Around the World in 80 Days

Huguette Pettis owned Sunnyview School. Even though Sunnyview was advertised as an “American School.” Honey (she despaired of any non-French person ever pronouncing “Huguette” correctly) imparted a distinctly European atmosphere. She was French, raised in Algeria, and educated in the European style, the only style suitable for educating young people in her opinion.

I possessed none of those advantages. Although the school year started out well enough, it soon became apparent that she did not think much of my American ways or style of teaching. We had saved money during our profitable years on Guam and had planned originally to not work for the two years we spent in Spain. Given this financial situation, I made plans to work as a self-employed full-time free-lance writer for a year. Honey quite liked Joanne since her style of teaching was more “French,” and so our economic plan involved her continued employment. I recommend this situation to any young married man. This is a great plan for a free-lance writer.

It was in the spring of 1975 and I wanted to go out with a last hurrah, so I volunteered to supervise the end-of-the-year program for the kindergarten through eighth-grade. I was interested in total student involvement and in having interested and talented children working with each other no matter what their grade or who their teacher. Very unFrench. Kindergarten and first grade were the exceptions. Their teachers felt that their kids weren’t quite ready for a free-wheeling activity like this and would rather participate as a group. I wasn’t sure I was quite ready for this activity either. But I was obligated, and so away we went
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First we had a brainstorming session. There were lots of interesting students and I mixed and matched them so that at least three grade levels were involved in every group, more often four grade levels. The groups were charged with generating ideas no matter how silly, impossible or expensive. The only thing worse than a bad idea, I told them, is no idea at all.

Ideas emerged from movies to monsters to kung fu. One girl didn’t care what we did so long as she got to do a ballet number. The one idea that struck most everyone’s fancy was the story line from Around the World in Eighty Days.

So now we needed to adapt Jules Verne’s novel to our needs and we formed a writing group. I really didn’t want a script with blocking and memorized lines because I thought they would interfere with these kids’ strongest points, imagination, spontaneity, creativity, enthusiasm. In other words, I didn’t want to do a lot of directing.

The group roughed out a story and we selected the countries we would visit for a variety of reasons. We chose Russia so our ballerina could dance. We chose the United States so the kindergarteners and first graders could stage an Indian raid. We chose Spain because we had a Spanish dancing class, England because that’s where Verne started and ended his story, and Africa for no reason at all.

Because we had no theater, we built our sets in different classrooms. That way they could be put up permanently and the audience could go from set to set under the direction of student “tour guides.” About twenty students threw themselves into set building projects. They built Africa and Russia on the second floor, the USA, Spain and England on the first floor, and a portable Indian teepee for the playground outside. They acquired their own materials and designed and built their own sets. Good thing. I’m terrible at designing and building sets. It turned out they weren’t very good either and sometimes the sets wouldn’t nail together or tumbled down as fast as they put them up. But they kept at it and found solutions. Where they found them, I don’t know, because they didn’t ask me.

The acting group had to first get used to improvising. We did some of the beginning drills, pretending we were flowers opening, apples falling from trees, bacon frying in a pan. I gave a few hints on movement and voice projection, but not all that much. Then we started on our play, the story for which had by now been written.

We began daily rehearsals. Everyone involved acted several different parts each day for two weeks before I cast anyone. There was so much interest in the show among the parents that we decided on four different performances. I cast the show in four different ways so everyone got to do four different parts. In one show Passapartout, the valet, was played by three small second graders who had worked out a comedy routine. In another the valet was played by a French boy who had enrolled the previous October speaking only French and Spanish. By June his English was acceptable but heavily accented. He said all of his lines in French. I think I was the only one who didn’t understand what he was saying.

The kindergarteners and first graders were making their costumes and weapons and practicing a dance. They were going to tie their captive to a pole and dance around him. The only difficulty we had with them was persuading them to release their captive so he could be in the next scene.

An eighth grade boy assumed the role of stage manager and took it upon himself to be sure that the set was ready and the actors in place on time. Some of our props had to be hand made and weren’t always successful. We had a hand lens for the detective, but it always bent in the middle so we never used it.

