100 Years of Making Plays at 100 East End

One hundred years of girls on stage.  Amazing. For weeks, I have been thinking about Drama Club, about Oreos and sandwiches on Saturdays, about our tech week dinners—the one Rasha’s mother made for us when we did Antigone.  I’ve thought about the girls, who are now women, from whom I learned so much, about big risks and vulnerability and inhabiting other worlds.  I’ve thought about costumes and heightened language and vulnerability and risk.

Nineteen of those years are stitched through me—just as we stitched our enormous quilt for Threads!  Many productions happened in the Assembly Room and the last several, joyfully, in the Black Box, which was really blue, at least, at first. 

For me, the drama club productions—an interschool play or musical in the fall and a Chapin-only production in February—were the times I felt I could really teach acting because we rehearsed three times a week—Monday. Wednesday and Friday and for three Saturdays before each show. (Never on Tuesday, so the actors could be part of Dance Club!) While my “half-credit” classes and full drama classes were wonderful, they met only 45 minutes; it was in rehearsal, in tech weeks, that real breakthroughs happened.  And, I had many girls for five years—starting in eighth grade; they grew up doing plays, mentored by older girls and then becoming mentors. They were formidable. How I love them.

When I arrived at Chapin in the fall of 1984, all drama was in the hands of Janet Walker, whose husband was the long-serving music teacher, Charles Walker; they retired at the end of the year, and Mrs. Berendsen asked if I could “take on the drama program, in an interim way.”  Of course, I said yes, and, after that, I would teach both drama and English for many years, directing two shows a year and overseeing the girls’ direction of one acts in the spring. 

For seventeen years, we asked for a lighting grid in the assembly room—on every budget every year, and finally, finally, one was installed.  We were a team—Seth and I—because before Jeremiah or Luc, there were no tech directors. There was Seth, then Seth and Kevin Holly, our first part-time TD, who worked at Riverdale, and the team of amazing NYU women I assembled to design because I wanted the girls to see women lighting, set and costume designers.  Caty Maxey, Rhonda Roper, Theresa Squire, Christy Irish, and our dear friend, Joan Racho—these were talented women who were willing to teach and work alongside the girls at load-in and strike—both required always for the full cast. They knew how to make magic on a shoestring; we were very frugal. We did make posters and buttons--the girls wore the buttons advertising the shows on their skirts or backpacks--and the posters, often, were lovely.

If a play happened on stage, we could pull the curtain and leave the set, but if we performed on the floor, which we often did, given the limits of a shallow proscenium and no wing space, the set had to be struck each night and re-set.  Everyone had a job, and knew exactly what she was supposed to do. After tech-Saturdays, with lunches from Coleman’s thanks to Nancy’s generous aunt, we would walk the Assembly Room barefoot, making sure we hadn’t missed a pin or a nail, so the Middle School girls would be safe in dance class on Monday morning. Tom Palermo was our great friend and advocate, letting us into the building on weekends to finish a tricky project, helping when the fog machine continuously set off the smoke detectors during tech for the Scottish Play, shaking his head at the girls learning to set up and take down our fancy Wenger risers, shaking his head some more as Seth utilized every inch of space underneath the Assembly Room stage to store platforms. 

Over time, our department grew.  Laurie Gruhn was with me from the start; Martha Hirschman, Patti Norchi, Sarah Rutledge supported the musicals!  Mike Calderone and Julia Heaton and Beatrice Cody all joined the drama department and began to direct, so I no longer did every show. 

I have enough memories for a long memoir, but share only a few.  Apologies for all the great moments I forgot to include and all the girls.  Write to me and remind me! I may not have the order right--Seth has an enormous box of videos and photographs that we intended to go through to share with you, but we ran out of time--perhaps for the 125th celebration!!

My first big production:  Jill Kamin on Roller Skates as Hamlet in R and G are Dead; Lizzy Bruce and Lisa Stevens in matching swirling capes; Tia Fuhrman as Claudius.  The players doing remarkable ensemble work, popping out of the trap on the floor of the assembly room stage.

For Threads, the first play the girls and I wrote, we laid out our enormous quilt on the floor of the Assembly Room, set up lights along the fabric, and quilted the top layer, the batting and the back, using embroidery floss because it was so big.  Each girl had made her own quilt square. “How hard could it be?” I remember thinking, “to put together a quilt?”. The girls and I made a play about pioneer women going West because they wanted to wear long dresses; Eliza led the way; Sisi in yellow calico as Grace Vitengruber; the staging for the trial came to me in a dream; the girls thought I had lost it.

The House of Bernarda Alba  Remarkable Rachel, singing opera—against her will—during rehearsal as Bernarda with Minnie and Sisi and Eliza and Katrina and Christina—we made the set like a birdcage with Rodrigo guitar in the background. 

Wild fabric costumes for The Tempest, Jessica as Prospero and Sasha as a most winsome and ferocious Caliban.  

Stage Door—a costume parade and a box set in the Assembly Room!  The girls said to me, “Ms. K., let us play the boys. We’d wear the clothes better, anyway!”  And they did. What a fun one this was. Many of the dresses we bought at a vintage shop in Pennsylvania formed the basis of our costume collection for years.

