LOCKDOWN

CARIBBEAN CAMERA, JUNE 30TH 2009

BY Jean Hodgkinson

Lockdown

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next. -Abraham Lincoln

“What shocked me most was how mature the kids are,” director Frances-Anne Solomon told me at Thursday night’s sneak preview of her upcoming Fringe Festival play, Lockdown. Referring to the age-old “hierarchy that you assume exists between people who are in their teens and somebody like me, who is really an adult—that just went out the window.” Solomon, who also wrote the play, is speaking here of the cast members who are still in high school. “There was never any sense that I knew more than they did.” This seemed to reflect the general mood of the production’s elders, which is hardly surprising given the play’s subject matter.
An “explosive fictional story, it begins with an emergency lockdown: students trapped in their classes” while the “parents wait helplessly outside and police officers swarm.” Among the writer/director, three of the older actors, and two stage management crew members I interviewed, only one had experienced high school lockdowns as a student—assistant stage manager Vanessa Gervais, a second-year Ryerson theatre student raised in Florida. Yet, Solomon advises, type “lockdown Toronto” into an online search engine and you’ll get a list of incidents whose frequency is best measured in weekly, not annual increments. And they aren’t restricted to Toronto.
Since the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School lockdowns, “referred to as the new fire drill, have become increasingly common,” the Vancouver Sun reported in 2007. “Schools in Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Ottawa and Montreal are among those across Canada that conduct regular lockdown drills at least twice a year.” Ryan Ishmael, the on-stage police officer, observes that students “see school almost as a jail now. In lockdown, they’re treated like prisoners.” With the exception of Gervais, Ishmael’s sentiment, that Lockdown reveals “more truth than people actually realize,” was common.
Finlandia Casellas portrays a mother at her wit’s end, a role she sympathizes with. “I’m the mother of an 11-year-old boy,” she lamented, “and I’m scared for my son when he gets to high school. I was shocked to know that they’re having all these lockdowns.” Casellas understands that times have changed, however, and this leaves her with mixed feelings since, she says, lockdowns are ostensibly a safety procedure. In 2006 there were nearly 23,000 charges laid across Canada for incidents occurring on school property during, just before, or just after supervised hours according to the Vancouver Sun article. A StatsCan student survey, also from 2006, estimated “Overall, 2 out of every 5 students (40%) reported having been victimized.”
Lockdown is Solomon’s response to the findings of the Falconer Report, released after the inquest into the May 2007 murder of C.W. Jeffreys Collegiate student Jordan Manners. “That really shocked me,” she admitted. “That was the lynchpin.” The StatsCan survey estimated 62,000 violent acts were committed by students in 2006 and, of the half dozen “types” of acts listed, “carrying a weapon” and “group fights” totalled 88%. These problems are addressed head-on in Lockdown, plus a whole lot more. Sexual violence—“rape” says Solomon, correcting her terminology—drugs and prostitution all contribute to the plot’s explosive mix.
Recognizing that our schools should be institutions of learning, the cast and crew expressed their hope the play would, above all, improve student/parent communications. And Michael Miller, who plays two characters, offered the insightful commentary that educators might keep kids interested in their studies by improving, say, the mechanics of history class. “A problem is that history is taught in bubbles,” he explains. “There’s a continuum, but they don’t teach it like that.”
A potentially controversial element is the play’s realism. Lockdown’s scenes are built around actual high school experiences and although the characters are indeed fictional, they were invented by the cast members portraying them. Solomon was initially concerned about staging some of the violence too realistically, but says the students told her bluntly: “Well, it’s reality. It happens all the time.” An accomplished writer, director and producer in the world of filmmaking, this is Solomon’s first live theatre production since studying the craft at university. “I’m having the time of my life,” she enthused when asked how she was coping with the change of pace.
This year’s Fringe Festival runs from July 1 to 12 and Lockdown begins its set of 7 performances on the first day, Canada Day, and tickets are $10. For show times and location follow the Lockdown links at the www.caribbeantales.ca website.
30 juin ’09