“The Wave” surges with emotion
(Photo courtesy of www.themarsh.org)
Marsh Youth Theater’s production of The Wave elicits a pandemonium of emotions that is sure to raise hairs on the back of your neck and give you the urge to erupt in song.
Directed by Lick-Wilmerding’s former acting and theater teacher Cliff Mayotte, The Wave recounts the shocking experiment conducted at a Palo Alto high school in 1967. History teacher Ron Jones, intending to convey to his students the chilling realities of Nazi Germany, formed his class into an exclusive group complete with a hand motion greeting, strict rules for posture and speaking and a name: The Third Wave.
The play follows the students as they become consumed by the “game.” I was impressed by the actors’ progression from prototypical teenagers to obsessed fanatics as the experiment spun out of control. They captured the turmoil of emotions that every student must have gone through.
Musicals conjure the image of smiling people joining in cheerful song, so at first I was skeptical about how such a serious event would translate into a musical. But The Wave challenged this notion.
Singing added an element of power to the play because it allowed the actors to express their emotions through the energy of the music. The characters’ emotions reverberated inside me just as much as the drumbeat of the song.
While the violence and gang mentality that this experiment elicited is shocking, what was truly frightening was the ease and rapidity with which the experiment whirled out of control. The actors captured this chaos through their seemingly random yet precise movements, and the passion with which they assumed the roles of the fanatical students.
After only five days, the experiment culminated in a shocking realization for the students that also rattled the school board. Jones was fired two years later, but the story of The Wave has continued to astound people for decades.