Ed. student teaches kids about 'Our Town'

Students at Beverly Hills Middle School are getting first-hand experience with the performing arts. They are not exploring film and television production in California, however. Instead, the students are learning the art of producing a dramatic play right in Philadelphia. Thirty-two eighth graders from Upper Darby's Beverly Hills Middle School, which is located just outside the city, have been studying Thornton Wilder's Our Town under the instruction of Emily Gold, a student in the Graduate School of Education. Gold, who is working with the class as a student-teacher, coordinated the students' study of the play with the Quadramics' recent production of Our Town. And as part of their lesson, the students have performed excerpts of the play in class. "I actually chose Our Town because I knew Penn was doing the show, and I had friends involved," Gold said. Quadramics performers have helped teach the class about the art of theater and the themes of the play itself. College freshman and Quadramics performer Matt Seneca spoke to the students at their school about character development and about traits of his character, Dr.Gibbs. "They were thoroughly enthralled," he said of the eighth graders. "They had a lot of perceptive things to say." Seneca and College junior Ellen Carnochan, who played Mrs. Gibbs, also discussed some of the inter-character relationships and themes of the play. Beverly Hills eighth grader Alexis Parente said she understood Our Town as a play "all about life and how people take it for granted." Parente was one of a handful of middle schoolers who came to the University last Saturday to see the Quadramics performance of Our Town in its entirety. After the play, the students were given a behind-the-scenes tour and "got an idea of what goes into the production of a show," Our Town producer and College senior Jeremy Shapira said.