fbpx
  • Subscribe & Support
  • Sign up for Free Newsletter
  • Print Edition
    • Get Home Delivery
    • Read ePaper Online
    • Newsstand Locations
  • HV1 Magazines
  • Contact
    • Advertise
    • Customer Support
    • Submit A News Tip
    • Where’s My Paper?
  • Manage HV1 Account
  • Free HV1 Trial
  • Holiday Gift Subscription
Hudson Valley One
  • News
    • Schools
    • Business
    • Sports
    • Crime
    • Politics & Government
  • What’s Happening
    • Calendar Of Events
    • Featured Events
      • Art
      • Books
      • Kids
      • Lifestyle & Wellness
      • Food & Drink
      • Music
      • Nature
      • Stage & Screen
  • Opinions
    • Letters
    • Columns
    • Editorials
  • Local
    • Special Sections
    • Local History
  • Marketplace
    • All Classified Ads
    • Help Wanted
    • Post a Classified Ad
  • Obituaries
  • Podcast
  • Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • News
    • Schools
    • Business
    • Sports
    • Crime
    • Politics & Government
  • What’s Happening
    • Calendar Of Events
    • Featured Events
      • Art
      • Books
      • Kids
      • Lifestyle & Wellness
      • Food & Drink
      • Music
      • Nature
      • Stage & Screen
  • Opinions
    • Letters
    • Columns
    • Editorials
  • Local
    • Special Sections
    • Local History
  • Marketplace
    • All Classified Ads
    • Help Wanted
    • Post a Classified Ad
  • Obituaries
  • Podcast
  • Log In
No Result
View All Result
Hudson Valley One
No Result
View All Result

Drama Club performs original stage production based onpersonal accounts of World War II

by Frances Marion Platt
April 14, 2016
in Education
0
Pictured are some of the cast members of the upcoming New Paltz High School production of “Shades of War.” Back row (left to right): Sasha Williams, Brendan Woolsey, Zynab Makki, Liz Corey and Ashley Mazzei. Front row (left to right): Christina Tortorici, Ari Raskin and Valerie Jensen. (photo by Lauren Thomas)

The Drama Club at New Paltz High School is mounting an exciting, original stage production this weekend that is unlike anything that it has ever presented before: a pastiche compiled from new interviews, old writings, period songs and pop culture showing the World War II era from nearly every imaginable perspective, titled Shades of War. And it almost didn’t happen, because the financially strapped New Paltz School District completely cut the traditional fall dramatic production from the club’s budget, leaving only enough funds to put on the spring musical.

But Drama Club advisor Nancy Owen is not a woman easily deterred, and she loves working with the high school kids enough to go ahead with the fall drama, even though she’s not getting paid for it this time (unless the efforts of a parent volunteer committee succeed in raising enough funds via car washes and the like to fill the gap). She got the idea for Shades of War a couple of years ago while taking a local memoir-writing class, when another member of the group, Denise Springer, read an account of her life under Nazi occupation as a 14-year-old girl in Vichy France. Owen enlisted a Drama Club member, Allison Albrecht, to record an interview with Springer. And this weekend, Albrecht, a senior, will be performing a first-person account of Springer’s story in Shades of War.

“Denise got a very good view of how the Nazis were, because her parents owned a hotel and had 200 to 300 Germans living there,” Albrecht reports. “She felt torn between compassion for these Nazis and hating them.” Denise and other French children would “follow the Germans at night, trip them and throw stones.” But the girl also saw how miserable the young German soldiers were, how much they missed their families; two hanged themselves in their hotel rooms rather than be sent to the Russian front. When she moved to this country in her 20s, Denise was disgusted by the way that Americans seemed to glorify and romanticize war without ever having lived with it in their own communities.

Springer’s ambivalent narrative inspired Owen to assemble an educational stage production that would throw light on all the nuances of World War II — not just patriotic puffery. Act One is mostly upbeat, interspersing excerpts from nostalgic letters between American soldiers and their families with Swing Era song-and-dance numbers as performed by acts like the Andrews Sisters. But in Act Two, jitterbug jive and Rosie the Riveter give way to the darker side of the war.

The next local World War II survivor whom Owen wanted the Drama Club students to interview was her husband’s aunt, Dorothy Maroon, who had served as an Army nurse right after high school. Unfortunately, Maroon had Alzheimer’s disease by that point, and her wartime experience had to be assembled from her diaries, photos and mementos. “It’s such an amazing story, but it deserves to be told. It’s horrific, but it’s priceless,” says junior Liz Corey, who undertook the research project and will personify Dorothy in Shades of War.

Assigned to the 131st Evacuation Unit, Dorothy was among the American nurses sent in to rescue survivors of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp upon its liberation by the Allies at the end of the war. “The conditions were horrible,” with “bodies stacked like firewood,” reports Corey. “Dorothy had albums filled with pictures. She really did hide behind her camera.”

