Lower School Play is "Just So"

“This was the year we decided to make it happen," said director Nicole Harris. "All the pieces fell into place.”
 

The play, staged in the Black Box Theater, began with an introduction by two narrators, Edwina Polynice ‘21 and Jane Park ‘21. The rest of the cast then filed in, wearing neutral clothing, and took on the roles of animals as the story followed a young elephant on her journey to protect a community from a giant crab. In one impressive spectacle, four students, Janice Zhai ‘21, Alex Brown ‘21, George Kingsland ‘21, and Luke Benedict ‘21, joined to create the body and face of a whale. As with the other animals, the whale helped explain why a key feature of the animal is “just so”—in the case of the whale, why it only eats small fish.

As the elephant’s quest continues, Kipling provides answers to why the leopard and jaguar have spots, why the rhino has saggy skin, why the zebra has stripes, why the giraffe has patches, and why the kangaroo hops.

The revival performance of the Lower School play was a success. Because the play was an addition to required afternoon activities, participating students put in extra time to perform. Despite this supplemental time commitment, the cast had only happy memories from the experience.

"It was a lot of fun," said Jane. "A big part of it was the people, and I got really close to them.” Edwina shared this sentiment, stating, “The experience was a lot of fun because I was doing it with my friends. It was a time to hang out and get together during the winter.” Janice Zhai ‘21 added, “Our interactions with each other definitely helped our performance.”

With such a close cast and a successful performance, it is likely that this tradition will continue. “I would definitely do it again,” said Beatrice Agbi ‘21. Theater Department Head Laurie Sales was looking further ahead, saying. “Maybe some of you will join us on the main stage.”—Ben Calmas '18

 

See photos from Just So Stories.