The students interested in music had dwindled to a precious few. Our orchestra consisted of a clarinetist, a guitarist and a bongo player who massaged Moroccan drums, tin cans and other bangables. They furnished most of the music to start the scenes, although the dance music was provided by record player or tape recorder.

As opening neared, the remaining students were pressed into service as furniture movers, tour guides and “expediters” whose job it was to get the parents away from the punch bowl and into the correct room so they could see the play.

Here is as much script as we ever had.

Scene One—London, a pub. Orchestra: Around the World in Eighty Days. A newspaper reader recounts a story of the robbery of the Bank of England to other patrons. This leads into a story about whether it is possible to circumnavigate the world in 80 days. There is a heated argument. Phileas Phogg bets 20,000 pounds he can do it. He and Passapartout, his valet, leave with a bag of money, their traveling expenses.

Scene Two—Spain, a café. Guitarist: Pasodoble. Phogg and Passapartout are on stage admiring the dances from the Spanish dancing class and eating oranges, the peels of which they put into a bag which is an exact duplicate of their money bag. Enter detective, Hemlock Bones, who explains that Phogg and Passapartout were seen leaving England with a bag of money which he thinks is the loot from the Bank of England robbery. Bones steals the wrong bag and exits vowing to dump the contents on the bank manager’s desk.

Scene 3:--Africa, outdoor bazaar. Drummer: solo. Bones enters muttering something about soreheaded bank managers and is about to make his arrest when he is fed a native delicacy and collapses. A witchdoctor performs an emergency laporotomy in his clinic and removes all manner of items from the detective’s abdominal cavity including cans, bottles, lengths of hose. The doctor’s clinic was made of branches and leaves in the center of the room. The front of the clinic was covered with a sheer and a light set up at the rear of the room so we could project this high drama in silhouette form.

Scene 4:--Russia, indoors. Bones enters clutching his abdomen and is about to arrest Phogg and Passapartout when a smuggler asks him to hold a mysterious package. Police then drag the protesting detective off to jail. Afterwards the ballet was performed as well as a Russian folk dance created by four girls in the Spanish dancing class. One of the girls had a hissy fit and dropped out, so the dance for four was done by three. One of the remaining three girls could actually do kazotskies, which amazed us all. That helped make up for the missing dancer. Sometimes one of the dancers also acted in the same scene. Then they would improvise a way to change from policeman, or smuggler to dancer.

Scene 5:--USA, outdoors. Clarinet: Do You Know the Way to San Jose. Actors enter on a train. Just as Bones is about to make his arrest, the first graders and kindergarteners, who have been hiding in rooms all around the set, stage a raid and kidnap him. To attack they had to work their way through the legs of the parents who were standing between them and the USA set. The train collapsed before it’s final performance, so the actors formed a conga line and shook cans of gravel for sound effect.

Scene 6:--London, pub. Orchestra: Around the World in Eighty Days. Phogg wins the bet by arriving just as the clock strikes 12. (Sometimes we had someone off-stage strike the chimes. Once we had someone dressed in a clock suit hit himself in the head with a mallet. It was up to the clock in each performance.) Bones enters and is about to finally make his triumphant arrest when the newspaper reader announces that the thief was caught. It was the bank manager. Bones faints and all of the Indians and other participants enter over his (or her) recumbent form. All bow and exit.

I had forgotten all about this play until I reviewed my Spain notes from over thirty years ago. I really liked this show. For one thing, I didn’t have to do much work. Whenever some kid asked me if something was good, I’d reply, “Let’s try it and see.” Also, I never knew what was going to happen. Each performance was brand new.

As I think about it, this was a good unit. I’m sure the kids learned something. I had no lesson plan with goals, objectives, evaluative criteria, none of that. But I’m sure they learned something. I just don’t know what.

The parents loved the show. Some of them saw all four performances. There were lots of compliments on how creative the children were. Honey Pettis was pleased. How French.

Copyright Ken Harris 2009