Notre Dame Prep alum Meredith Gifford ’02 is the school’s theatre director.
From “Leap of Faith” and “The Book of Mormon” to “Sister Act” and recent reincarnations of “Godspell,” “Superstar” and “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” stagecraft lately seems to be re-focused on religion and on those who follow it. But not all religion-themed productions have been kind to the faithful, however. In fact, many tend to take a decidedly acerbic and/or humorous approach to their subject matter, if only to provoke.
“Sister Act” and “Leap of Faith” lyricist and director Glenn Slater said in a recent article in Playbill that theatre offers a way to look at religion from a safe remove from our own feelings about it. “It’s sometimes easier to criticize religion when the laugh is at the expense of characters on a stage rather than ourselves,” he said. “At the same time, it’s sometimes easier to feel the draw of religious exaltation through a character’s eyes rather than risk it ourselves.”
Most high school drama departments, especially religious high schools, don’t have quite the same freedom on stage as professional play producers. Above all, they must ensure their productions are both appropriate for students and consistent with the school’s mission.
Notre Dame’s own theatre director, Meredith Gifford, a 2002 graduate of NDP, feels very strongly about tying the school’s mission—especially the Christian persons part—into what the students are doing on and off the stage.
The upcoming spring production for the Notre Dame Prep Players is “Rumors,” a decidedly dark, but farcical play written by Neil Simon. Gifford says it’s not a religious play at all, but the students so far have really embraced the story. Most of the auditions for the main characters have been completed [at press time] and she says the whole process has been fantastic.
“The play calls for four husband-wife couples,” Gifford said. “We only had three high school boys audition so we recruited an 8th grader from our middle school to fill in one of the roles. The kids did an initial read-through where we sit at a table and read the script out loud. They were in tears and falling off their seats with laughter!”
Pope Francis has said that culture and the arts offer a portal into Christian thought.
“When you do a show, you really become a family of sorts,” she said. “You spend at least 10-15 hours together each week and we work well as a team. But at the core of it all is our Christian faith.”
And it’s not just the performing arts that get filtered through the school’s mission and faith. Notre Dame’s visual arts chair Sandy LewAllen also keeps the mission top of mind. She said she believes the visual arts deeply connect to NDPMA’s Marist mission in many Christian and charitable ways.
“Our program teaches students tolerance through the understanding and appreciation of art in cultures that are not like our own,” LewAllen said. “Also, our students use their artistic gifts and talents to make a positive difference in the world by participating in outreach programs both locally and globally. Among many initiatives, we have beautified Detroit’s blighted Brightmoor neighborhood with painted mural panels and we’ve painted portraits to brighten the lives of orphans in Haiti and Guatemala.”
Pope Francis himself talked of the intertwining of art and one’s faith. He is a big fan of stage and screen and counts Italian neorealist cinema as a film genre he really likes—with Federico Fellini’s “La Strada” at the top of his list. In an interview given to Jesuit journalists in 2013, Francis said culture figures importantly in his own life and as a portal into Christian thought.
“A Jesuit must be creative,” the Jesuit pope told the journalists. For him, he said, art is not mere illustration or aesthetic play, but a humanistic enterprise as important and as fundamental as work or prayer. “Even the forms for expressing truth can be multiform,” he said.
Camille Paglia, a sometimes-controversial author and social critic, is not often on the same page as a Roman Catholic pope. But she said in “Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics at Boston University,” that great art “can be made out of love for religion as well as rebellion against it. However, a totally secularized society with contempt for religion sinks into materialism and self-absorption and gradually goes slack, without leaving an artistic legacy.”
Pontiac to Boston and back again
Gifford is on a second theatre directorship at her alma mater. She started directing at NDP in 2011 and did three shows: “Our Town,” “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” and “All in the Timing.” She then left the Detroit area to get a master’s degree in theatre education from Emerson College in Boston. Now firmly back in place in Michigan she is looking forward to getting “Rumors” on stage.
As a student at NDP, Gifford said she was in only two plays herself. She was Ado Annie in “Oklahoma” and Adelaide in “Guys and Dolls.” Now, as theatre director, her primary responsibility every year is the spring play, with choir director Dave Fazzini typically handling the fall musicals. Retired Notre Dame teacher Norm Kotarski handled stage directing for many years at NDP and before that at Notre Dame High School in Harper Woods.
‘Very smart’ students
Gifford is eager to complement the students at NDP who get involved with the school’s theatre productions. “The kids are very smart at Notre Dame,” she said. “I always have a difficult decision in choosing what show to do because I want to challenge them. There is a lot of ‘fluff’ out there for schools to produce and a lot of it is just not right for this school. A celebrated playwright has written each of the plays I’ve chosen, so the students are exposed to many different themes and excellent writers.
“The kids also are very talented,” Gifford added. “And they really get comedy. Many of them are in choir so I know they can sing, too.”
She also stresses character development with her actors. “I try to add exercises on character to the rehearsals to help with this. They usually get it quickly and it turns out great.”
For their current production, Gifford says that like most of Neil Simon plays, it’s all about timing.
“Blocking the basic movements on stage started in early February and the students who didn’t have rehearsals were memorizing on their nights off,” she said. “We are also in the process of recruiting our stage crew and designing the show. I do a lot of the designs, too, and right now I’m researching costumes and the appropriate period props.”
All in all, Gifford said, putting on a stage play is a big job. Between the students behind the scenes to those in front as well as her parent volunteers, especially Andrea Fredin, who Gifford said has been the parent producer for five or six years, “it’s a real labor of love.”
“But we respect one another, take pride in the work we do, and maintain the integrity of our show,” she said. “Working on a play is a lot of work, whether you are doing lights, running the soundboard, or acting on stage. It takes students who can juggle their usually intense schoolwork with an equally intense rehearsal schedule.”
The Notre Dame Prep Players production of Neil Simon’s “Rumors” is scheduled for March 27-29 in the Notre Dame cafetorium.
Comments or questions? mkelly@ndpma.org.
Follow Notre Dame on Twitter at @NDPMA.
About Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy
Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy is a private, Catholic, independent, coeducational day school located in Oakland County. The school's upper division enrolls students in grades nine through twelve and has been named one of the nation's best 50 Catholic high schools (Acton Institute) four times since 2005. Notre Dame's middle and lower divisions enroll students in jr. kindergarten through grade eight. All three divisions are International Baccalaureate "World Schools." NDPMA is conducted by the Marist Fathers and Brothers and is accredited by the Independent Schools Association of the Central States and the North Central Association Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement. For more on Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy, visit the school's home page at www.ndpma.org.