JASPER FANCIES
TOP ROW (LEFT TO RIGHT): PEYTON PRATT, ADDIE HUGGINS, TONI PARKER | BOTTOM ROW: VANESSA VAUGHN, JORDAN PENNINGTON, EMILY CATE, SUSANNA MCELVEEN | NOT PICTURED: PERRY CATE, JONATHAN SHIVER,JACOB SHIVER
YOUNG ART ABROAD Twelve teenagers from the AC Flora theatre department have been selected to perform for the American High School Theatre Festival (AHSTF), which runs in conjunction with the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the oldest arts festival in history, in 2015. Based on their awards, philosophies and programs, not to mention their incredible craft, they will be included among 43 other schools to travel to Scotland to perform for fourteen days in August of next year. The Fringe Festival includes over 2,000 different performances. AC Flora High School will be showcased at the AHSTF venue in Edinburgh. This is an exceptional group of students, very deserving of this special honor. In her third year of teaching for AC Flora, director Samantha Elkins has seen the number of students participating in theater double from 90 to 180. She says, “Their love of the theatre art form amazes me every day. The work they do in rehearsals and performing is at a much higher level than the average, non-the6 . JASPER FANCIES
atre going person would expect from this age group.” The students and Ms. Elkins are still deciding what to perform while they are there. They are leaning toward adapting a Shakespearean play with an all female cast (as the group will be mostly female). There is also talk of possibly performing The Giver. Elkins says, “What it comes down to is what story they are passionate about telling.” AC Flora has been given this unique opportunity to travel to Scotland’s capital to share their talent and hard work. Columbia supporters of the theatre now have the opportunity to help them get there. The teenagers, who organized the International Thespian Society as an extracurricular that raises funds to benefit charities, now need some support of their own. To fund their trip to Scotland the students are putting on a production of A Christmas Carol. Proceeds from the show will go toward their trip. A Christmas Carol performances will be unlike any you’ve seen before. Elkins has decided to take a non-traditional route. “In
a time where if something isn’t eye catching we immediately turn to our phones for entertainment; we decided to get to the crux of the story.” They plan to tweak the aesthetic in the style of Tim Burton a la A Nightmare Before Christmas. Anticipating that there will be several other performances of A Christmas Carol in Columbia this year, theirs will surely stand out. Show times are December 10, 11, 12 at 6 pm and December 13 at 3pm. Cost is $8 for general public and $5 for Richland One students and faculty (with ID). – Annie Brooks
POEMS AND PRAYERS: 3 NEW CHAPBOOKS
D. H. Lawrence called a poem an “act of attention,” and Simone Weil (among others) reminds us that “unmixed attention is prayer.” The thing poems and prayers have in common is attentiveness. Attentiveness—to the world, to our own deep losses and hungers,