By reading plays and seeing performances, students explore the creative dynamic between page and stage in this Sidwell Friends senior seminar.

It’s a simple but brilliant idea: have students read plays and then see a production to explore the nature of the artform in its translation from author’s text to stage production. Students in Upper School English Teacher Manny Jacquez’ “Page and Stage” senior seminar are doing just that this spring, reading and taking in plays ranging from the classic Inherit the Wind to more recently heralded works, including The Minutes by Tracy Letts and What the Constitution Means to Me by Heidi Schreck. 

One recent morning, the class of 12 students discussed Inherit the Wind, a riveting retelling of the titanic battleroom contest between Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan over the teaching of evolution in what has become known as the Scopes trial. The students had read the play and attended a production at the Arena Stage theater. With the drama fresh in their minds, students enthusiastically shared their thoughts and impressions on the clash between modern science and religious fundamentalism the play recounts. They discussed how a playwright’s script guides but does not control how a producer or director might interpret the work. In addition to classroom discussion, students write analytical essays in class and compose both a performance review and a directorial concept.

“I could wax on about how the students are benefitting from getting to experience live performances in 2026 when content and entertainment have defaulted to streaming, but I’m more focused on students getting to experience community in various layers,” says Jacquez. “The kids always have pointed feelings about being a part of an audience, express admiration about the community of performers on stage and how they work together, and marvel at the work of the directors, designers, and crew who put on the show. I really feel like the class is implicitly suggesting an important lesson about communal effort, shared passion, and the grace of building something alongside other people.”

Jacquez’ own interest in drama began when he attended a small outdoor production of King Lear—a behemoth of a play to stage—put on by a company of unpaid amateur actors in 2010. It might not have been Shakespeare in the Park, but the quality of the adaptation and the commitment of the people involved—Lear was played by a local lawyer—led him to volunteer for the next summer’s season. “Like the people who showed up to watch and philosophically contemplate that play’s ideas, I believe that every play my students see and read pushes them to think critically,” says Jacquez.

By the last play or two of the semester, Jacquez says he notices a significant shift in the depth of observations his students make. In their discussion of Inherit the Wind, students pondered the fact that though the trial took place in one courtroom, in one small town, it was being watched by the world. “We only saw an incomplete jury and in some ways the audience filled in the rest, making us—the audience members—judges, too,” said one student. Another mentioned the symbolic gesture of the defense attorney holding the bible in one hand and Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in the other: “Moving his hands up and down like a judicial scale seemed like he was saying that believing in both creationism and evolution is possible.” Another student noted how the staging harkened back to Shakespeare and the Greeks, while another still considered the power of silences and pauses: “So much can be communicated without saying anything.”

At the beginning of the semester, more than 80 percent of the class had never seen a non-musical live performance. Now they have seen a variety of very different performances, including an avant-garde a cappella musical (Octet), a raw drama about the risks of incarceration many youths face (Pipeline), and a biting comedy about small-town politics (The Minutes).

“The balance of reading the plays and seeing them performed gets the students thinking about the dynamic between page and stage,” says Jacquez. In some cases , he says, reading the text is easier for students because they have fewer stimuli to keep track of. However, in the case of a play like Inherit the Wind, the text presents a dizzying amount of characters with often brief utterances, making it difficult to figure out how the people weave in and out of the story. For that play, seeing it performed helped the students better understand how the characters helped drive the plot.

Now in its third year, Jacquez believes the seminar has developed a following that will attract seniors for a long time to come. “Plays are not just text and not just the performance,” he says, “Students in the seminar come to understand the effort needed to put ideas in front of people to encourage them to think for themselves.”