Aislinn Langley Performance Review

The Jungle Book Performance Review

               Henry Clay’s triumphant production of The Jungle Book marked the beginning of a new era of HCHS theater. Running intermittently from April 29^th to May 16^th, the production that drew attention in the papers and online came five months in the making. From double-casted leads to innovative set design and crew work, The Jungle Book proved entertaining and sufficiently impressive for audiences of all ages.

Taking up the directorial torch on something of a whim, Kiefer Shuler and Kristian Junker began their co-directing run in the fall with the drama Twelve Angry Jurors, followed in January by The Frogs, whose cast was largely made up of actors who were simultaneously rehearsing Jungle Book. Feeling the need to prove their worth as directors, the two sought ways of stepping up the game throughout the process of putting the show together, always seeking improvements and innovation. This search led them to hang ropes from the rafters, construct a massive tree, and attach wheels to massive set pieces. Each of these bold choices contributed to the imagination of the show—a simple stage gains a multitude of new dimensions when actors can climb and swing before a fluid and malleable setting.

The fact that a double cast was necessary conveys the pool of talent the directors had to draw room. Instead of having to choose between Raiffa Syamil and Viviana Ortiz for the role of Mowgli, it was simple enough to simply double cast and roll right along. Only the roles of Mowgli, Baloo, Kaa, and King Louie were double cast, but even these changes created an entirely different dynamic with the rest of the cast. Green Cast was stocked with actors who had previously taken to the stage this year in the two previous shows and brought endless energy that created some artistic synergy and led to fantastic acting. Orange Cast brought together an especially talented group of musicians and excelled musically. Whether viewing Raiffa’s petulant Mowgli or Vivi’s utterly adorable Mowgli, the audience was gifted with genuine interpretations of the Kipling character.

As impressive as the acting, singing, and dancing is, the crew and tech work is what brings a show together, and The Jungle Book is no exception. Just as important as what’s seen on stage is the twenty-five-piece pit, the forty light cues being worked out in the booth, and the constant microphone work being done both in the booth and backstage. A set of ten mics is shared by a cast of thirty-something, necessitating a system of sharing, passing off, and switching in the dark. Actors also double as crew workers, moving set pieces and props when they aren’t on stage. A crew of four actors who play the vultures at the end of the show spend the rest of the show moving the large wheeled set pieces and lounging in the rafter catwalks above the stage to drop and haul up ropes throughout the show. This cast duality of acting and working backstage highlights every actor’s dedication to the show.

The high energy, complicated choreography, staged hits and use of audience space all add up to a performance that is engaging for all. The monkey’s massive swing dance number brings down the house every night while the percussionist’s badum-tss accompanying puns and jokes earns giggles. Younger audiences never fail to be amused by physical humor and enjoy the staged hits and action of the show. The Henry Clay production of The Jungle Book was well worth the five months its growth required and made a worthy final show for the first year of the artistic reign of Junker and Shuler, who have next set their sights on the works of Agatha Christie and Shakespeare, as well as another monumental Disney classic.

emily cashman performance review

Emily Cashman

Jungle Book Performance Review

The morning school performance of The Jungle Book last Friday was, by far, the best school play I have seen during my time at Henry Clay. Directed by Mr. Shuler and Mr. Junker, The Jungle Book went above and beyond my expectations. Raiffa was an excellent Mowgli and her singing was fantastic. Sydney Young played Baloo and was also great at singing. Jade Curless’ performance as the snake was geat, and I heard Anne did a fantastic job as well. My favorite aspect of the show had to be the monkey scene with many kids swinging from actual ropes hanging from the theater ceiling. I was awed by the creativity of that, and it was, in my opinion, one of the best parts of the play.

Another one of my favorite parts of the play was the continuous audience interaction. It wasn’t usually direct, except for the quick note writing to Charlie Grimes, but the cast members moved across a row in the audience multiple times and also moved up and down the aisles. I happened to be sitting in the row directly behind the row that the cast members used, and I loved being so up close and personal to those parts of the play. I enjoyed this aspect of the show because it brought the cast and the audience together, if only for a short moment, and made the experience much different from previous plays I had watched.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed Henry Clay’s rendition of The Jungle Book and was blown away by the quality of the performances by the actors. I liked that there were more actors than usual because the group dances and songs were more lively and enchanting simply because more was going on on stage.

VOD Performance Review-will mathews

VOD Review

By Will Mathews

 “VOD” is a gripping performance by the Muhlenberg College Theatre and Dance Association. I had the pleasure of viewing the piece on April 21^st at 8 P.M, at the Muhlenberg Theatre in Allentown, PA. Written and directed by Henry Evans and Noah Dach, starring Nicollette Amico, Shantell Cruz, Henry Evans, Divine Garland, Courtney Imken, Michael Masse, Mary Rollins Mathews, Tommy McCarthy, Nick Stone and Lea Torelli. The performance was set in a post WW2 society in which a lot of hope had left the main character “the soldier” played by Tommy McCarthy. We see this by his opening of a box, Pandora’s Box, and all the evils of the world escaping, causing nothing but despair. During this part of the performance the music is dark and the lighting is very dim. Which gave off a very grim vibe and the actors who came out of the box were dressed in dark rags to represent their evil. The production revolves around the Soldiers interactions with other people he meets in the post war society.  He often struggles as the beings from the box try and ruin him. Ultimately he is saved by Hope, who is played by Mary Rollins Mathews; she was dressed in an elegant blue dress and always had a bright light on her to represent her goodness. Being a college production run entirely by students, there were a few points that were not done as crisply as they should’ve been, but overall I thought the performance was very good and moving.  I would give it four out of five stars.

