Page 134 - Gonzaga at 60
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GONZAGA AT SIXTY: A WORK IN PROGRESS
Right: A Man For All Seasons.
Far right: Remembering the
old theatre
INSTITUTION OR EDUCATION?
To misquote one of Shakespeare’s tediously wise, old, choric igures, almost two score years I
can remember well, within the volume of which ime staged drama, and musical producions for
stage, have enjoyed an almost unbroken annual run in Gonzaga – the programme for the Jubilee
Year producion of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible records only one year since 1971 in which there
was no Sixth Year play, and there have been no subsequent lapses; and to this date, since Gerry
Murphy embedded his cycle of ive Gonzaga Operas (beginning in 1976) in the experience of
over thirty years of Gonzaga students, a musical producion has been a feature of the opening of
the Easter Term every single year. Drama, (or theatre, for they are diferent) has very irm roots
in the school’s oicial curriculum, and this is before one lists the less formal dramaic iniiaives
that have surfaced from ime to ime.
The Sixth Year Play; the School Opera: the very itles imply an event that must take
place because it has become the tradiion. And for thirty years each was in danger of being
insituionalised because it was associated with a single director. There is, of course, much to be
said for the dedicaion of individuals who commit themselves to so many years of service in any
area of co-curricular acivity in a school (a wry anecdote will remind of how things have changed
in Gonzaga since its foundaion: at one of Fr John Looby’s producions in Clongowes in the ‘70ies,
a parent was heard to remark ‘Aren’t the Jesuits wonderful? Of course you’d never get this kind
of hard work from a lay person.’). But in reviewing the history of drama in the school, one is led
to consider how coherent an educaional philosophy has characterised it.
Could there be a beter ime to do so than the year in which the school saw the irst
producions in its brand new theatre?
THE EARLY YEARS: 1950 – 1971
A considerable literature exists on the disinguished place drama had in the Jesuit foundaions
Leslie Webb, who died from the very beginning. They may not have been the irst to adapt drama to educaional
tragically young, as purposes, but they took it very seriously and found it highly compaible to their educaional
Thomas More in A Man aims and objecives; it had a funcion in the teaching of religion and moral principles, and played
For All Seasons
a part in rhetorical formaion. Jesuit colleges did a lot of damage it seems: Molière and Racine
cut their literary teeth wriing dramaic exercises for their teachers. That great Renaissance
Jesuit, Brother Andrea Pozzo – no relaion whatsoever to his modern entrepreneurial Gonzaga
counterpart, so far as we know – was not only architect and painter of the extraordinary ceiling
in the Gesù, but had an interest in set design. He had plans to remodel the Gesù’s choir to admit
more light for dramaic presentaions there.
GONZAGA AT SIXTY: A WORK IN PROGRESS
Right: A Man For All Seasons.
Far right: Remembering the
old theatre
INSTITUTION OR EDUCATION?
To misquote one of Shakespeare’s tediously wise, old, choric igures, almost two score years I
can remember well, within the volume of which ime staged drama, and musical producions for
stage, have enjoyed an almost unbroken annual run in Gonzaga – the programme for the Jubilee
Year producion of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible records only one year since 1971 in which there
was no Sixth Year play, and there have been no subsequent lapses; and to this date, since Gerry
Murphy embedded his cycle of ive Gonzaga Operas (beginning in 1976) in the experience of
over thirty years of Gonzaga students, a musical producion has been a feature of the opening of
the Easter Term every single year. Drama, (or theatre, for they are diferent) has very irm roots
in the school’s oicial curriculum, and this is before one lists the less formal dramaic iniiaives
that have surfaced from ime to ime.
The Sixth Year Play; the School Opera: the very itles imply an event that must take
place because it has become the tradiion. And for thirty years each was in danger of being
insituionalised because it was associated with a single director. There is, of course, much to be
said for the dedicaion of individuals who commit themselves to so many years of service in any
area of co-curricular acivity in a school (a wry anecdote will remind of how things have changed
in Gonzaga since its foundaion: at one of Fr John Looby’s producions in Clongowes in the ‘70ies,
a parent was heard to remark ‘Aren’t the Jesuits wonderful? Of course you’d never get this kind
of hard work from a lay person.’). But in reviewing the history of drama in the school, one is led
to consider how coherent an educaional philosophy has characterised it.
Could there be a beter ime to do so than the year in which the school saw the irst
producions in its brand new theatre?
THE EARLY YEARS: 1950 – 1971
A considerable literature exists on the disinguished place drama had in the Jesuit foundaions
Leslie Webb, who died from the very beginning. They may not have been the irst to adapt drama to educaional
tragically young, as purposes, but they took it very seriously and found it highly compaible to their educaional
Thomas More in A Man aims and objecives; it had a funcion in the teaching of religion and moral principles, and played
For All Seasons
a part in rhetorical formaion. Jesuit colleges did a lot of damage it seems: Molière and Racine
cut their literary teeth wriing dramaic exercises for their teachers. That great Renaissance
Jesuit, Brother Andrea Pozzo – no relaion whatsoever to his modern entrepreneurial Gonzaga
counterpart, so far as we know – was not only architect and painter of the extraordinary ceiling
in the Gesù, but had an interest in set design. He had plans to remodel the Gesù’s choir to admit
more light for dramaic presentaions there.
