• The Canterbury Tales: The 2021 Junior Play

    The Canterbury Tales: The 2021 Junior Play

    “This is not your ancestors’ Canterbury Tales,” says Marge Dunn, director of this year’s Junior Play. “Six hundred years after Chaucer first sent his pilgrims ambling through the English countryside, the tales have been adapted and modernized in many ways. In our production, we witness the storytelling pilgrims through the lens of Monty Python—witty wordplay, outrageous characters, confusing accents, and modern references that will make you groan! With more than 50 characters spanning several species and time periods, this raucous romp is fun for the whole family!”

    The Junior Play, which premieres virtually on March 5, includes nearly thirty Roxbury Latin boys—in Class VI through Class IV—who have been working on their parts since January, both in-person and in Zoom rehearsals. The resulting film was edited by Evan Scales, a Boston videographer.

    Roxbury Latin boys in the cast:

    Akhilsai Damera (IV)……..……..………….Boring Scholar
    Aspen Johnson (VI)……….…….…………..Arcite, Farmer
    Austin Reid (VI)………….………Gluttony, Emelye, Manny
    Brendan Reichard (V).……Thief 1, Alex of Trebek, WP 1
    Calvin Reid (V)………..………..……………………Lawyer
    Edward Smith (VI)…..…………..…………………….Knight
    Fintan Reichard (VI)………….….…………..Frankie, Lust
    Grayson Lee (VI)………..…..………….Mrs. Bailey, Sloth
    Joseph Wang (IV)……………..……………………Theseus
    Liam Walsh (VI)…….……………..….…………….Pardoner
    Lucas Vander Elst (IV)……………….…..WP 2, Old Widow
    Marc Albrechtskirchinger (V)…………….……Chanticleer
    Michael DiLallo (VI)…….…………..……………….…..Bob
    Michael Strojny (V)……………..,,.………….……..Parson
    Nick Glaeser (VI)……..……………..…..Geoffrey Chaucer
    Nick Makura (V)…………..…………..……Tax Man, Pride
    Nitin Muniappan (VI)………..…………..……………..Cook
    Oliver Colbert (VI)……………..………….…………Palamon
    Raj Saha (V)…………………………..Greed, Nun’s Priest
    Ryan Miller (V)……………………………..…….King Larry
    Ryan Peterson (IV)…………….……………….Thief 2, Fox
    Sam DiFiore (V)…………………………………….Old Man
    Sean DiLallo (IV)….……………………….……Wife of Bath
    Simba Makura (VI)……………………………Physician, SM
    Simon Albrechtskirchinger (VI)……………..….Envy, Friar
    Theo Coben (IV)……………..………………….Harry Bailey
    Tucker Rose (V)…………….……….………………..Anger
    Xavier Martin (V)………..…….….……………Miller, Thief 3
    Zach Heaton (V)……………….……………Pertelote, Devil

    You can watch the production in its entirety here. (The production is 1 hour, 15 minutes long in its entirety.)

    Erin Berg

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  • Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, the Year’s Senior Play, Premieres Virtually

    Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, the Year’s Senior Play, Premieres Virtually

    In planning for the school year, Director of Dramatics Derek Nelson knew that he would have to be creative in order to stage a drama production during a pandemic. His solution elegantly responded to two realities of 2020: The isolation and social distancing forced by COVID-19, and the uprising against racial injustice that marked the spring and summer, specifically. Mr. Nelson’s solution was to enlist Roxbury Latin’s oldest students—and their Winsor School and Boston Arts Academy counterparts—to stage Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, a work of documentary theatre by playwright and actor Anna Deavere Smith.

    In the play—performed as a series of monologues—Ms. Smith uses the verbatim words of nearly 300 people whom she interviewed after the Los Angeles riots—which were sparked by the beating of Rodney King and the subsequent trial—to expose and explore the devastating human impact of that event. “Given the political and social unrest of the last eight months,” says the play’s director Mr. Nelson, “it is stunning, revelatory, and tragic that Anna Deavere Smith’s Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 speaks to us 28 years later.”

    Twenty-one Roxbury Latin boys have been working on the 22 men’s monologues since September, both in-person and in Zoom rehearsals, along with 12 girls from Winsor and one girl from Boston Arts Academy.

