Gilroy
– High school drama teacher Ethan Stocks and his students are
going out with a bang. Tonight they open their final play of the
season – the rattling and schizophrenic Pulitzer prize-winning
drama,
”
The Skin of Our Teeth,
”
by Thornton Wilder.
Gilroy – High school drama teacher Ethan Stocks and his students are going out with a bang. Tonight they open their final play of the season – the rattling and schizophrenic Pulitzer prize-winning drama, “The Skin of Our Teeth,” by Thornton Wilder.
The spring play represents the culmination of a year of drama class for students and three years of teaching for Stocks, who will return to school to pursue a master’s degree this fall. During his three-year tenure at the high school, Stocks added more plays to the annual repertoire and helped revive the senior play, a tradition started in 1979, but canceled for lack of interest from 2001 to 2004.
Stocks has become so associated with the high school theater that students fear his departure will mean the demise of the department.
“It kind of scares me, because what if we don’t have a drama program next year,” said sophomore Kendra Springer. “I want a senior play.”
While Stocks understands their concerns, he has been worn out by his time as a teacher.
“I thought I wanted to be a high school teacher, but it’s challenging,” he said. “It’s time for a change, I think.”
Stocks, a 1999 GHS grad, will be attending the University College London in England next year to pursue a master’s degree in film studies. With aspirations of becoming a film director, the degree will give him a base of knowledge to create his own art, he said.
“It’s a natural kind of step for me,” he said.
The last play of the year is not your typical drama, said Stocks, director and drama teacher.
“It really is this weird balance of comedy and drama,” he said.
The production follows a family of four and their maid through three acts that span eons. While the curtain opens on a prehistoric scene – complete with a mammoth and dinosaurs – the second act finds the family in 1940s Atlantic City and the final act takes place in the aftermath of a futuristic nuclear war.
The constant through these anachronistic acts is that the family has problems – a glacier that threatens the family home in the first act, a great flood in the second act and, in the third act, the tension of reunited father and son after they fought on different sides of a war.
The play features a multitude of roles, making it a good challenge for high school actors, Stocks said.
It is also “a great play for high school students because it draws on all sorts of literary and biblical allusions” – such as the feud between brothers in act one and the flood in act two.
The multiple layers in the play thrill students.
“If you can actually dig in, it has a really good moral,” said Springer.
“I’m not even sure I get (all the references),” said senior Aaron Nasser. “I get some of it.”
The complexity is part of what makes the production so appealing, he said.
“It’s such a crazy, funny, down-to-earth play,” said Nasser. “I think it’s great because we’re going out with a bang.”
