Twenty students were involved in our New School Showtime production, Lissy
Walker is Going Home. This was a script inspired by Homer’s The Odyssey; however, ours was set in in present day.

The play begins with the blending of real life and threatre. After the house goes dark, the audience waits for some slightly uncomfortable time for the show to begin. Then a latecomer makes her way past the usher who is desperately trying to maintain calm and peace in the theatre. However, the latecomer makes her way onto stage with her cell phone trying to maintain a good connection. And as she loses it, she looks up into the faces of the audience. We find out that something has happened back home, and she is desperately trying to get back. But this is also an existential issue for Lissy. She ends her monologue saying, “and all I want to do is go home, if I just knew where home is.”

She meets a guy dressed as Athena coming out of a gay club (The Trojan), and he stays with her as they wait for the opening of the metro, for the “rosy fingers of dawn.”

This play had quite a bit of comedy: underage students lining up to go into a club, a bag lady who breaks into a Calypso song in the metro---about the metro system, failed pick-ups, quarrels in the bathroom.

Lissy encounters many of the obstacles Ulysses did---but in a different form: The Cyclops, who Ulysses had to defeat with his mental prowess is DJ Cyk, who wears the illuminati eye on his T-shirt. Calypso is a bag lady on the metro when it stalls. Circe, who turned men into pigs, is the spirit of the cell phone—doing the Circe rap. The sirens present a “brief tango of ego and desire” leaving us with the warning : “If they’re telling you what you want to hear, our advice to you is to turn a deaf ear.

The style of the play was Brechtian. We made no effort to hide the fact that this was a play. Actors changed on stage in from of the audience; props and set pieces were always visible. We performed the show four times. And this was a profound experience for the students. They watched themselves grow and go deeper into the text.

This project met the criteria for student success as it allowed student to connect directly with the course material: they acted and helped produce the play by designing the posters, programs, costumes, and tickets. Acting together in a play, helped students develope their cooperative and teamwork skills. Moreover, they gained self-confidence as they roe to the challenge they were given. The fact that they were all directly involved in the play enriched their classroom experience. They all said they felt more at ease when speaking in front of people and were thrilled with having had the opportunity to “perform,” to have stepped outside their comfort zone. The students’ first-hand experience in putting on a play helped them develop their creative skills and gave them an opportunity to put their talents into use. Being actively involved in all aspects of the production helped them develop their executive skills and inspire their desire to start projects on their own. They fell in love with themselves.