In 1983/84 I was teaching at Cheyenne Mtn High School in Colorado Springs. A lifetime ago. For two periods I drove a short distance to the junior high to teach two classes of Communications. One day I decided that the classes should write, produce, direct and perform a show. We began by dividing into small groups, brainstorming ideas which bit by bit turned into scenes, monologues and sometimes very brief glimpses of life in junior high in those in between moments during the changing of classes.
The students tackled all the big issues from premarital sex to suicide to what to wear or how much makeup to wear, peer pressure, virtually everything. Early on the choir wanted in on the project. And so we included music to underscore scenes or introduce them. The back drop was a series of joined flats painted to resemble lockers and recordings of the school bell punctuated the script with students running across stage during a change of class and freezing while one or two students played out a bit of silliness that took a humorous look at a day in the life of. The bell would ring and all would rush off to class and then a scene would ensue.
I decided to use Phil Collins' song Against All Odds, focusing on the imperative Take a Look at Me Now as the theme song. It was a call to parents attending the show to really look at their kids because who they were, during these moments on this cafeteria stage, was already changing and before they knew it their memory of these teen years would be faded. So take a look, a close look. Of course my own three sons ranged in age from 6 to 17, so I was feeling the galloping pace of time in my own life. But the show was also a call to the kids to stop and assess, step outside themselves if possible and see the self at this moment in time. They would never pass this way again.
I stood at the back of the cafeteria and watched the work of these wonderful young people. I also watched the parents watching their sons and daughters. Their faces were rapt. Many openly wept. They got it! It was one of my proudest moments as a teacher.
Recently a student from the high school from that year found me on Facebook and I wonder if there are any students from that junior high class in Communications who remember that production with the sort of nostalgia I experience and who are on Facebook.
I remember one young man in particular. He wore a black leather motorcycle jacket, hair cut in a Mohawk, perhaps a bit quiet, but my best writer. Where is he? I hope that experience meant something to him. I hope he remembers. I hope he took a look at himself and his cohorts in creating art and found inspiration. I did.
Gail Mangham
Proud Faculty Member for too brief at time of Theatre, Speech & Communications at Cheyenne Mtn High School and Junior High, Colorado Springs.
Phil Collins sings Against all Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OiV_5kEt6A
