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“Little Women is my favorite story. I’ve read the book more times than any other book, and have much nostalgia and sentimentality attached to these characters and their narrative arcs. While many decide to dismiss Little Women as a story about ‘girls getting married’, it is actually a narrative focusing on truly deep familial love, and growth personally and in relationships as life progresses.
Louisa May Alcott, the author of the book Little Women, used her upbringing and her family as inspiration for this story, with she herself inspiring the character of Jo March.
There is an easy danger for these characters to be presented as two dimensional, so I challenged the students in this process to find hte third dimension; what makes these characters tangible and real, what makes people grow an attachment to them in the way they do. It is in those details that the story becomes personal and accessible to the audience.
There are many kinds of love that are referred to in the Bible (agape, eros, storge, phileo, and philia). Love is not just romantic. Love is a deep care and affection for a person or group of people who matter to you, and I encouraged the audience to look for these types of love in this story. In the production we also emphasized the love and growth shown by each of the girls in their relationships with each other, their family, as they evolve as people.
This production included ‘legacy’ students, students whose older siblings and other family were also heavily involved in the Drama Department, as well as seniors who have been involved in almost every production since the beginning of their tenure at Lancaster Mennonite. I am so proud of the cast and crew for the hard work they did at making this production a success, congrats to you!”
– Katelyn Coryell, HS Drama Director
Photos courtesy of Paul Jacobs Photography