    The monologues were filmed individually at both schools, and the resulting film was edited by Evan Scales, a Boston videographer. The production premiered on the evening of November 20, via livestream and YouTube.

    Roxbury Latin boys in the cast:

    Jake Carroll (I)…………………..Stanley Sheinbaum
    Colson Ganthier (I)………………….…..Charles Lloyd
    Ale Philippides (II).…………………Anon. Man, Juror
    Aydan Gedeon-Hope (I)……………….…Keith Watson
    Matt Hoover (III)………………………….……Joe Viola
    Edozie Umunna (I)…………………………Cornel West
    David Sullivan (II)……………………Shelby Coffey III
    Alejandro Denis (II)…………………….…Paul Parker
    Michael Thomas (III)…………………….…Talent Agent
    Emmanuel Nwodo (III)……………….……Twilight Bey
    Ryan Lim (I)………………….…Chris Oh, Jin Ho Lee
    Eli Bailit (II).………………….……….…Peter Sellars
    Will Grossman (III)………………..…..……Daryl Gates
    John Austin (III)…………………..……Reginald Denny
    Frankie Gutierrez (II)……………..………Ted Briseno
    Esteban Tarazona (I)………………..…Rudy Salas, Sr.
    Ben Crawford (I)………………………..…Bill Bradley
    John Wilkinson (I)………………..Sgt. Charles Duke
    A.J. Gutierrez (I)……….……….…Octavio Sandoval
    Krishan Arora (II)……………..…Federico Sandoval
    Daniel Sun-Friedman (I).………..………Walter Park

    Watch the production in its entirety here.  (The production runs two hours, 15 minutes.)

    Erin Berg

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  • Can You Handle The Truth? RL Showcases “A Few Good Men”

    Can You Handle The Truth? RL Showcases “A Few Good Men”

    On November 22 and 23, Roxbury Latin staged the year’s Senior Play—Aaron Sorkin’s drama A Few Good Men. In the play, two U.S. Marines are facing a court-martial, accused of murdering a fellow Marine at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. While it is believed that his death was retribution for him naming another Marine in a fence line shooting, Naval investigator and lawyer Lt. Cmdr. JoAnne Galloway suspects the two carried out a “Code Red” order: a violent extrajudicial punishment. While Galloway wants to defend them, the case is given to the inexperienced and lazy Lt. Daniel Kaffee. The case goes to court, and what unfolds—in and out of the courtroom—is emblematic of the tight narrative pacing and rapid-fire dialogue that viewers have come to expect from writer Aaron Sorkin.

    Known for the Emmy-winning television series that he created, wrote, and produced—The West Wing, Studio 60, The Newsroom—Sorkin has been a prolific force in American film and television over several decades. While many people are familiar with the 1992 film adaptation of A Few Good Men—starring Jack Nicholson, Tom Cruise, and Demi Moore—the work was a play before it was a screenplay! Roxbury Latin boys—along with Winsor student Katie Burstein, who played Lt. Commander Joanne Galloway in the production—successfully brought to life the tension, complexity, and humanity of Sorkin’s writing on the Smith Theater stage this fall.

    In a recent Tripod article, senior Jonathan Weiss explored faculty member and director Derek Nelson’s decision to stage A Few Good Men this fall:

    When Mr. Nelson searched for this year’s Senior Play, he had the school’s 375th anniversary in mind. His first instinct was to find a play written literally in the 17th century… but A Few Good Men ties in with the 375th in a profound way. It deals with history, with education, and with core Roxbury Latin themes like honesty and loyalty.

    A Few Good Men is brilliantly written: “Aaron Sorkin is a master of both overarching plot structure and scenes,” says Mr. Nelson. “He manages to push just the right buttons to get the audience on the edge of their seats.” Dauntingly, excitingly, the play moves fast: “The challenge is there’s a lot of language, and you’ve gotta make those scenes pop.”

    Best of all, A Few Good Men is delightfully out-of-the-box. Seldom does a mainstream movie… grace the RL stage. Mr. Nelson would stress, though, that the intention was not to recreate the movie, but rather to bring to stage the original Broadway play. As director, he did not aim to “match the tone, or interplay between characters, or even the readings of the lines in the way that they were directed in the film.” At the same time, he did not command the cast not to imitate the movie. His goal? “I want the actors to find themselves in Colonel Jessup, in the judge, and so on.”

