This weekend, Hillel Theater Group presented The Children's Hour directed by Alison Thvedt '15, the final of the main stage productions for the UTC Fall season. Written by American author Lillian Hellman in 1934, The Children's Hour reflects Hellman's markedly left-wing political beliefs for her day and yet maintains a cultural relevance and cautions today's audiences. The play is an almost two-and-a-half hour-long drama following the destruction of rumors and intolerance at an all-girls school in the 1930s, though HTG's modern staging of the play.

In her director's note, Thvedt states that though the play "was written nearly 80 years ago," it "is still, unfortunately, a play with events that could easily take place in the present." The plot follows two young women, Karen Wright (Bront? Velez '16) and Martha Dobie (Grace Fosler '14), who have worked for eight years to save up and start a boarding school for girls in a large house on a beautiful farm. Most of the girls enjoy their time at the school with Ms. Wright and Ms. Dobie, except for the unruly Mary Tilford, (Allison Kaminsky '17), whose spoilt nature provokes her to throw endless tantrums at the expense of the patient women.

One by one, Mary bullies and blackmails the other girls at the school in order to make her own life easier and gain control over them. Time after time, as soon as the adults leave the stage, Mary descends into a terrifying personality. In one scene, she even pulls a girl around by her ponytail and slaps another girl in the face.

But the breaking point of the play-and the catalyst for the dramatic plot-comes when Mary lies to her doting grandmother, Mrs. Tilford, in order to get some time off of school. She accuses Ms. Wright, who is engaged to her long-time beau Joseph (Justy Kosek '14), and Ms. Dobie of being lovers, telling her grandmother that she saw the women kiss and that she heard strange sounds coming from their rooms late at night.

Mary's little lie to skip a day of school turns into something more volatile than anyone could imagine, leading ultimately to the complete downfall of both women. As Ms. Wright and Ms. Dobie face accusations by Mrs. Tilford (Rachel Liff '15), parents quickly pull their children out of the school. Velez and Fosler engage on a deep emotional level with the adversity their characters are affronted with, and both women pulled off an absolutely incredible performance. The play's emotional plot is driven largely by the tension from scene to scene between silence and noise. The women-mainly Fosler's character-execute an array of emotive noise, ranging from crying to shrieking, to whispering, to charged speech.

As Mary Tilford, though, Kaminsky delivers a large portion of her lines through yells and screams, engaging the audience in a curious way. Though the audience was mostly silent through the emotional production, during a scene in which Mrs. Tilford silences Mary with a "Stop, you are annoying me so," the audience erupted into laughter. I even heard some yells like "yeah!" and "it's about time!" from the people sitting around me, affirming the incredibly convincing job the actors did in inhabiting their characters.

The final scenes of the play were certainly the most emotionally confrontational. Ms. Wright tells Joseph that she needs some space from him and their seemingly unbreakable relationship finally shatters. Just seconds later, Ms. Dobie confesses to Ms. Wright that the whole ordeal has caused her to confront her romantic feelings for her long time friend. Ms. Dobie kisses Ms. Wright on the forehead, walks out of the scene calmly and a loud shot sounds, leaving Ms. Wright in tears.

As the play ends, the audience has seen two true loves-Ms. Wright's engagement with Joseph and Ms. Dobie's silenced love for Ms. Wright-extinguished by rumors, intolerance and shame. The Children's Hour addresses, with honesty and openness, the great destruction that bullying can cause. And as the play showed at the tail end of Transgender Awareness Week, it was an appropriate caution to treat others with love and acceptance-no matter what is believed or said about them.
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