During the show that class 5-301 had performed, we decided to reflect on the reasons why we performed the show and what we really liked.
Claude and Medea; My Life Is My Message
Response By: Phobe Chan
You can never understand anything in the basic lessons we have in schools nowadays. What is the point of the lessons school teach if the words they teach you are empty? How does reading and writing help us if we are raised like that it seems those words are empty? This is why we performed the show Claude and Medea: My Life is My Message, to teach the young students that are truly going to shape our future how messed up the world is now and just like what Mrs. Rattlebee had said, “Who better than you?” I think that if students learn from a young age on how much difference we can actually make, then they will grow up to feel that they can make a difference. So, in the show Claude and Medea, we had wanted to entertain and not bore students or adults, but in a way, also portray a message. We wanted to make sure that students at such a tender age would grow up to care about our beautiful Earth.
While we were performing the play, we tried our best to have fun, but portray the importance of making a difference in our world, a serious topic as well. One of the most memorable moments in the play would be when we had our 2nd rehearsal and we had improved on our lines so we actually got to do the most of the play smoothly and I found it very amusing to watch my own classmates take their turn to steal the spotlights away. I found that although the theme was important, our play would only strengthen if we all paid off our efforts little by little and participated to make and complete a whole play. Mrs. Clyne had did her part directing and writing the play itself, then, Mr. Samuels helped us learn the music parts in our play as well as with the help of Ms. Mastrantones. Our play had become a group effort and we had gotten more out of it then just making a difference. We had also learned how to work together to make a difference. We had a lot of people spend their time and effort trying to shape this play into the perfect one and we had not wanted to let them down one bit, and hopefully, we hadn't let them down.
In our play, an important question we had asked was “Is your life the message you want it to be?” This quote had come from Mahatma Gandhi. As we had stated in our play, Mahatma Gandhi was famous for his ways to make peace without physically harming anyone. Basically, he was a non-violent guy. Then, one day, a reporter came up to him and asked him, “Gandhi, what is you message to your people?” He had replied, “My life is my message”. Firstly, we need to analyze what did the reporter mean by asking about Gandhi’s “message”? I think that the message the reporter was talking about was what Gandhi wanted to share with the world to be more like him. Mahatma Gandhi was a very important man in our play and in the world. He showed us that words are stronger than fists. (Or the term that the pen is mightier than the sword.) Then after that, a scene in our play was to write if we had thought our life was the message we wanted it to be. A lot of confusion had come up when we had stated that. I do not think anybody understood what Mahatma Gandhi had meant. I think that when Mahatma Gandhi had said his life was his message, I think he was saying that his actions is what he thinks his “message” should be. So, I think that my life is not the message I want it to be. Like Claude, I feel as if I could make even more of an impact on the Earth than I am doing right now, but like Claude said, “at least I can try”.
In our play there were many life lessons expressed. The most important one would be making a contribution to the world and try no matter how little of a difference you’ll make because in the end, you may have made a group effort and it had mattered to what you had just saved. Another life lesson that had occurred in the play was the importance of saving homeless household pets that are overpopulating and how we need to spay and neuter our pets so that we will not have any more pets that need to be born. And the last of many life lesson would be how we need to save the animals that we are destroying or their habitat. One of the main themes was relate to the song Big Yellow Taxi. The chorus of the song is the main heart and soul of our play. It goes like “you don’t know what you've got till it’s gone”. I think this means that we never appreciate something or someone until it is too late. This predicts a future for our dear precious Earth. Think about it like this. Nobody is appreciating the Earth right now, so when it all crumbles down, everyone will realize how we should’ve appreciated what the Earth had to offer to us.
In conclusion, our play Claude and Medea: My Life is My Message had been an amazing play that had paid off in the end. Not only did we educate young ones, but we raised money for 2 local pet adoptions (about 800 to 900 dollars) and lastly, we had some fun out of it! We enjoyed our show ourselves and that is what had put our play to the top! We had loved our play because we had put all our effort in the play. We made a PowerPoint as a background and we had music as well as people to make sure the play ran smoothly. Our cast of students had hoped that everyone had enjoyed the play/musical and we were happy to see that the audience enjoyed it.