Plays for Change, Division 1
In this class, we explored the many ways theatrical spaces act as agents of change. The students in this class played a central role in determining our trajectory, and their active input led to them crafting their own play for change. We looked at the role of theatre in South Africa during Apartheid through the play Sizwe Bansi is Dead written as a collaboration among Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona. The students watched the first half of Indecent by Paula Vogel, which tracks a a piece of theatre from Poland to the United States and the various scandals that followed it. Finally, the students took the initiative to improvise their very own play, titled Change.
Collective Artist Statement by Izzy Denman, Aya Abramowitz, Simone Robinson, and Frances Mathews
The play Change, directed, written, and acted out by four Division 1 students, stars two women, Adrianne (played by Frances Mathews) and Michelle (played by Isabella Denman). They live in Poland in the year 1980, in an extremely anti-LGBTQ town. But, the pair are in love, and must hide it from the world. As their relationship grows, and with that, a baby in the belly of a newly-married Michelle, we follow the couple through all of the hardships they faced for being lesbian. Not only is their baby Briar (played by Ayelet Abramowitz) assassinated, but they are kicked out by Adrianne’s French grandfather Jon-Merie (played by Simone Robinson), someone they thought they could trust. Finally, the production comes to an epic finale and they move to Boston. While there, a kind woman named Lola (played by Ayelet Abramowitz) opens her beautiful heart to them, and they are able to pursue respectable careers and blossom as people, regardless of their pained pasts.
We decided to write this play when, during theater class one day, we had been improvising for many minutes. Simone dramatically exclaimed, “We should write a play!” Josh, who was substitute teaching our class, suggested – on behalf of Betsy – that we do indeed write a play. We accepted that challenge and, based off of one of our previous improvisations, said “Let’s call this play Change.” When we were in class we watched a play called Indecent and that was the main inspiration because it has to do with immigration which is in our play as well. One day in class, we were playing an improv game where we made up a play on the spot. After that, we were assigned to create a play about change. At first we didn’t have any clear ideas, but then we thought back to the play and characters that we had improvised, and we decided to use many of those ideas and themes in the play that we ultimately wrote. In a way, one of our main inspirations was our own improvisation game.
What is this play about? you may ask. Well– in this play we wanted to touch viewers through theater. We knew that some of the many issues we face in today's world are LGBTQ+ rights and immigrant rights, so those are the themes we decided to focus on in our play. Another issue we briefly addressed is climate change, which is another problem that is harming the environment and world.
Though it’s most unlikely that Change’s Broadway debut is anytime soon, the topics we covered in it are important. If more and more people were educated on things like homophobia and climate change, these issues most likely wouldn’t be happening, and less people would be hurt by them. While watching our play, we’d want people to think about how they could fight these issues that Michelle and Adrianne are facing. Maybe they’d been doing those bad things without realizing how much their actions hurt people. Change would educate people on the hardships LGBTQ+ people are facing, and hopefully inspire them to treat people with kindness regardless of their identities.