer correctly then receives a series of questions related to the first question for points. However, if the qualifying question is answered incorrectly, the other team gets the opportunity to answer and potentially get the points from any questions they can answer in the category. The program concludes with the Lightning Round, a 90-second round where teams are given a general subject and the first team to hit the buzzer gets a shot at the question. Correct answers are worth 5 points but incorrect answers are penalized 5 points. Jalbert said he was “especially pleased by our win, noting that it was the WMA’s highest score in the competition in three years. Since second round contestants are determined by the total points scored in a first round match (WMA scored 185), the Titans won’t learn if they made it into the next round until all of the first round contests are completed.
Academy Players’ Somber 9/11 Reflections
By NORA HARRINGTON ‘13 Art Editor
Vogt ‘15, Alexandra Stoll ‘15, Najma Shy ‘15, Madeleine Duke ‘15, Lyusi Abramian ‘15, Dani Wilbraham & Monson’s elle Pytko ‘14, Hunter Donovan Academy Players had a lot on ‘14, and Cari Manghan ‘13. Each their plate during the fall trimestold their character’s stories with ter. As a group, they compiled and the importance that they deserve. adapted first-hand accounts from While the monologues were delivthe September 11, 2001 terrorist ered in plain clothing and on a simattack into a theatrical ple black production where each box set, actor plays different the narcharacters with differratives ent stories of their exwere periences that day that quite intertwine. The play, elabocalled “9/11 Accounts rate and and Reflections”, was ranged performed in Fisk Thefrom ater Nov. 12 and 13. romantic The spotlight to tragic was shared by Nick to surJalbert ‘12, Rachel prisingly Ostrom ‘12, Nick Gillightfor ‘14, Issa Best ‘13, hearted. Melody Liu ‘12, Jacob Mr. Royal ‘13, Adam Dziura, Maciaszek ‘15, Ben who Ochola ‘15, Jonathan co-wrote
and directed the production, said his goal was “to focus on what we think about when we think about September 11th.” Often, he added, “the event is used as a way to rally people around political causes and people lose focus that what happened that day was that 3,000 people died.” He said he is “tired of all of the attempts to portray these deaths as a monolithic political statement.” It was a difficult process, one that should have probably taken two years, not two months. ’The main thing I remember about the time leading up to the play was that it was very hectic,’’ says Issa Best. The project was ambitious to begin with but the surprise Halloween blizzard and the lost week, created new challenges. As a result, a number of special effects planned for the production were dropped. The Academy Players used the book Tower Stories, a collection of first person accounts, as a starting point for the script. They spent the first month reading the
accounts out loud and deciding which ones to use. They came to the group decision to use New York obituaries in counterpoint to the Galway Kinnell poem “When the Towers Fell”, accounts from Tower Stories and Time Magazine’s 9/11 commemorative issue. They began with two central narratives from people in the towers when the jets hit supplemented by narratives of family, friends and neighbors. Mr. Dziura said they wanted to tell individual tales, bringing the audience closer to the people who lived and died that day, focusing on the human factor of that tragic event in a new way. He succeeded in doing this mainly due to the range of characters portrayed. If the goal was for the audience to find relatable traits in the characters then the goal was achieved. Considering the density and sincerity of the subject matter, the cast, which included many actors new to Academy Players, did a fantastic job delivering a powerful and memorable performance.