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Around the pond by Joe Freeman
j Sylvia Barrett, played by Maggie Hutton ’08, tries to keep her class in order in this spring’s production of Up the Down Staircase. Rick Doyle
“Disregard All Bells” Sylvia Barrett is a new English teacher at Calvin Coolidge High School. She is young, idealistic and passionate about teaching the classics to her English class, one she envisions as being lively, energetic and insatiably curious. Then she gets to class, and so opens Bel Kaufman’s Up the Down Staircase, this year’s Fritz C. Hyde Jr. ’29 Memorial Production. Faced with the bureaucracy of a large public school, the indifference of her stu-
dents and the hilarious incompetence of her colleagues, Barrett comes to see the incredible impact she has on her students over the course of the play. Maggie Hutton ’08 portrayed Barrett onstage, accompanied by Nick Tyson ’09 as Paul Barringer, John Lane ’09 as JJ Hedgepit, and a rowdy English class that included Simone Foxman ’07, Joe Dillard ’09, Kristine Palmieri ’08, Sydney Low ’09, Daniela Garcia ’09, Tyler Perry ’07, Brian Sengdala ’10,
Khai Do Ba ’08, Alice Gao ’07, Caitlin O’Halloran ’08, Nicola Glogowski ’08, Oscar Shi ’08, Kat Gronauer ’09 and Marryam Khera ’07. Some of the play’s dialogue was adapted for a Taft setting, and many of the actors wrote additional lines for their characters, making the play all the more pertinent for the audience. Director Rick Doyle praised his cast, calling them “one of the most energetic and determined groups I have worked with here.” Taft Bulletin Summer 2007