If you are a regular viewer of my blog or know anything about PLP then you would know that in a PLP calendar year there are two exhibitions. One being the winter exhibition and the other is the year end exhibition. Since we just had winter break we will be talking about the recent 2018 PLP winter exhibition. Since, the PLP 11 cohort is the oldest age group in the PLP system, we got to do something a little different where the whole class worked together on one exhibition.
1950’s
In Humanities recently we have been studying the 1950’s and everything leading up to “the greatest time in American history”. This was one of the main themes of the exhibition. At this time in the 1950’s everyone had just come back from the war and the economy was booming. America was at its peak and the idea of the American way was very popular. On the flip side, the Communists (Russians ) were secretly placing spies in American societies to get information on the booming country as well as spread the Communist way.
The Three Prong Approach
Our exhibition was based around the following three topics. The Crucible’s witch trials, the McCarthy trials against Communists and the present day Russian investigation on Donald Trump and his presidential election. I like to call it the three prong approach. So the exhibition was set in the 1950’s and had different references to connect all of these topics together.
The Planning and Layout
We started off by planning the entire presentation/play in class. This was the first time that the teachers let us plan the entire project with no input at the beginning from them. We created multiple story boards and many different charts to help us fathom the project we would be undertaking. We ended up appointing two people to be the DRI’s of the project. DRI stands for directly responsible individual. These people made the final decisions on different questions and problems we had.
So when I was in Grade 9 PLP the Grade 11s did a project similar to the one we did this past exhibition where they took the entire gym and turned it into a running play. Here is a link to one of the PLP 11 blogs from the prior PLP 11’s Our project was quite similar in terms of structure and how everything was laid out but our idea was to put curtains across the gym so that we could split it up and create 6 different sets.
Here are the sets
1. Eisenhower
2. Vets come home/Baby boom
3. Us vs Them (Communists vs Americans)
4. Korean war
5 Hollywood
6. Hearings
Each one of these mini skits had anywhere from 1-3 actors and ran for about 4 minutes each. On top of these skits we had 1-2 guides that were in character as well they interacted with the audience and the actors to make the audience feel as if they were being drafted into the war or were at one of the Communist trials. These guides also lead the audience through the maze to make sure that the transition between each skit/station was smooth and make sense.
The Roles
Now that we had figured out the overall look and layout of the exhibition it was time to put each person in their own respective categories. So at this stage of the project I had just sprained my ankle from playing basketball and was on crutches so the DRI decided to make me a disabled veteran in the play. I was put with Ethan Dennis, and Robbie Wharton. In our part of the play Robbie and Ethan were members of the military. They were going around the neighbourhood giving out draft notices to ‘willing and able’ men to fight in the Korean war. My job in this section was to be one of the many residents and be a draftee into the war. At first this is where the injury would come into play. Sergeant Dennis and Sergeant Wharton would come to my door handing me a draft notice and I would declare myself unfit because of my injury that I sustained while l was in World War 2. This was part of the first version but we later scrapped the injuries because we found that it didn’t play enough of a significant role as well as I wasn’t on crutches anymore. My excuse for not wanting to participate in the war was that I just came back from the gruelling second World War. Dennis and Wharton would reason with me and make a valid point about how I would have to support my country and fight the communists so I ended up being drafted.
Building the Props
The next step before the exhibition was to build all the props that would actually bring the entire play to life. We all worked together to maximize our opportunities and use all of our skills. For the first scene we created a stage so that Eisenhower could address the nation. The second scene we created a modern house for the 1950’s. Scene three was ‘Us vs Them’. This scene was the Communist rally. It was set on a street, so we had to build some street lamps as well as bring in an old bench and a bike so we could bring the street to life. Scene four was my scene, this was the street scene where I would come out of my house and be drafted. We had to build a house as one of our props but luckily Sergeant Wharton had a telephone sized box that I could emerge from that was built for an earlier PLP Project. All we had to do was slap some new paint on it and give it a new roof. Scene five was Hollywood. We made the Hollywood sign out of cardboard and painted it white. This would lead into a live stage where they had been filming a reenactment of the Crucible. We created a Hollywood film stage. Lastly was the trial. For this scene we recreated a court room for the audience to sit in.
The Night of the Exhibition
The exhibition went very well. There were some hiccups along the way. For example in the Seycove gym there is a big wall that can swing out and divide the gym into two halves. We planned to use this wall as a backdrop for our street as well so that it would break up the gym and give each scene a smaller atmosphere. Unfortunately on the night of the Exhibition there was a big storm which knocked out all the power to every school except Seycove. The one thing the storm did break was the circuit board. This caused the motor that pulls the wall into place to malfunction. We were unable to use it and had to come up with more creative means. For the entire gym we used curtains that the band and choir use for their concerts. We hung rope from wall to wall splitting up the gym into sections. At the beginning of the night we were all so excited that we ran the first group through the play in half the projected time. As we have all been in the PLP program for 4 years now we are used to rising under pressure, and we did just that. We improvised some of our script to lengthen the play so that we could meet the projected time. Other than that, everyone gave us great reviews and was very impressed with our knowledge of the topics we had studied as well as our amazing acting skills.
Conclusion
Overall I really enjoyed this project and I would say that this is by far my favourite project that I have done in my PLP career. The amount of information in my head that I walked out of that building with on the night of the Exhibition was far more than any history class could have taught me. A great example of this is when we were off school for Christmas holidays I had an interesting discussion/debate with my uncle surrounding the McCarthy trial as well as the blacklisting of Hollywood movie stars. I was able to recall all of my information and facts that I had learned previously. I truly believe that if I hadn’t done this project and had only studied for a test on the same topic that I wouldn’t remember half the stuff I still do today. Usually the two biggest critics for our PLP projects are our teachers Mr Hughes and Ms Willemse but to our surprise they loved our project as well. This was a fun and interesting project and a great way for a class such as ours to bond and build teamwork skills.
Here is the walkthrough video of the play:
