EDWARDSVILLE - Edwardsville High School’s Drama Club welcomed the Jewish Community Relations Council so students could learn more about Jewish culture and religion ahead of their fall play.
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The EHS Drama Club will produce “Letters to Sala” on Nov. 8 and 9, 2024. This play tells the true story of a young girl who survived seven labor camps in five years during the Holocaust. On Sept. 18, 2024, the club spoke with teenagers from the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC).
“That element of being able to connect to real people, it’s not just a two-dimensional page in a play. I think it makes it more meaningful, more purposeful,” explained Ashley Melton, theater director. “One of the things with selecting a show that’s this heavy is making sure that there’s some reasoning behind selecting it, not just, ‘Let’s do something dramatic because we want to show our acting chops,’ but, ‘Let’s do something dramatic because it’s purposeful.’”
Members of the JCRC spoke about Jewish holidays, dietary rules, anti-Semitism and more. Students could also ask questions anonymously.
Melton said it is important that students have this context before they perform the play. Before the club began work on “Letters to Sala,” a teacher in the EHS foreign language department gave students a German lesson, and a history teacher went over the basics of World War II. Students will also visit the St. Louis Holocaust Museum later this month.
Melton believes this supplemental education is an important part of producing “Letters to Sala.” She wants to make sure the Drama Club does it “right.”
“Today’s teenagers are so really aware of cultural differences, and not only that, but they’re really sensitive to it,” she said. “I know, working with my kids and who I know them to be, that they wanted to do this right if we were going to do it. By right, I mean they want to be respectful. They want to tell this story in a way where it’s not going to be shedding negative light on Sala’s story, but positive light and sharing her memories, because that’s what it was all about.”
In order to do this, Melton was eager to bring in other educators and the JCRC. She said she wanted to make sure her students got the context and education they need in order to produce this play as respectfully and sincerely as possible.
“For myself as the educator, it’s important for us to identify that this isn’t my wheelhouse and I need to bring in others,” Melton added. “I think that makes our students trust us more whenever we’re willing to say, ‘I don’t know the answer to something but I am willing to seek it out and I am willing to seek out an expert who does.’”
The students and educators who work with the Drama Club are excited to produce the play in November. This production is truly one-of-a-kind. The playwright, Arlene Hutton, emailed Melton a new scene that has never been produced before, and the EHS Drama Club will be integrating this scene into the play. Going forward, this scene will be included in all productions of “Letters to Sala,” but the EHS production will be one of the first.
Students will be Zooming with Hutton and Sala’s daughter, Ann Kirschner, who wrote the novel on which the play is based. Melton is proud to be sharing this story with the community and her students, and she hopes it’s a powerful experience for all involved.
“It was a dramatic piece that our students needed to be challenged with, but it also was a drama that they are learning about currently in school. We can connect it to their other curricular courses, so it becomes relevant,” she said. “We’re really taking our time digging through it.”
For more information about the EHS Drama Club, visit EHSDrama.com.
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