As he walked into the theater to see “Prayer for the French Republic,” sophomore Grant Levy dreaded spending three hours watching the play. When the play ended, he was pleasantly surprised about how much he enjoyed the show and noticed that he didn’t realize the time was going by.
Rather than going to their usual classes on Nov. 19, the sophomore class traveled to the Washington DC Jewish Community Center to see “Prayer for the French Republic” at Theater J. The play is about French Jews in 1944 and 2017, which connects to the sophomores’ current unit in their Modern Jewish History classes about Judaism in France.
Deborah Herman Berger Director of Arts Education David Solomon began planning this field trip when he was told about the play coming to the Theater J. He collaborated with Hester Kamin, the education programming manager at Theater J, to work out logistics and plan information sessions for students before they went to see the show.
During the information sessions before the show, Kamin told students about the plot, timing of the show and what they could expect to see during the play.
“I think it’s important that students have a sense of what they’re going to see, what some of the major themes are, how what they’re going to see can relate to them and also to get excited about going to the theater,” Solomon said.
Solomon knew that some students were worried about the play being so long, however many students said that they were shocked by how quickly the play went.
“I said two things before we left,” Solomon said. “One is that it [the play] will go very quickly … It will be like you’re binge-watching Netflix, but everything is live. And there’s something about this play where everything goes very speedily. And two, I predict that they’ll like the show very much, and I think that that was the case.”
Sophomore Maya Grumet was one of the students who enjoyed the show, and was very impressed by how the actors who portrayed the characters brought them to life.
“There [were] times in the play where I wasn’t exactly sure if it was acting or raw emotion,” Grumet said.
Grumet also appreciated how relevant the play felt, and how it captured current situations relating to antisemitism and the safety of Jews around the world. She thinks that these things were translated onto the stage very well.
“I just felt like they were very good at bringing what they were trying to say into more modern [circumstances] and show it to a younger audience,” Grumet said. “I feel like that was good, because it was showing just what they were actually feeling, rather than holding back, because we’re a younger audience.”
Sophomore Grant Levy enjoyed the play a lot more than he expected he would.. Not only was he worried the play wouldn’t interest him, but he was also very anxious that the play would go by very slowly when he heard it would be three hours long.
“The play was great,” Levy said. “It just blew my socks off … It was really relevant right now in the state of the world.”
Solomon was pleased by the positive reactions from students. Though he expected the students to enjoy the show, he was glad to hear that it exceeded so many students’ expectations.
“Watching students see theater through fresh eyes, and their excitement, and their reactions and their enthusiasm is such a great day for me,” Solomon said.
Solomon believes that watching theater is very important for building empathy and gaining ways of communicating.
“I want students to realize that speech, gesture, visuals, music, are languages that are every bit as powerful, if not more powerful than the written word and numbers,” Solomon said. “It is not enough for a student just to learn how to write and how to do math, if that’s all you know how to do, that limits your ability to communicate.”
This story was first published in The Lion’s Tale, Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School, on Nov. 21, 2024.
