The Worlds a Stage
Amose Pierre stands on a stage at the front of a cavernous hall in Codman Square. She is grinning, fidgety, a little embarrassed.
Then she blows the roof off the place, her voice soaring above the giggles of her classmates, and the police siren blaring outside: "He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million, laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and what's his reason? I am a Jew.''
The awkward 17-year-old has dissolved into Shylock, her every word dripping with his indignation.
Scenes like this play out every day in towns like Wellesley and Lexington, where it's a given that kids will learn to understand Shakespeare, get up on a stage, give the words life.
Predictably, recent champions in the state's Shakespeare competition come from schools like Weston High or The Winsor School.
Why couldn't they come from our school, too, asked Kim Parker, the humanities teacher who brought the Shakespeare competition to Codman Academy.
How about these reasons, for starters: Half of the students at the Dorchester charter school enter the ninth grade reading at the fifth-grade level; about 28 percent of them are special education students; two-thirds of them qualify for free or reduced-priced lunches; about a third don't speak English at home; too many of them deal with such immense dysfunction at home that it's a superhuman achievement for them just to show up every morning.
The school believes none of that should matter. As Shylock might say, have not these students the same hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions as those from the fancy schools?
And so, as soon as they arrive, new Codman students get the word that in the 10th grade, they'll get up on a stage and recite a monologue. No exceptions. No excuses.
"It gives students chances to inhabit the roles of other people, to be able to speak in that person's voice,'' says Thabiti Brown, the principal. "Our mission is to make what seems unreasonable and outlandish elsewhere seem like the norm here.''
Students at Codman are given a gift more valuable than swish facilities (which they definitely do not have) or individual tutoring (which they do): High, unyielding expectations. And they meet them.
Yesterday morning, 10th-graders took a practice MCAS exam in English language arts, in an effort to maintain the school's stellar performance on the statewide test. Last night, they got up on that stage and spoke as Hamlet, Beatrice, Iago, and Kate, hoping to win the school's annual contest and a spot in the regional final.
At practice on Monday, Darius Black was becoming Orsino, from "Twelfth Night,'' reluctantly.
"If music be the food of love, play on,'' he said, woodenly.
Lynne Johnson, the Huntington Theatre associate education director who coaches the students, wanted more from him.
"I can't do it today; I don't know why,'' Black said, before continuing in his monotone.
Then, suddenly, he seemed to realize he couldn't live with a lackluster performance. Could he start again?
Could he ever. This time, his voice rose, and his face filled with joy.
"If music be the food of love, play on! Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, the appetite may sicken, and so die!''
Pierre placed first last night. But hers wasn't the only victory. The students who looked as if they might turn inside out with discomfort, rushing, mumbling, stumbling over lines - and who stood on that stage anyway because it was expected of them - are winners, too.
