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11/24/2021 06:00 AMGlaciers surge and recede. Civilizations rise and fall. In three acts, eons of geological time, and centuries of hysterical human history, unfold in Branford High School (BHS) Performing Arts’ production of Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth.
Audiences are invited to attend two live shows starring student players on Thursday, Dec. 9 and Friday, Dec. 10 at 7:30 p.m. in BHS Cathyann Roding Auditorium. Tickets are $5 at the door.
“It’s an absolutely brilliant play by one of America’s foremost writers, thinkers, scholars, and activists,” said director Maria Ogren.
For more than 40 years, Ogren, now a retired BHS AP English teacher, has uniquely interpreted classic and modern plays so BHS students and their audiences not only experience the performing arts, but see parallels to the current state of their world. In this case, Wilder’s clash of fateful decisions and disasters don’t need much tweaking to fit into 2021 as a telling tale of today, she said.
“I have always wanted to do this play, but the time never seemed right,” said Ogren. “When on earth do war and cataclysmic disasters all come together? There’s a real convergence of insanity, so it works.”
Assistant director John Matthiessen, a BHS English teacher, is once again working alongside Ogren to help students pull the performances together. The BHS production has a cast of 21 players and a small crew that also doubles as cast in some scenes.
Over the course of the play, those populating Wilder’s world deal with everything from climate disaster to ecological destruction and end-of-the-world scenarios. Through it all, the playwright shows how “people’s individual decisions have a tremendous impact on what goes on in their world, in their country, in their households,” said Ogren.
“It’s also heavily, biblically rich,” she added, pointing to principal characters Mr. Antrobus and Mrs. Antrobus, who not only represent a sort of everyman/woman, but also Adam and Eve.
Decisions to go to war, to be faithful to a spouse, to take in the wanderer and the refugee, are also all touched upon in this play, she said.
“That’s how current it is,” said Ogren. “It is so incredibly germane to what’s going in the world around us. And it’s also about horrifying things that happen. They certainly mention war. There are refugees [and] turmoil, and laxity—people not doing what they should do. Wilder just has it all in there. People will be amazed.”
Wilder, who lived in Hamden, introduced the play in 1942, while the country was still at war. Known for his experimental theater, Wilder includes the tumult of war in The Skin of Our Teeth while also tying in “a lot of quirky, unusual things,” said Ogren. “There’s some absolutely hysterical lines, and there are some that ring very true for our current political and cultural situation.”
At one point, Wilder even has one of his characters point out the clashing convergences on stage.
“There’s a line in there, ‘The playwright, he can’t even decide if this is modern New Jersey, or we’re still living in caves,’” said Ogren. “And it’s true, every step of the way. There’s a dinosaur and a mammoth in the play. There’s a glacier; there’s a telephone.”
The BHS production adds to Wilder’s humor with some unexpected and surprising songs piped in as events unfold, such as the Great Flood, or when a new sight is introduced, such as Atlantic City’s boardwalk. As this is a play that depicts everything from the Ice Age to a 20th-century family home, the BHS production relies on suggesting surroundings with simplified sets crafted by Ogren, who also created the costumes.
In order to give more kids the chance to get on stage, three different sets of students, one for each act, fill leading roles of Mr. Antrobus, Mrs. Antrobus, and the family maid, Sabina.
“They’re very large roles. This gives nine people a chance to get on stage and do something with a role,” said Ogren.
Mr. Antrobus is played by Matt Cabahug, Alex Lenox, and Adit Rajpurohit. Mrs. Antrobus is played by Bella DeSorbo, Layla Richmond, and Cheyenne Rose. Sabina is played by Jasmine Baklik, Grace D’Addio, and Michelle Lin.
Additionally, two different pairs of players appear as the Antrobus children, Henry and Gladys, on alternate nights. Levi Burger and Ian MacDougal are Henry; Shay Barrett and Morgan Selander are Gladys. The Fortune Teller character is also played by two different students, Morgan Hackley and Alexis Peterson, on alternate nights.
Additional student performers are Louis Brodsky (news anchor and Moses), Charles Doyle (announcer and Homer), Jenny-Lynn Rose (as stage manager), and Mia LeBlanc (telegraph deliverer and sound technician) as well as stage crew with various roles: Italia Bruno, Sanai Johnson-Byrd, Avery Maymon, and Elliot Miller.
Ogren and Matthiessen also note the students should be commended for not only working on this production since September, but for remaining COVID-safe. Audiences may be able to make out several players wearing clear face shields during their performances.
BHS Performing Arts presents Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth on Thursday, Dec. 9 and Friday, Dec. 10, at 7:30 p.m. in the Cathyann Roding Auditorium at Branford High School, 185 East Main Street. Tickets, $5, are available at the door.