By Doreen Marion Gee

"What was happening in the world about eighty years ago?" A little hand shot up and the boy said earnestly " The dawn of man!" This was all part of the fun as the director queried the pupils about the play they were watching. On April 3, 2008, South Park School hosted a play about the new book, "South Park School - Memories Through The Decades" by Linda Picciotto and Debby Marchand. "Soldiering On" was performed by the UVIC's Theatre Department and directed by Warwick Dobson. It is called Reminiscence Theatre, a form of Applied Theatre, where the play is based on seniors’ memories and remembrances of things that happened in their past.

The theme of the play revolved around the new book's memories about past war years as they pertained to South Park School. They acted out when the boys formed units of cadets during World War One and when they got boxes of gas masks and were taught how to load a 22 rifle while kneeling. They did "black out drills", emulating the real ones going on in England at that time. When the actors sang, "London Bridge is Falling Down", I realized for the first time that a song that I had sung all during my childhood was really about war. The actors talked about a more shameful part of our past: the Japanese Internment Camps of the Second World War where the South Island RCMP would detain "suspicious" people and send them to housing camps.

Finally, the theatre group portrayed the omnipresent fear of nuclear war in the 1960's, where there "might be nuclear war in two days!". One actor exclaimed, " If they bomb Mount Baker then we can watch!" As a former student of South Park School in the sixties, I have a story in the book about the utter stupidity of our nuclear war exercises where we were told to hide under our desks if an atomic bomb was dropped on Victoria!

"Soldiering On" was well done and is an absolute delight. It is a fitting tribute to the wonderful book by Linda Picciotto and Debby Marchand. The play revealed how much our lives are affected by war, like it or not. And it makes you think about what is happening in the world right now.

Photo by Barry Behnke