“All the world’s a stage!” Speyer’s annual Eighth Grade Shakespeare Performance!
It is said that "All the world's a stage!" and at Speyer, it's the Dining Hall that serves that purpose. On Monday, the forks and napkins were pushed aside for our annual Eighth Grade Shakespeare performance, a highlight of every student's journey here at Speyer. Yes, each year, our soon-to-be graduates present their own unique take on the Bard's famous words — this year's play: As You Like It (which the aforementioned quote is from, natch)!
With all of the details, we have a special guest writer for The View...Deputy Head of School and Eighth Grade Humanities teacher Mr. Deards:
This past Monday evening was the annual Eighth Grade play, which this year was Shakespeare’s "As You Like It."
It was a strong, fast-moving, joyful performance — made all the more astonishing by the fact that four weeks earlier, the students didn’t even know they were doing it.
In just over a month, they produced a full-length Shakespearean comedy: a show with costumes they designed themselves, sets they conceived, built, and painted, original music composed and performed by students, choreography created collaboratively, and — as is so often the case with Eighth Grade work — a production that was largely directed, shaped, and sustained by the students themselves.
No one in their right mind would attempt this. But we do. And somehow, it works. For the fifth year, Mr. Chris Ryan worked with us as our drama guide. Chris often says that he does not treat students as children; he treats them as actors. He teaches them that way, too — with seriousness, respect, and high expectations — and they rise to meet it.
The story of "As You Like It" is deceptively simple. Rosalind, cousin to Celia (the daughter of the usurping Duke Frederick), is exiled by her uncle and flees to the Forest of Arden in search of her banished father. She is accompanied by Celia and the court fool, Touchstone. Orlando, already wildly in love with Rosalind, also escapes into the forest, where he proceeds to write many, very, very poor love poems and nail them to essentially every available tree.
What follows is a play of remarkable sophistication and gender complexity. To remain safe, Rosalind disguises herself as a young man (Ganymede) and suggests to Orlando that he might be cured of his overwhelming love for Rosalind by pretending that “he” is Rosalind, and wooing her daily with sweet words and extravagant devotion. Love multiplies, tangles, and deepens. Identities blur. Assumptions are tested. And, in the end, Rosalind herself quietly and brilliantly orchestrates the resolution of all of it.The finale was spectacular: a two-minute original song, sung by the entire cast, played live by a student rock band, danced by the lovers — and then, finally, by everyone. It was a fitting ending to a show built on joy, courage, and trust.
The night ended in applause and laughter, but what lingered was something deeper: the sense that we had witnessed young people trusting one another with something difficult, beautiful, and alive. They made Shakespeare contemporary not by simplifying him, but by taking him seriously — with intelligence, humor, and joy. For a few hours, a forest appeared where a stage had been, reminding us what schools can be when we let students learn without ceilings.
Bravo! We give a virtual standing ovation to our Eighth Grade thespians, Mr. Deards, Mr. Ryan, and everyone who made this cornerstone of the Eighth Grade curriculum a success once again!
