Cross Country: Red Devil runners ready for Nationals. See B1
THE IOLA REGISTER Locally owned since 1867
Thursday, November 10, 2016
IHS brings ‘Our Town’ to life ‘Our Town’
By RICK DANLEY The Iola Register
7 o’clock tonight and Friday, Bowlus Fine Arts Center Admission $5 (Students admitted free of charge)
If you include the stage direction, the first words of Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play “Our Town” are these: “No curtain. No scenery.” It was Wilder’s belief that the theatre of his day had become too obsessed with spectacle. Directors loaded the stage with period furniture and elaborate costumes and realistic set design — what Wilder called the “obtrusive bric-a-brac” of stagecraft. The move toward a comprehensive realism, which included a playwright’s dialogue too, irritated Wilder. “In Chinese drama, a character, by straddling a stick, conveys to us that he is on horseback,” Wilder wrote in a preface to “Our Town” some decades after it first premiered. “In almost every Noh play of the Japanese, an actor makes a tour of the stage and we know that he is making a long journey.” The emphasis on naturalism was not only a superficial distraction, said Wilder. It was, in his words, an “evasion” of the necessary project of art. “When you emphasize place in the theatre, you drag down and limit and harness time to it,” Wilder continued. “You thrust the action back into past time, whereas it is precisely the glory of the stage that it is always ‘now’ there. Under such production methods the characters are all dead before the action starts.” Forget all the paraphernalia of the historical moment, instructed Wilder; in good theatre, it is the human predicament that is at stake: “Our claim, our hope, our despair are in the mind — not in things, not in ‘scen-
At left, siblings George and Rebecca Gibbs, played by Zach Cokely and Gabriella Lampe, gaze out of an “upstairs window” in Iola High School’s production of “Our Town.” Below, Quentin Mallette plays the role of Stage Manager and Karly McGuffin plays Emily Webb. REGISTER/RICK DANLEY
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LaHarpe park helpers needed By RICHARD LUKEN The Iola Register
LAHARPE — Volunteers will take another swing at installing playground equipment at the LaHarpe City Park this weekend. Organizers discussed the playground work at Wednesday’s LaHarpe City Council meeting. Getting the site prepared for the equipment has been the biggest hiccup so far, although organizers anticipate the site will be ready this afternoon for work to proceed. Work will begin at 8 a.m. Saturday at the park. See LAHARPE | Page A5
Brownback: Election ‘very positive’ despite state GOP losses By JOHN HANNA The Associated Press
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback said We d n e s d ay that a sluggish economy, not discontent with his fiscal policies, led to the ouster of 11 GOP legislators on Sam an otherwise Brownback huge night for Donald Trump and Republicans across the
See PLAY | Page A3
See LOSSES | Page A5
Protesters lash out after vote
Flag holders mark vets’ graves
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A day after Donald Trump’s election to the presidency, campaign divisions appeared to widen as many thousands of demonstrators — some with signs declaring “NOT MY PRESIDENT” — flooded streets across the country to protest his surprise triumph. From New England to heartland cities like Kansas City and along the West Coast, demonstrators bore flags and effigies of the president-elect, disrupting traffic and declaring that they refused to accept Trump’s victory. Flames lit up the night sky in California cities Wednesday as thousands of protesters burned a giant papiermache Trump head in Los Angeles and started fires in Oakland intersections. Los Angeles demonstrators also beat a Trump piñata and sprayed the Los Angeles Times building and news vans with anti-Trump profanity. One protester out-
As the nation pauses Friday to honor Veterans Day, Iolan Barbara Sherwood takes note of an often overlooked measure taken to honor those who have served. More than 40 types of flag holders are used to support American or other flags during holidays such as Veterans Day, Sherwood notes. The flag holders may mark the time or the branches in which the veteran served. Others may simply say “GAR” for the Grand Army of the Republic, for Civil War veterans. The flag holders date back to the GAR in 1874, which sought to preserve the memory of those who fought and died in the Civil War. The topic carries special meaning for Sherwood, who has six generations (and counting) of her family who place flags in each holder during holidays. Her father, Delmar Sherwood, was a World War II veteran. Delmar Sherwood’s great-
Protesters burn an effigy of Donald Trump outside Los Angeles City Hall Wednesday. LOS ANGELES TIMES/MARCUS YAM/TNS side LA City Hall read a sign that simply said “this is very bad.” Vishal Singh, 23, said he was disappointed with voters who supported a man he sees as anti-immigrant and anti-LGBT. “I expected better of my electorate,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “I thought this country was different.” Late in the evening sev-
Quote of the day Vol. 119, No. 9
eral hundred people blocked one of the city’s busiest freeways, U.S. 101 between downtown and Hollywood. More than a dozen people were arrested as officers in full riot gear walked the protesters off the freeway. In Orange County, about 10 people were arrested after three police cars were damSee PROTESTS | Page A3
“Man lives by imagination.”
— Havelock Ellis, British psychologist, 1859-1939 75 Cents
grandson, Jonathan Rodewald, compiled the flag holder information this summer for a 4-H poster during the Allen County Fair.
Hi: 67 Lo: 40 Iola, KS