Page 1 of 2
12Next
Tags: Drama ClubNew Paltz High SchoolWorld War II
Join the family! Grab a free month of HV1 from the folks who have brought you substantive local news since 1972. We made it 50 years thanks to support from readers like you. Help us keep real journalism alive.
- Geddy Sveikauskas, Publisher
Previous Post

Meredith Monk’s voice in the wilderness

Next Post

An alternative for treating ADHD

Frances Marion Platt

Frances Marion Platt has been a feature writer (and copyeditor) for Ulster Publishing since 1994, under both her own name and the nom de plume Zhemyna Jurate. Her reporting beats include Gardiner and Rosendale, the arts and a bit of local history. In 2011 she took up Syd M’s mantle as film reviewer for Alm@nac Weekly, and she hopes to return to doing more of that as HV1 recovers from the shock of COVID-19. A Queens native, Platt moved to New Paltz in 1971 to earn a BA in English and minor in Linguistics at SUNY. Her first writing/editing gig was with the Ulster County Artist magazine. In the 1980s she was assistant editor of The Independent Film and Video Monthly for five years, attended Heartwood Owner/Builder School, designed and built a timberframe house in Gardiner. Her son Evan Pallor was born in 1995. Alternating with her journalism career, she spent many years doing development work – mainly grantwriting – for a variety of not-for-profit organizations, including six years at Scenic Hudson. She currently lives in Kingston.

Related Posts

Saugerties Junior High School announces its second-quarter Honor Roll
Education

Controversy ensues as KCSD walks back Black History Month opt out language

February 4, 2023
Onteora faces “unfathomable” choices as district’s enrollment dwindles
Education

Parents voice concerns over plan to send Onteora sixth graders to middle school in Boiceville

February 2, 2023
Trump’s taking back trans kids’ protections won’t change local approach
Education

Committee works to ensure that every Saugerties student has the opportunity to succeed 

January 31, 2023
News & notes (4/21/21)
Education

Kingston School District weighs priorities as federal COVID funding set to expire later this year

January 30, 2023
“The School will be shot up” written on Miller Middle School’s bathroom wall
Crime

“The School will be shot up” written on Miller Middle School’s bathroom wall

January 30, 2023
Wild Earth collaborates with the KCSD to get kids out of the classroom and into their natural surroundings
Education

Wild Earth collaborates with the KCSD to get kids out of the classroom and into their natural surroundings

January 23, 2023
Next Post

An alternative for treating ADHD

Trending News

  • One-man crime spree comes to end after Kingston man runs out of luck 3.7k views
  • Saugerties to host inaugural Snow Moon Festival February 3 to 5 2k views
  • Visit Kingston’s 12,240-square-foot squat, centrally located with wood-burning fireplace 1.6k views
  • The Bruynswyck Inn Oyster & Clam Bar offers fresh seafood and Shawangunk views 1.6k views
  • 20-foot, 10-wheel big rig overturns in Saugerties, injuring driver 1.2k views
  • Three-story, mixed-use building proposed for Agway property in New Paltz 1k views

Weather

Kingston
◉
39°
Sunny
7:04 am5:15 pm EST
Feels like: 34°F
Wind: 9mph S
Humidity: 42%
Pressure: 30.04"Hg
UV index: 1
MonTueWed
46/21°F
41/34°F
50/28°F
Weather forecast Kingston, New York ▸

Subscribe

Independent. Local. Substantive. Subscribe now.

  • Subscribe & Support
  • Sign up for Free Newsletter
  • Print Edition
  • HV1 Magazines
  • Contact
  • Manage HV1 Account
  • Free HV1 Trial
  • Holiday Gift Subscription

© 2022 Ulster Publishing

No Result
View All Result
  • News
    • Schools
    • Business
    • Sports
    • Crime
    • Politics & Government
  • What’s Happening
    • Calendar Of Events
    • Featured Events
      • Art
      • Books
      • Kids
      • Lifestyle & Wellness
      • Food & Drink
      • Music
      • Nature
      • Stage & Screen
  • Opinions
    • Letters
    • Columns
    • Editorials
  • Local
    • Special Sections
    • Local History
  • Marketplace
    • All Classified Ads
    • Help Wanted
    • Post a Classified Ad
  • Obituaries
  • Podcast
  • Subscribe & Support
  • Contact Us
    • Customer Support
    • Advertise
    • Submit A News Tip
  • Print Edition
    • Read ePaper Online
    • Newsstand Locations
    • Where’s My Paper
  • HV1 Magazines
  • Manage HV1 Account
  • Log In
  • Free HV1 Trial

© 2022 Ulster Publishing