Antigone—striking the set every night and repainting the marble; Alixa making elaborate braided hair dos inspired by Greek vases at the Met, Barbara’s little brother coming to rehearsals, working on lines during the tenth grade trip at Frost Valley, beautiful dyed costumes.

Godspell—an interschool musical with Reminiscence overalls and a jungle gym, a misplaced mink coat in the audience on closing night.

Working—also a musical with a silver scaffold set with a Tylenol bottle left on stage on opening night; Hugo so ill at intermission, but determined to finish the show.

Galatea—another show we wrote ourselves, largely in my apartment.  It was inspired by Ladies’ Magazines, circa 1914. . Barbara, Nicky, Angela, Alixa, Heidi were the staff of the magazine, Galatea, all attired in Edwardian costumes.  Allison Chang kept it all organized. A tiny version of the poster hangs by my bed here in Ohio--Alixa drew our magazine cover!

Pippin—replacing the boys who lacked commitment with Nora Zimmett as Pippin!  Lauren Willig as Charlemagne in gold painted football pads.

Anything Goes—telling the accompanist he had to play with BOTH hands on the keyboards.

Caroline and Joanna and Georgia and the racist characterization of the two Chinese characters that led us to a new chapter about equity and inclusion in our plays.

The Scottish Play—stained glass window costumes, Nora’s Lady M on the balcony of the Assembly Room; setting off smoke detectors with the fog—Kristen Kenny’s amazing work and Clelia’s Macduff and their great fight.

Revolution!  One of our most ambitious productions, the third  play we wrote from scratch was inspired by the girls’ interest in an etching in their history book of women—fishwives and prostitutes—marching on Versailles.  We turned the Assembly Room into Paris—the stage—and Versailles—the windows facing the building next door filled with enormous vases full of flowers and sprayed with something to prevent the audience from seeing into the neighbors’ windows.  Exquisite performances and amazing writing: Lucy, Alexandra, EB, Georgia, Lily, Nancy, Caroline, Janet, Sabina, Martha, the Kent sisters, and ANF keeping it all running. We alternated between Paris and Versailles trying to imagine how the women in both settings felt.  And we had a spy plot! Alixa came back to help us with the costumes. 

Twelfth Night  Our first production in the Black Box with gorgeous drops painted by Theresa—set in the 1920’s—hilarious Martha Roberts, swinging from a pole as Sir Toby; EB as Malvolio in yellow stockings, Georgia as Viola, Lili as Maria, Laura as the Priest and elegant Lucy as Olivia. 

Johnny Belinda  Polly popping popcorn on cue was one of Seth’s greatest triumphs!  The beautiful signed Lords’ Prayer—Georgette and Lili and Amy Boyle sharing the role of Belinda with Georgia as the hateful villain.

Peter Pan Lili playing the guitar; Georgette as Smee in a boat that moved across the Black Box floor; Justine as Tink in a tutu, wildly ill on Saturday night, but determined to go on, Amy Boyle as Tiger Lily, Elizabeth Grant as Wendy, Hana, too, but I can’t remember if she was Mr. Banks or a brother--and Emily Meisler in footie pajamas as Michael!.  Julia directed this one, but I loved it. Tender but not saccharine. 

To Kill a Mockingbird  I’ve written a whole essay about this production, but will say that it stands in my memory as remarkable.  We used the rehearsal process to consider questions of race and class at Chapin. Sharing out narrations, we used Lee’s language to make Maycomb, Alabama in the Black Box,.  We had three Scouts--Hajera, Lindsay Thomas and Jennica with Jenny Lancaster as Atticus and Chris Diggs as Jem with Jennica as Mrs. Dubose—illness struck during production, so we had great understudies take on roles!  The current Broadway production is spectacular, but ours, in the shadow of 9/11 was rich in love. Our own little girls, Miranda and Cordelia, watched every tech rehearsal and every performance from the catwalk. It was during this show that I famously said, “If I ever had a boy baby, I would name him Atticus.”  Little did we know...

Hamlet The Frank Lloyd Wright room at the Met inspired the look and feel of this production, also in the Black Box. We explored ideas about power and corruption and personal responsibility.  Georgette was Gertrude; Jennica was Hamlet; Jenny was Old Hamlet; Sophie was Ophelia; Abby was Claudius; Lindsey was Laertes--it was a hugely strong ensemble. I think of our audacity in producing Hamlet and then think, “Why not?”  It’s a play that speaks to adolescent grief, to culture, to questions about authority.  

Great Expectations  My last show and a tricky one because of all the scene changes that Georgina, thankfully, ran. We returned to the Assembly Room because we needed more space!

To put all my love and even a quarter of my memories  into words reminds me of what a privilege it was to teach drama at Chapin for almost two decades.  I wish I could be with you for this celebration, but I know we can’t always go home again. When I think about all these plays, all these girls we loved so much who peopled our lives--because it was very much a family affair--I remember what it felt like to stand in a circle before opening night, to count the cast down into character, to hug each one, to remind them that “It’s a play, not a work,” and “No matter what happens, deal with it,” and to tell them to “Light up the Sky!”  

I wish the Drama Club a wonderful Centennial.