From Kelli, Re: An Enemy of the School

Today we held the culmination of our yearlong sci-play curriculum. The students in 11A read and adapted Henrick Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People and had it performed on Vital’s stage by both professional actors and student actors. It was a truly original and well received performance. I would like say congratulations to the playwrights of 11A on their hard work and dedication to this project. Your talent and passion were evident throughout the process and the performance.

The play was entitled An Enemy of the School and centered around an ethical debate between what’s best for the health and safety of the students and an economic concern of the companies that provide the food. The ethics of scientific research is a common debate among scientists and researchers alike. After group discussion and decision making, the students created characters with complex relationships and provided challenges and drama that centered on an ethical problem.

I was blown away by the performance itself, the writing, and the student response to the piece. All of the students in the audience were receptive, engaged, and actively participating in the talk back following the performance. All of the students, who attended, even those who had not actively participated in the writing of the play, were engaged, focused, and very thoughtful with their feedback and thoughts about the play. A lot of them expressed extremely positive views of the play itself and of the presentation.

I feel like this experience was so influential for all of the students involved. It is quite a sight to see professional actors and directors taking their work as serious art. It is this kind of experience that sticks with me as a teacher and I hope sticks with the students as well.

I’d like to say a HUGE thank you to JM, the brilliant director who made this kind of work possible, to Linda Key and the staff at VITAL Theater Company who generously provided the space, equipment, and dedicated their time to helping our project be a success. Finally, to Ms. Reed, who was able to pull off what we had envisioned so long ago at a Whole Foods on the Upper West Side.