Students Give a Personal Lesson in Weekend Plays

At first glance, the theater productions at Falls Church High School and Marshall High School last weekend had few similarities. FCHS presented the classroom drama Up the Down Stairs and Marshall showed an updated version of the Russian play The Inspector General. But the differences in stories and settings belie thematic similarities and a poignant message that resonates even stronger coming from the mouths and minds of high school students.

In Up the Down Stairs the story follows a young English teacher trying to make a difference in a tough school. Well educated with good intentions Sylvia Barrett, played by Jenni Marsh, struggles to connect with her students even as she works to deal with the heavy bureaucratic demands of the school system.

Initially she finds resistance from her students, wary of a teacher that wants to get deeper than grammar instruction about the proper use of “who” and “whom.” Over the period of the play, they begin to understand that she really cares about them and their lives matter to her. The reason for much of the students’ resistance comes from their realization that many of the teachers are more consumed by the technical needs of the system rather than the personal work of teaching. This is highlighted by a comment from another teacher, Paul Barringer (Ricky Dilworth), saying his goal in teaching is to retain an attitude of amused detachment.

The ridiculousness of the system is often underlined by a bell system that seems to ring whenever it chooses and a series of late delivered notes are the only way to identify when a class begins and ends.

But Barrett’s idealism ultimately thaws some of the iciness of the system as well as the guardedness of ultimate hard-case student Joe Ferone (Johnny Berona) whom Barrett convinces not to drop out of school. Success is achieved as students and teachers are able to see past the strictures of the system and recognize each other as human beings.

In George C. Marshall’s production of the Inspector General, the story centers around a small town that has discovered they are going to be investigated by a high ranking official from Moscow. Led by an unscrupulous First Party Secretary Anton Skvoznik-Dmuchanovsky played by Daniel Chestnutt, the town is full of people each looking to gain a leg up in the pecking order while avoiding detection by an ever present big brother. This combination of scurrilous ambition and constant suspicion leads to the entire town mistaking a lowly clerk from Moscow with an over-inflated ego and an over-active libido for the expected Kremlin inspector. In their mistaken belief, they ply the clerk Ivan Khlestikov (Matt Hall) with bribes and preferential treatment all aiming for their own advancement.

This preferential treatment climaxes with the engagement of Khlestikov to the party secretary’s daughter Marya (Leigh Patton McManamy) and bribes in excess of 1,000 rubles.

After exploiting nearly everyone in the town, Khlestikov escapes the city with his plunder leaving its citizens to discover their error too late, and then as suffer the censure of the real investigator who has been watching the entire time. Throughout the play the audience is shown how a strict system that is supposed to create efficiency and discipline becomes a lens through which people see each other as tools to further their own ends rather than as real people. The status-grabbing townsfolk stand in contrast to the idyllic archetype of the small rural town where everyone knows and helps one another. Both productions highlight the dehumanization and disenchantment that can come with systematizing an organization without a thought to the human side of the equation.

The message is especially potent coming from the high school-age actors. Today in American and global culture it is the youth who often feel disenfranchised and are usually the most suspicious of people claiming to have vested authority. Fortunately these plays are not just emotional rejections of flawed systems. Just because the excessive rules of the school system or the corrupt hierarchy of the Russian town impede and minimize human interaction, neither play denies the value of social organization, but instead both assert values that transcend bureaucratic structure.

In Up the Down Stairs Barrett learns to work around the system to get to the students, and in the end of The Inspector General a letter written by the clerk documents the corruption of the townsfolk and makes them face the ugliness they have tried to ignore. From each performance, from a cast made up of students used to be on the receiving end of instruction, comes a compelling lesson about structuring systems to help people, not structuring people to uphold systems.