    View production photos, by Mike Pojman.

    Cast List

    Lance Cpl. Harold Dawson………………Esteban Tarazona

    Pfc. Louden Downey………………………Frankie Gutierrez

    Lt. J.G. Sam Weinberg……………………David Sullivan

    Lt. J,G Daniel Kaffee………………………Ben Crawford

    Lt. Cmdr. Joanne Galloway……………….Katie Burstein     

    Capt. Isaac Whitaker………………………Will Specht     

    Capt. Matthew Markinson…………………Austin Manning   

    Pfc. William T. Santiago……………………Teddy Glaeser     

    Lt. Jack Ross………………………………..Alejandro Denis   

    Lt. Col. Nathan Jessep……………………..Frankie Lonergan    

    Lt. Jonathan James Kendrick………………Jake Carroll   

    Judge Capt. Julius A. Randolph……..…….Jonathan Weiss       

    Cmdr. Walter Stone, MD……………………Edozie Umunna  

    Cpl Tom Sturgess……………………………Nick Raciti  

    Cpl Jeffrey Owen Howard/MP………………A.J. Gutierrez  

    Naval Brig MP, Washington……………..…..Colson Ganthier  

    Orderly Admin., Andrews Air Force/MP……Eli Bailit  

    Lance Cpl Hammaker/MP……………………Oliver Wyner  

    Lance Cpl Dunn/MP………………………….Daniel Sun-Friedman  

    Sergeant-At-Arms/MP………………………..John Wilkinson

    Erin Berg

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  • Peter and the Starcatcher: This Year’s Junior Play

    Peter and the Starcatcher: This Year’s Junior Play

    Each winter, RL’s youngest, budding actors and crew—from Class VI through Class IV—come together with their girls’ school counterparts for the production of the annual Junior Play. On March 1, Peter and the Starcatcher opened with magic and adventure, and with much laughter from a delighted audience. Director Paul Valley described the play as not Disney’s Peter Pan, but as the prequel: “In this superhero origin story,” Mr. Valley said, “we’ll learn how Peter Pan got his powers—how he learned to fly.”

    Playwright Rick Elice sets the scene of the Tony Award-winning play: “A young orphan and his mates are shipped off from Victorian England to a distant island ruled by the evil King Zarboff. They know nothing of the mysterious trunk in the captain’s cabin, which contains a precious, otherworldly cargo. At sea the boys are discovered by a precocious young girl named Molly, a Starcatcher-in-training who realizes that the trunk’s precious cargo is starstuff, a celestial substance so powerful that it must never fall into the wrong hands. When the ship is taken over by pirates—led by the fearsome Black Stache, a villain determined to claim the trunk and its treasure for his own—the journey quickly becomes a thrilling adventure.

    “Peter and the Starcatcher upends the century-old story of how a miserable orphan comes to be The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up (or, Peter Pan). An adaptation of Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson’s best-selling novel, the play was conceived for the stage by directors Roger Rees and Alex Timbers, and written by Rick Elice, with music by Wayne Barker. From marauding pirates and island tyrants, to unwilling comrades and unlikely heroes, this play playfully explores the depths of greed and despair, and the bonds of friendship, duty, and love.”

    View photos of the production. (Photos by Mike Pojman)

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  • “It Can’t Happen Here” is this Fall’s Senior Play

    “It Can’t Happen Here” is this Fall’s Senior Play

    On November 16 and 17, RL’s thespians performed this year’s Senior Play, “It Can’t Happen Here,” based on the 1935 semi-satirical novel by Sinclair Lewis. Published during the rise of fascism in Europe, the story follows the ascent of Buzz Windrip, a charismatic and power-hungry politician who is elected President of the United States on a populist platform—sewing fear and promising economic and social reform, while promoting a return to patriotism and “traditional” values. After his election, Windrip takes control of the government imposing totalitarian rule. The plot centers on journalist Doremus Jessup’s opposition to the new regime and his subsequent struggle against it as part of a liberal rebellion.

    The novel was originally adapted for the stage in 1936; in 2016 Tony Taccone and Bennett Cohen were inspired to update that adaptation of a storyline that feels prescient more than eighty years later. In their adapter’s notes, Taccone and Cohen wrote: “Mr. Lewis was a singular artist, and his ability to grasp the complexity and underpinnings of American society and to reimagine the world continues to be a source of inspiration. With this play, we hope to sustain his artistic legacy and to translate his overreaching vision into a compelling piece of theatre.”

