As far as human memory goes, man has always-in way or the other-acted, A rather peculiar characteristic that only we seem to possess inside the animal kingdom. Man has used this capability to pretend to be someone or something that he is in reality not for all causes, with good or bad intentions: entertain himself or others by acting, lying, dressing up, religious rites…And even today, in a world where the rat race is boss, acting in general still plays a major role in our daily life, mostly on TV as entertainment (or in commercials as bloody irritating, especially in the form of laundry products or badly dubbed foreign ads). But theatre itself is still alive as well, as was proven at OLVE during a performance for the 3rd grade.
The play was performed by two brave actors who crossed the Channel in order to bring some cultural entertainment into the day of the OLVE-students of classes 5 and 6.
The introduction resembled, according to several students, Forrest Gump rather a lot, even though it was actually based on the book ‘Of Mice and Men’. It describes the adventure of two American hillbillies looking for a ranch where they could work. All they had were each other and they looked after each other. One of them was rather “simple”, the other one was a bit cleverer. Their dream? One day own their very own ranch, with lots of animals. However, one of them had killed a woman and now the other one had to “dispose” himself of his companion. Dressed as these characters they came out and welcomed the students in, who were waiting anxiously for the spectacle to begin.
“The big book show” was the official title of the performance. Apart from the introduction, some other books were discussed. One of those was “The Great Gatsby”, a story about a bright rich young man who was in love with a girl. Here the audience already had the honour of playing an important role. It was divided in three groups. One group played the “settled” rich (the girl belonged to this group) the second one acted as the wind in the “Valley of Shadows”. The third group played the “nouveau riches”. By war and a series of intrigues, basically everybody gets killed.
Another story was ‘The Barrytown Trilogy’, about a family called “the Rabbits”, and the conflicts that happened in their midst. It was built up out of many children. Each with their own problems. The oldest daughter was pregnant, the father was constantly angry, the twins were annoying, another son was making too much of a racket as a music producer upstairs…and oh yes, the neighbours were constantly spying on them.
And of course, if you are discussing English literature, it is simply not imaginable that no-one mentions George Orwell’s masterpiece “Animal farm”, which represents a mirror for the communist society of that time. The reign of a sadistic farmer is overthrown by the farm animals after a speech by an old boat who dreamt of an utopian society. After his passing-away, the animals take control. Slowly however, the farms turns into a dictatorship, run by three pigs (representing Trotsky, Lenin and Stalin) who constantly make up lies to keep the animals under their control. They also use dogs as bodyguards (KGB). The famous slogan “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others” says it all, really. In the end, the pigs practically turn into humans: they wear clothes, drink alcohol, eat human food, smoke and invite other farms to come over and play poker with them. The book ends with the farm animals looking through the windows at the party, and them not being able to separate man from beast and vice versa.
As in any normal school, the audience was shy to participate with vigour. Opinions were strongly divided amongst the crowd: some found it ridiculous, others appreciated the play. One thing everyone was probably pleased about, was that they missed two hours of class. None the less, we appreciated that OLVE organises this events and, of course, that the two British actors were willing to pay us a visit so far from home. The acting was quite good, and they certainly involved the audience. However, it wasn’t always clear what books they were actually talking about or what the subject was as some books were not very well-known.. Otherwise, a jolly good. According to us : an initiative which should certainly be repeated in the future at OLVE.
By Erik Geens en Alec Van Peel
6EcMt