Peace Child Israel's Season Performances

2010 Season

POCAHONTAS

Group Process  - Tira and Kfar Saba

The group consists of three schools:

Tira High School

Herzog High School, Kfar Saba

Katznelson High Shool, Kfar Saba 

The Actors

This is the first time that any of the three schools participated in the Peace Child Israel program.  The recruitment began well into the school year and there was a difficulty in recruitment at first, since many of the Jewish actors already had other obligations.  But the events that take place in the Kfar Saba shopping mall didn’t help the recruitment.  Many people were skeptical.  But, eventually, as they got to know each other better, some friendships were formed.  Everyone is in 10^th grade.  Some of the actors never performed in the past and a lot of time was spent on improvisation and improving acting skills while the kids got to know each other.  Though the Pocahontas story is from over 300 years ago, it was used as a trigger for discussions about the relations in the here-and-now.  The students found parallels and discussed them; it wasn’t always easy.  But if it was easy, this whole effort wouldn’t be necessary, would it? 

The group met weekly since the beginning of January and went on a team-building seminar for 3 days.   In early February rehearsals began.  The casting of the show was done keeping the Arab-Jewish factor in mind.  The main characters were broken into different casts and sometimes Pocahontas  is an Arab-speaker and sometimes a Hebrew speaker.  The same holds true for the other main characters in the show.  After the performance the audience is invited to talk about the ending and many other things.

 Synopsis

“Pocahontas’ is the story about the English settlers who came to “The new world” looking to colonize and search for gold and riches.  There are two “protagonists” in the story, which is unusual, because they came from the two opposing sides of the conflict:  Pocahontas and John Smith.  Some of the “mythical” or “mystical” characters that are in the Disney version were dropped (no talking trees!) but the rest of the story and the some of the music remains in the production – in Arabic and in Hebrew.

As Pocahontas and John smith get to know and like each other, they have problems with the rest of people on their “side”, who don’t trust the other side and see them as dangerous.  The captain of the Englishmen is a greedy, nasty type who thinks he is going to get rich on gold and become famous.  He exploits his crew for his own purpose and sets them out to destroy the ‘savages” for his personal goals.    Powahattan, the Indian chief and Pocahontas’ father feels he must protect his people from these invaders and prepares to go to war.

With a twist of the plot, an  Englishman looking for John Smith  kills one of the Powahattan tribe’s bravest warriors;  John Smith is taken hostage.  He is condemned to die, but Pocahontas pleads with her father to reason and think with more humanistic powers.  The Englishmen prepare to attack but stop when John smith, who is injured, is freed by the Indians. 

Pocahontas and John Smith build a bridge for friendly relations between the two sides, but the ending is only a partly happy one. 

Pocohontas, John and Us - Invitation

Pocohontas, John and Us - Collage Poster