    There is a long tradition of playwrights using theatre to pose intriguing and startling “what ifs” about history and politics. Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” reimagines the Salem Witch Trials as a way to discredit McCarthyism. “Inherit the Wind,” which Class V boys read, dramatizes the 1925 Scopes “Monkey Trial,” putting the Constitutional issue of the separation of church and state front and center. More recently, American novelist Philip Roth performed a feat of political revisionism in 2004 with his novel “The Plot Against America.” Unlike Lewis’s novel, Roth made his interpretation of history autobiographical. While none of the characters portrayed in “It Can’t Happen Here” are actual figures from the past, some of the historical politicians and ideologues referenced by those characters—Roosevelt, Huey Long, Karl Marx—were real people with influential ideas and enduring political legacies.

    In addition to a strong cast of 19, and a tech crew of 15, the production was enhanced by original music compositions by Jonathan Weiss, Class II. Writing and scoring music for two violins, a viola and cello, Jonathan developed the music that played during five interludes. (It was pre-recorded in Rousmaniere Hall by the student quartet of Elias Simeonov (I), Alex Yin (IV), Eli Mamuya (V), and Justin Shaw (V).) “Jonathan is very attentive to the nuances in a text and how those might be translated into music,” says Director of Dramatics Derek Nelson—the play’s director. “We are very fortunate to have him at RL—he is a true artist and very talented composer.”

    View the gallery of production photos by Mike Pojman.

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  • American Shakespeare Center Performs Antigone in Smith Theater

    American Shakespeare Center Performs Antigone in Smith Theater

    On October 15, Roxbury Latin boys and faculty enjoyed a performance by one of our nation’s most respected touring theater troupes, the American Shakespeare Center (ASC) on Tour. This performance, part of the troupe’s six-month national tour, was brought to RL thanks to the Claire Berman Artist-in-Residence Fund, established in 2005 by Ethan Berman ’79 and his wife Fiona Hollands in honor of Ethan’s mother.

     

    The ASC actors performed an enlivened and current version of Sophocles’s Antigone, complete with a Hamilton-esque rapping intro, musical performances by the actors during intermission, epic battle scenes, and extensive use of the aisles, most notably for blind Tiresias’s slow and ominous entrance. With the audience sharing the same light as the actors, students and faculty felt part of the action. About twenty boys even shared the stage with the actors, their seats only feet away from King Creon’s wrath. The cast was diverse and talented, and though half were dead by the end of the performance, the actors performed an excellent version of the ancient tragedy. A lively “talk back” with cast members followed, and RL boys were curious about the actors’ theatrical and musical backgrounds, their tactics for approaching emotional scenes, and, of course, Tiresias’ all-white contacts and whether he could really see out of them. (The answer is no, by the way.)

     

    While RL’s older boys had already read Antigone in their classes, younger students were prepared for the performance by extra attention paid to the play in their Latin classes leading up to the production.

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  • Roxbury Latin and Winsor students stage “Oliver!”

    Roxbury Latin and Winsor students stage “Oliver!”

    Over Friday and Saturday evenings, 4 & 5 May, the combined efforts of Roxbury Latin and Winsor students presented the musical “Oliver!” in RL’s Smith Theater. The musical is based upon the novel Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens in which Oliver, a nine-year-old orphan, escapes from the workhouse and makes his way to London, where the “Artful Dodger” hooks him for Fagin’s gang of pickpockets.

     

    Directed by Marge Dunn, the cast of 15 characters included Jamie Drachman of Class VI as Oliver, Eli Bailit as The Artful Dodger, and senior Andrew White as Fagin. Fifteen RL boys and Winsor girls made up the ensemble, and eleven RL instrumentalists made up the orchestra under the direction of Rob Opdycke.

     

    With music and lyrics by Lionel Bart, Oliver! premiered in the West End in 1960, earning Bart the Tony Award for Best Original Score in 1963. The show enjoyed long runs in London and on Broadway (after being brought to the US by producer David Merrick in 1963) along with tours and revivals. Little known fact: Davy Jones (later a founding member of the Monkees) played The Artful Dodger in the Broadway production.See photos of the production here.

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