A Connection Across Cultures: Box

This is the box my parents want for me. This is who my parents want me to be. A shining star… I don’t want to disappoint my parents, but this is not my box.

How do we handle the boxes imposed upon us because of our gender? Our race? From peer pressure? From parent pressure? Do we have to live with our box for the rest of our lives? Can we change?

Box by Lindsay Price is a middle school vignette play with flexible casting. It can be expanded for a large cast or reduced to a cast of 10 with doubling. Excellent small scene and monologue opportunities.

Under the direction of Stephanie Brook the student performers at GEMS World Academy in Switzerland demonstrated that the challenges of choosing how the world sees us is shared by students worldwide.

This was performed by my theatre class made up on only Grade 6 students (ages 11-12), from a variety of backgrounds and nationalities. We have Italian, Spanish, Swiss, Canadian, American, British, Scottish, Irish, Filipino, Dutch, Argentinian, Venezuelan, Brazilian, Israeli and Portuguese, to name a few.

I had to do a lot of unpacking of the material for them to understand what the play was speaking about, but this is a beautiful age to be addressing stereotypes and “boxes”, and they really connected with it. I have been receiving messages from parents all evening telling me how wonderful it was.

Several of the parents, kids and staff at school commented on how relevant, how real and how engaging the play was. One of the students really connected with it, and she was in Grade 4! She said it helped her to understand a lot of what goes on at school.

The school counsellor wants us to take this on as a Grade 6 play every year – she thinks it is so perfect.

Congratulations GEMS World Academy!