Oh, how I wish I had a photo or program from the first play I ever saw. It was in the Campton Gym where, even before the dance recital on its stage (written about in a previous blog), I experienced a production of PINOCCHIO. For me, a life-changing event.
During that school year, 1956-57, most students beyond 6th grade attended classes in houses on Bell Circle. Seniors (and perhaps juniors also?) rode the bus to the high school in Two Harbors. Kelley High was not yet finished. And yet, in the midst of what must have been a challenging teaching experience, someone began a drama club and produced a children’s play. I don’t know how or where PINOCCHIO was advertised. I don’t remember hearing anything about it in class. Just that one afternoon Daddy drove me to Campton School to “see a play about Pinocchio.”
We sat down on steel folding chairs set in rows on the polished, wood floor facing the stage—on the end of the gym nearest the kindergarten classroom. I think music played on a phonograph to one side of the gym. After a few minutes, the lights in the audience faded. The gold pleated drapes were still shining as they parted in the center and moved slowly to each side. Geppetto’s workshop stood there before me.
Perhaps there weren’t any boys interested in the Drama Club. A girl named Francine Williams played Pinocchio’s creator and father, Geppetto. The following Sunday I was thrilled to recognize the actress when I was leaving my church after Sunday school. She was walking toward the church for the morning service. She was with her mother, later my high school Home Ec teacher. I stared at Francine as we passed each other on the cement walkway. I wish I dared say something about her wonderful performance.
Last month I was in London for vacation, with a two-day side-trip to Stratford-upon-Avon. Walking down Stratford’s Chapel Street I passed a group of uniformed boys— probably students of the old, prestigious King Edward VI grammar school which is right in the middle of town. Seeing these boys I couldn’t help but think how different it would be to attend school in a village with all that history about you. A quick check on the internet tells me that the original charter of Stratford-upon-Avon dates from 1196. What a different perspective it must be to grow up in a village with all those Shakespearean reminders around than in a brand new town like Silver Bay.
In Stratford we saw two plays. One was a new children’s play titled ROBIN HOOD'S HEART with Marion as a funny, swashbuckling heroine. Parents and grandparents in the audience probably all worried that the production might occasionally be too gruesome for young people. I know I did. But the children in the audience laughed at the slapstick, cheered the hero and heroine, and booed enthusiastically at dastardly King John and the evil Nottingham sheriff. Some girls that looked about twelve wept at the end when Robin and Marion, on trapeze, gazed at each other with rapt fairy tale true love. And I remember how I also cried in the gym of Campton School in Silver Bay as Pinocchio and Geppetto were reunited, and Pinocchio became a real boy. A life-changing event. My journey to Shakespeare’s home town began that day, when Daddy took me to see that play about Pinocchio.
