Parkview student performance tells story of S. Africa’s Mandela
Choir, drama and American Sign Language students from Parkview Arts and Science Magnet High School performed the life story of former South African President Nelson Mandela for a packed audience Sunday as part of the school’s annual Black History Month Performance at the Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock.
Minutes before the performance began, Karen Strachan, the Education Programs Manager for the center, and several staff members wheeled in stacks of chairs to accommodate the number of attendees who gathered in the facility’s Great Hall.
“We work with Parkview Arts and Science Magnet High School, and they create this incredible experience with their theater students, and then add music,” Strachan said. “And it’s inspired by a special exhibition that we have here at the Clinton Presidential Center.”
This “special exhibition” is the Clinton Center’s current temporary exhibit, “Be Our Guest,” which focuses on Mandela and memorable diplomatic visits from foreign leaders that the former president hosted during his administration.
To create the performance — which contained elements of music, acting and sign language — the school’s drama, choir and American Sign Language departments drew inspiration from Mandela’s 1994 visit to the U.S., the same year he was elected South Africa’s first Black president.
Parkview’s choir sang 11 songs during their part of the production, including both Black gospel and South African songs, and ended their performance with a rendition of “We Are the World” by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie.
Choir member Jaylon Casey and others added percussion to several songs with wooden blocks, rattles and drums.
“Tshotsholoza — that’s
one of my favorite songs. Very energetic, very flowy,” said Casey while discussing the choir’s list of songs. “It has a nice beat and tempo. Makes you almost want to get up and dance to the song.”
Another choir member, Aniya Foster, directed the choir’s performance of the song “Total Praise.”
“Being a Parkview choir student is amazing. Just being able to sing with other people who love to sing as much as I do is just awesome,” she said.
To Chrisitan Seymore, another member of the Parkview choir, the show allowed the students to shine a light on important stories from Black history.
“With each song that we sing, and each act that we put on, it tells a story,” Seymour said. “So we want to tell and share stories that can bring awareness to everybody. [To show that] what we are telling you is important.”
Mary Shollmier, the director of choirs at Parkview, has been involved with the annual Black History Performances at the Clinton Center since its inception. “This is my 19th year at Parkview, and we started some version of this my first year,” Shollmier said.
According to Shollmier, this is the first time the Black History Month Performance has included scenes that did not solely focus on Black American history.
“I think sometimes we think Black History Month talks [only] about the history of Black Americans,” Shollmier said. “But Black history is worldwide, not just in the United States.”
The choir’s songs were interwoven with short scenes performed by the Parkview’s drama students.
The scenes explored apartheid in South Africa and President Mandela’s life and activism.
According to April Gentry-Sutterfield, a drama teacher at Parkview, the program offered an opportunity for students to learn more about the former South African president through research and performance.
“The students did the research. They wrote the script and directed it,” Gentry-Sutterfield said. “Once we found out that ‘Be Our Guest’ was the exhibition, we really wanted to dig into Mandela. And that’s something that our students didn’t know much about: apartheid and South Africa.”
This year’s performance was the first that featured an American Sign Language number. Students from Parkview’s ASL program signed to the song Cynthia Erivo’s “Stand Up” from the movie Harriet, a biographical film about Harriet Tubman.
Parkview ASL teacher, Crystal Kirkland, acted as the sign language interpreter throughout the performance of the song.
“It’s very important to broadcast ASL because we have a deaf community that is sometimes marginalized and forgotten about,” Kirkland said. “We have a big deaf community within the Little Rock area, and I want to expose them as much as I can to the beautiful language of ASL.”