to the Stage with Orlando

Orlando showtimes in the Coville Theater

All performances are open to friends and family, and there are no tickets.

After last year’s season, which featured The Seagull and Spring Awakening, this fall called for a piece that was colorful and uplifting. The catch: It needed to be stimulating and meaningful for the students and the creative team alike. Sarah Ruhl’s Orlando, adapted from Virginia Woolf’s fantastical 1928 novel, strikes this balance perfectly – it allows our program to discover its more clownish side while exploring ideas of gender, love, time, and identity with curiosity, poignance, and joy.

One challenge and delight of Orlando is that the play is full of third-person narration; characters possess a sort of cynical self-awareness which allows them to directly address the audience and comment on their own lives. This device cleverly illuminates and supports the play’s central exploration of concepts like the male gaze, arbitrary gender expectations, and self-objectification, and how those influences affect the way we see ourselves and our relationships.

Orlando’s inherent queerness and playfulness makes it perfect for the fearless and energized young artists I’m so lucky to work with here. Our advice to audiences embarking on this bizarre journey: maybe it doesn’t have to make sense. Orlando and its immortal, genderfluid, time traveling hero gleefully bends all the rules.

Athletics note: The most-recent athletics schedule is always available through Schedule Galaxy and can be accessed on the MPH Calendar page or via the Schedule Galaxy mobile app. The schedule included below is subject to change after the date of distribution, so please check Schedule Galaxy before heading out to a contest.

NO CLASSES | Parent-Teacher Conferences

4:00 p.m. 7/8 Volleyball vs. Bishop Ludden

NO CLASSES | Parent-Teacher Conferences

Campus Closed | Thanksgiving Recess

Middle School and Upper School Parent/Teacher Conferences will be held on Monday, November 21 (Zoom only), and Tuesday, November 22 (in-person only). Conferences provide an eight-minute time slot for parents to meet with each of their child’s teachers and their advisor.

Please reach out to Juhee LaHaye at jlahaye@mphschool.org with any questions.

Just a quick planning reminder: The LS Winter Concert for Grades 3-5 will be held Wednesday, Dec. 14, at 8:30 a.m. in the Coville Theater.

Thank you to everyone who participated in our second week of Two of Tuesday. Halfway through the challenge and we’re at 53% of our $75,000 goal. With gratitude, we extend thanks to Mary Trusilo P’31 who generously offered the Week Two challenge match. 

Next week, Dave and Steff McCusker will be offering a pre-holiday challenge, and you won’t want to miss it! Come back on Tuesday to make your gift count more! To make a gift, or see who has donated, visit our site: Two for Tuesday 2022 · GiveCampus.

NOTE: If you have already placed an order in the MPH store, those orders are being packaged for delivery now. The only option was shipping to an address customers provided. There will be no orders from this store delivered to the school.

The official Manlius Pebble Hill clothing store is now live with a wide variety of selections for all sizes, genders, and ages. A couple key points:

You'll find the weekly lunch menu here in Snapshot every Friday, but it also lives on the MPH website (you can find it through the direct link or on the left column of myMPH). And this week we welcome the return of Nutrislice, which lets users sort menu items by nutritional data, ingredients, and allergens.

The MPH MUN team traveled to Montreal, Canada last Thursday to compete in the Secondary Schools Model United Nations Symposium (SSUNS) hosted by McGill University. With almost 50 schools participating, the team performed exceptionally well with more than 50 percent of the team earning recognitions.

The team also had the opportunity to visit the renown Notre Dame Basilica of Montreal and have some downtime ice skating during the busy four-day conference. Below are recognitions from the Symposium:

Honorable Mention – Panama Canal | Caroline Mezzalingua

Honorable Mention – Writer's Guild Strike | Rafael Jennings

Outstanding Delegate – UNAIDS | Tae-Jin Shah

Outstanding Delegate – UNHCR | India Clarry-Sohriakoff (co-delegation)

Outstanding Delegate – UNHCR | Jeffrey Pisciarino (co-delegation)

Sergeant Tommy Prince Award for Diplomatic Finesse – Kenyan Crisis Committee | JJ Braverman

Viola Desmond for Advocacy – UNHCR | Asriel Anderson (co-delegation)

Viola Desmond for Advocacy – UNHCR | Sophia Lovett (co-delegation)

Save The Date: MPH Lower School Parent Workshop Series

Session 1: Thursday, December 8, 2022 from 4:30-5:30 p.m. in the MPH Knox Farmhouse 

Topic: Children, Routines, and Sleep

Refreshments:

Recently, LS teachers have been sharing and discussing these short Brain Builders videos from Amplify in second, third, fourth, and fifth grade classrooms.

This past week, several students asked to share with their classmates their culture, connections they found in their studies, and events they participated in outside of school. This student directed sharing is part of what makes this group such a warm and supportive community.

5th-grader Micah Awoke shared his Ethiopian culture with his classmates. Micah used his family's 3D printer to create this coffee set which is significant as the coffee plant originated in Ethiopia. Micah shared much of this culture and history with his classmates in a report he wrote on display in the classroom.

Evanny Twomey-Smith was gifted this bookmark from her dad. She immediately noticed the connection between the Icelandic runes and the glyphs we are studying as part of the inquiry into the Maya writing system. The students were intrigued and enjoyed getting to learn something different.

Kethan Seth and Walden Oren have been working on a gingerbread house to contribute to the Gingerbread Gallery at the Erie Canal Museum. They shared the process with their classmates from shaping the dough to melting candy for the water.

Registration is now open for the Winter/Spring 2023 session. See our website for additional information and to register or call the Community Programs office at 315-446-2452.

Grade 6 computer literacy students had fun creating games in Google Slides this week. Students made Jeopardy, matching, and tic tac toe games for classmates to play.

Manlius Pebble Hill School | 315-446-2452 | mphschool.org