PERFORMING ARTS
Music to Our Ears Six Upper School choir students were selected to the Texas Private School Music Educators Association (TPSMEA) Region II All-Region Choir: Michael Wittman ’14, 3rd chair bass, mixed choir; Jazmine Monreal ’14, 36th chair, 1st soprano, treble choir; Mary Claire Ekstrom ’14, 27th chair, 1st alto, treble choir; Kenzie Knox ’15, 18th chair, 1st soprano, mixed choir; Akailah Warner ’15, 30th chair, 1st alto, treble choir; and Hasan Shah ’16, 24th chair, tenor 1, mixed choir. Wittman, Knox and Shah placed high enough in the audition to advance to the TPSMEA All-State round of auditions, which took place Friday, November 4. All five students will participate in the TPSMEA All-Region Clinic and Concert in mid-January.
Michael Wittman ’14, Jazmine Monreal ’14, Mary Claire Ekstrom ’14, Kenzie Knox ’15, Akailah Warner ’15 and Hasan Shah ’16
Choir student Lexa Brenner ’18 was the only Fort Worth Country Day student selected to the Texas Private School Music Educators Association (TPSMEA) Middle School All-Region Choir. She competed with students from Houston, Austin and the Metroplex. As a result of her selection, Brenner will participate in the TPSMEA Middle School All-Region Choir and Concert, date to be determined.
FWCD Eighth-Graders Perform Our Town Eighth-graders took audiences back in time—to Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, in 1901—for their fall play, Our Town. Written by Thornton Wilder, Our Town chronicles the daily lives of the Gibbs and Webb families in a picture perfect American town before urbanization. The audience witnesses the interactions of young Emily Webb and George Gibbs, as their friendship grows into love, and they are married. The play takes a tragic turn when Emily dies in childbirth. At her funeral, Emily is unsettled as she realizes she is now among the dead and unsure about her new role. She longs for one last day and returns to earth to the morning of her 12th birthday, despite warnings from her fellow dead. Emily’s “resurrection” brings a heightened awareness to life, and she finds it painful to watch the living take their lives for granted. In the end, she discovers that the living understand very little about death and even less about truly being alive. “This show was the first play produced on the Fort Worth Country Day campus in 1977,” said Melodee Halbach, director of theatre. “Previous to that, all the shows were musicals. Our next show is the Upper School musical Bye Bye Birdie, which was the first musical produced at FWCD in 1970. Both productions are the FWCD Theatre Department’s contributions to this milestone 50th anniversary year! “It has been a great experience for us all,” she continued. “I am proud of all these young actors and our technical crew, and appreciate the support through the process.” Eighth-graders Jack Stephens, Dilan Nana and Lauren Newton
24
FALCONER
To celebrate the 75th anniversary of Our Town in 2013, The Thornton Wilder Family generously made available artwork for FWCD’s use in conjunction with this production of Our Town.
fwcd.org