Ninth Age Plays Keep the Audience Smiling
The Ninth Age girls and boys presented their plays on Tuesday and Wednesday to audiences of classmates, siblings, parents, and friends. The girls performed Twice Upon a Time and the boys, The Sneetches. Each had a wonderful moral.
Twice Upon a Time is a fairy tale that was adapted to fit the stage for the Ninth Age girls. Princess Beauty, a beautiful but spoiled and mean princess, has her beauty taken away by her fairy godmother. In order to be made beautiful again, she must learn to be a kind and honest person, much like her sweet sister, Princess Honor. Through the help of her new friends and her fairy godmother, Beauty learns that a kind personality is more important than her physical beauty. Once she learns her lesson, Beauty must decide whether to return to her original beauty.
The boys’ play is an adaptation of Dr. Seuss’s The Sneetches, written by Skip Howe ’77, former Ninth Age teacher and current Middle School math teacher. The story’s message remains the same, but Mr. Howe’s writing is so witty that the play is even more enjoyable to perform and watch than the classic story!
The play begins with the story of the Star-Belly Sneetches who are proud of “having stars upon ours” and their exclusion of the Plain Belly Sneetches who “have none upon thars.” Then Sylvester, a scheming swindler, arrives to take advantage of the situation by adding or removing stars for the “low price of two dollars eaches.” The play ends as the Sneetches have run out of money, but realize they have something even more valuable: each other.
Practices for the plays began right after winter break, and the excitement built as the personalities of their characters started to shine through in rehearsals. As the day of the play approached, the play began to permeate the conversations of the girls. Most importantly, conversations about Princess Beauty’s transformation from a mean princess who only cared about herself to one who cared about all people were overheard from the lunch tables to the playground.
The Sneetches has been performed every three years for many years now, and the boys remember seeing the “magical” Sneetches machine as Sixth Agers. With greater understanding of the moral, the teachers were proud to watch the boys make the connection from the play to the broader message of acceptance.
Calvert School is a coed independent lower and middle school.