Sloan Warner Performance Review

Upon recently seeing Henry Clay High School’s recent performance of The Jungle Book directed by Kiefer Shuler and Kristian Junker on May 13 at about 9:45, I have mixed reviews, but overall would say it was a solid performance for a school play.

The main idea of the play is Mowgli, played by Raifa, who has lived with animals all his life, is told that he must be reintegrated into human society. Throughout, Mowgli runs into multiple different packs of animals, but ultimately runs into humans and is reintegrated into society by choice.

The set was actually quite impressive. There was a good use of dark greens throughout the set to mimic the audience actually being in a jungle where not much light is let through the enormous trees. There were also good light green lights to show that everything in the jungle, even the light is affected by the forest. There were also large, well-painted murals with intricate trees and a beautiful bucolic village in the middle of the forest.

The music was personally my favorite part. The band did a fabulous job, but unfortunately, the sound was not up to par. Pretty much every song which was sang with music accompanying it were incomprehensible to the point where you could not hear a single word. However, other than that flaw and some distractions from the audience, there were many pros to the play. My two favorite scenes would have to be the monkey and snake singing scenes. The monkey scene was elegant and a lot was going on, and the snake singing scene was spectacular singing. Also, Sydney Young who played Baloo did a wonderful job and was full of energy. Also quite funny.

If I had to rate the play on a scale of one to ten, I’d give it a six out of ten. It was probably worth the five dollar ticket coming from a stingy high school student.

Poetry Collection Emmet Allen

Allen Ginsberg was an American writer with ambiguous, but blatant, ties to Marxism in the era of McCarthyism. He authored a number of poetry collections, including his most famous Howl. This collection was seized by U.S. customs and its publisher was arrested and tried because of the "obscene" content of the title poem. In addition to his relationship with communism, his reference to drug use and his descriptions of his own homosexuality broke from previous norms. His openness was the fuel for many of his critics, but it was also the reason that he had such a lasting influence over those who accepted his work.
Howl is a collection that addresses all of the typical subjects of Ginsberg's. It addresses his political affiliations and, more importantly, discontents. It directs attention to his sexuality, as well as his drug use and the drug use of his peers, which influenced him greatly. His discontents with American society are articulately throughout, particularly in his poem America.


America, written 1956


America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for
murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over
from Russia. I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie
producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again. Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and
twentyfivethousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic. America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his
automobiles more so they're all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the
workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party
was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother
Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have
been a spy.
America you don're really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.


Ginsberg's disenchantment with contemporary affairs are noted several times throughout the poem, presented in exclamations such as "Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb" or realizations mocking realizations of the "power mad" Russians who desire to "eat us alive."
Additionally, he references cases such as that of Sacco and Vanzetti that illustrate some of the most grievous departures from conservative America.
His drug use is also noted, he strove to "smoke marijuana every chance [he had]."
Overall, the most striking aspect of his poetry is his dedication to individualism, the recognition of his "psychopathic" nature and his resolve to put his "queer shoulder to the wheel."
This is the continuity throughout Ginsberg's writings: the affirmation of the individual choice of each human being, within or external to the social platform upon which one is placed.


There are several aspects of Ginsberg's work that I feel a similar connection to, for instance my dislike for current political affairs. However, sexuality and drug use are far less important to my life to date, and there are other issues of social importance I would prefer to focus on. One example is American, and global, relations of race, religion, and lifestyle (the latter being another focus of Ginsberg's, however one that manifests itself mostly in discussion of homosexuality in this collection.


Ginsberg, Allen. Howl and other poems. San Francisco, City Lights Press. 1956.

The Flea

In his poem "The Flea," John Donne implores his lover to take part in the activity he suggests, as it is not in fact a "sin". Donne explains that his suggestion is nothing to be fearful of, because the "swells of one blood made of two" have been present before--if the flea has done it, why shouldn't they?

Donne reveals that his intentions are entirely superfluous in the closing lines, where he abandons his previous argument (that their "wedding" had already taken place, and that their union was so severe that further developments would change nothing) upon his lover's realization that, despite his impressive metaphor, she can simply avoid seduction with no true problem. To this, Donne replies with the claim that, since the previous union is unimportant and can be ignored, seduction cannot hold any significant problem. Essentially, Donne wants to argue his case without consistency--the conclusion is all that he cares about.

love poem analysis

I chose the poem "Somewhere I Have Never Travelled" by E.E. Cummings.  Cummings view on love resembles a flower opening and closing with the seasons.  He gets across the idea that the woman he loves makes it difficult to think, and in turn can use this manipulatively and to her advantage.  This idea is very similar to the way I see love.  It is something that causes people to do crazy things, typically due to the failure to think it through.  Love causes you to act rashly, and make decisions that you  may regret.  Those who love each other enjoy the time that they spend together more than anything else, and I feel that Cummings and I see love in the same way.