JRHS 20th Century Faire was one for the history books!

By Elissa Colombo ('20)

The Humanities Faire is a project unique to Jesse Remington that takes place in quarter one. The students met together at the beginning of the year, and we developed an initial overview of this year’s theme, along with a list of potential characters. This year’s Humanities Faire was centered around the 20th century, starting in the early 1900s and ending in the late 1980s. The students were split into four groups that focused on different time periods ranging from the World Wars through the space race and the Cold War. We were all working off of the theme of “Socialism vs Democracy: Clash of Worldviews”.

Each student was involved in writing the scripts, designing and painting the sets, studying their character, and creating fun games to entertain the guests. For example, my group covered the time period from World War One through the Great Depression. After choosing and researching our characters, a few students in our group wrote the script. At the same time, the rest of the students began brainstorming ideas for potential games and set design. After finalizing these details, everyone went to work on tracing and painting the sets. Along with that, we also gathered the necessary supplies and set up our games. In the meantime, costumes were being accumulated as soon as characters were assigned. The highlight of my scene was Abbott and Costello’s Who’s on First, portrayed excellently by Jaben Morganthal and Sam Carlson.

After our scene concluded, group two brought some of the key figures of World War II such as Benito Mussolini, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Anne Frank. The highlight of this scene was the meeting of the Big Three (Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill).

Following an intermission filled with games and activities, scene three depicted the Space Race and the Korean War. By interviewing several key figures of the time such as John Lennon and Ted Williams as well as portraying significant events such as Douglas MacArthur arriving to offer assistance to South Korea, Ginger Rogers and Frank Sinatra were able to successfully offer our guests a glimpse of what life was like back in the 1950s-1960s.

To conclude this year’s performances, the fourth group had students present key political figures such as Mikihal Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher, and Ronald Regan to show the significance behind the collapse of the Berlin Wall. By the time of this year’s 20th century fair, each of the four groups was well-prepared to host this event and bring our characters to life. Like so many previous Humanities Faires, this year was a huge success thanks to excellent leadership, hard work, time management, and teamwork. If next year’s Faire can learn from the victories and failures of this year’s fair, it will inevitably be outstanding.