Sophisticated school drama

We told you recently about some fifth-graders at Ivanhoe Elementary School in Silver Lake, who put on "Antigone," in tandem with a second play they created about a woman they decided was a modern-day Antigone: Benazir Bhutto. Their drama teacher, Carol Tanzman, sent us a couple of pictures:

Like the character of 2,500 years ago, the public school class decided, Bhutto was killed long before her time. And as Tanzman explained in her notes for the play: “The choices she made in her life were informed, like Antigone, by the death of a family member (in Benazir Bhutto’s case, her father). Much like Antigone’s decision to bury her brother, Bhutto returned to Pakistan in the fall of 2007 knowing that she might meet an untimely death.”

The production of "Antigone," pictured above, was co-directed by fifth-grade teacher Kim Jones and featured Molly Simon as Antigone, Raphael Dreyfuss as Creon and more than two dozen students as the messengers, queen’s guards, musicians and, of course, the Greek chorus.

In "The Benazir Bhutto Project," students took the parts of Bhutto; her late father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto; President Bush and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. They also portrayed Los Angeles Times reporter Laura King (played by Bayjolie Wolf) and author Gail Sheehy (Andrea Sanchez). The dialogue came directly from articles by King, who reported on Bhutto’s December assassination firsthand, and Sheehy, who interviewed Bhutto for Parade Magazine.

-- Paul Feldman

Photos courtesy of Carol Tanzman