Putting on a Play in a Pandemic: Let Us Sing!

Forest Bluff School students have been at Gorton Community Center all week, rehearsing and filming “Coming Together While the World Falls Apart,” a student-written musical about pandemics throughout history.

Forest Bluff School has had the great fortune of being open and in-person for the entire school year, but by January of 2021, it became clear that even with the success our school has had in staying open in a safe and healthy way, the traditional annual Drama Workshop would be impossible. Our teachers and Head of School wanted to give the students a chance at their Drama Workshop, especially in a year when so much has been taken away by the circumstances of the pandemic. They took the time to reimagine the possibilities and came up with a plan that was bold, exciting, and, ultimately, more “Montessori” than ever.

The teachers believed that, with the right support, the oldest Upper Elementary children (ages 11 and 12) could write and design this year’s all-school musical themselves. (In previous years, the play was written, designed, and directed by theatre professionals Phyllis Mount and Max Mount, longtime friends of Forest Bluff School.) Then, instead of the usual performance for family members in the evening (which would be prohibited by Covid protocols), they could make it into a movie to distribute to the parents.

At first blush, this idea may seem preposterous—Invite six 11- and 12-year-olds to write a play for almost 60 students, produce it, and then make a movie? How many ways can one plan go wrong? Fortunately for these children, the adults in the room had the highest faith in them. And they had a plan to support them.

When these elementary children were given the opportunity to write the musical for a school-wide performance, they, of their own accord, chose to write it about pandemics throughout history: the Bubonic Plague, Yellow Fever, and the Flu of 1918. Our Head Emerita Paula Preschlack observed, “They used stories from the past to normalize what is happening to us now.”

With a Montessori perspective, these students reminded themselves and each other that people have lived through similar circumstances before. And they found that, each time, people survived with kindness, courage, and new scientific discoveries. They saw that people did the best they could with what they had. They also recognized the importance of all the discoveries humans have made before our time. As one of the characters in the script observes, “Thank goodness for all the hard-working humans of the past. Without their toil and thankless effort, none of the tools we rely on today would be possible.”

What these children have done is remarkable. They have taken a sustained, stressful current event, rife with uncertainty and tragedy, and they have set it within the context of history. They have undertaken a complicated and important project, and they have done it brilliantly and sensitively.

Mrs. Preschlack observed that, as Montessori students, these children have learned from the beginning that their education is in their own hands. They have, as she said, “a self-propelling approach to knowledge.” Knowing this, it is not surprising that these children did exactly what they did when tasked with writing a play during a pandemic. They looked back through human history to ask—Has this ever happened before? How did humans survive? And whose shoulders are we standing on now?

What do our Montessori children see when they look at the world in this moment? They aren’t blind to the news or deaf to our conversations. They know about uncertainty, disappointment, and tragedy. But what they also see is humanity coming together. It is this act, and this generation’s observation of it, that can give us that hope—that clear optimistic sense—that we will survive this too. We will make new discoveries. We will persevere. We stand on the achievements of those who came before us and we too have our own role to play. As a character in their script shares, “Let’s… make the world a better place for the humans that will be born after us.”

To read a full account of how Forest Bluff School students worked through the process of writing and designing an original play and what they learned along the way, visit our blog for parents and educators.

To purchase a DVD or flash drive of the play, contact the school office at 847-295-8338 or office@forestbluffschool.org.