Havergal Presents: The Children's Hour

Written by Calla Alward
Edited by Maryam Khan
Photo by Paige Wanniappa

The Havergal play is a massive part of the performing arts here at Havergal. It is an event that many of the drama students look forward to. It is an amazing community to be a part of and is extremely special to many people within our school community. The play this year is The Children’s Hour which was first performed in 1934 and was written by Lillian Helman.

This play tells the story of Martha Dobie (Allison Tanzola) and Karen Wright (Emily Nevison) who run an all-girls boarding school with the help of Martha’s aunt, Lily Mortar (Dominique Cao). One girl, Mary Tilford (Katie McCraken) is a known troublemaker and influences the other girls into trouble. One day, Mary fakes an illness and is examined by Dr. Joe Cardin (Shaunik Mahajan) who is Karen’s fiance. While Dr. Joe is checking Mary for illness, Mary’s two friends, Peggy Rogers (Rachel Bernstein) and Evelyn Munn (Catherine Tassone) listen in on a conversation between Martha and Lily. When Dr. Joe realizes nothing is wrong with Mary, he lets her go and she goes to Peggy and Evelyn to see what they heard. They tell Mary they overheard Lily yelling at Martha to stop being jealous whenever Dr. Joe visited the school. Mary uses this knowledge to her advantage because when her grandmother Amelia Tilford (Aniela Stanek) denies her request to let Mary drop out, Mary tells her that Karen and Martha are having a lesbian affair. Amelia then goes and tells all of the other parents, and all of the kids are pulled out of the school. After some time, Karen tells Martha that she would like to relocate their school and that she would like Martha to come with her. Martha confesses that she has feelings for Karen, and when Karen hears this, she denies it and tells Martha that they never had feelings for each other. When Amelia begs Karen for forgiveness, Karen tells her that it is no use and that Mary has ruined innocent lives. 

I had the opportunity to ask Ms. Mills some questions about the show, and I learned very interesting things about the play. When asking her about her decision to choose the play “The Children's Hour” she gave me a very enlightening response. “The Children's Hour is a very important piece of theatre history,” she said, “I knew this show would be a challenge for our students. Not only due to the tricky subject matter, but due to the deeply complex characters.” At a later point in the interview, Ms. Mills stressed the importance of a level of trust within the actors, as well as the trust between the actors and the director. “Performers need to know that their boundaries will be respected, that their voice matters, and that we will work collaboratively in order to build trust and, eventually, chemistry with the other actors.” Ms. Mills and I spoke about what would happen if something went wrong on stage during a performance. She said, “This is the great joy of theatre…the live nature means that you never really know what's going to happen.” When talking about how Ms. Mills gets the actors to connect with their characters, she mentioned the importance of visualizations and hot seat exercises to get their actors into character. She also spoke about having conversations about why the characters make certain choices throughout the show, and how this is important to helping the actors better understand their characters. She explained, “The focus on understanding the ‘why’ goes a long way for helping the actors connect to their characters and understanding their motivations.” 

The Havergal play is an incredible experience and a big part of the performing arts here at Havergal. If you haven’t ever attended one, or maybe haven’t attended one in a while, I definitely recommend going to see The Children’s Hour this year.