Ms. Hagge’s English 4 students finished reading Deborah Brevoort’s The Women of Lockerbie just in time for Yoh’s upcoming performance of this play. Written in the form of a Greek tragedy, the play portrays how individuals and a community cope with the trauma inflicted by the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, a tragedy that occurred in 1988. For this summative project, students created vision boards with images and words representing the mood, characters, setting, and prominent themes in the play. After creating their vision boards, students wrote about their processes and presented their ideas in class. Here is a sampling of their vision boards and some excerpts of their presentations. We look forward to attending Yoh’s performances of The Women of Lockerbie on May 3rd and 4th!
“My process started by identifying my theme, which is that people need to grieve together and people need to support each other. I then found images that I thought related to my theme, like the image of the women grieving and holding hands. I then found images based on the mood and the setting, such as the hills, river, and sunrise. Then I added props, such as the candles, suitcase, and laundry. I chose the two words, hate and grief, because they were what I felt the play was really about; how to deal with hate and grief.” Grace Modarai
“I think that the two big themes of the play The Women Of Lockerbie are grief and unfairness. . . Madeline and Bill were still grieving from their son's death seven years later. Madeline thought she did everything right yet still this happened to her. My vision board captures this in the photos of the picture perfect house and the picture perfect family with a line crossing it out. . . The vision board being dark and gloomy shows that I understood the deep sadness caused by grief and conflicting feelings around fairness. The situation is so unfair. I also tried to show how important it was to the people left behind to have their loved one to be remembered as an individual and not just a nI also think that it is important to be able to tie all of the different objects together and be able to show a little bit of the story through the vision board. I think that one of the most important elements on my board were the many bags of people's belongings. I think that this one was really impactful because it showed us how many people lost their lives. Each set of their belongings showed us a little bit more about who the person was, making them real and not just random people or numbers. These were real people with real lives and had people that loved them. They mattered. “ Gracie Laperle
“For gathering my photos I looked up words relating to settings and the theme I chose which is to not let hatred win. I think my vision board communicates my theme through the photos I chose being directed towards more of a happy direction. . . I think the photo of the people hugging is the most important to my design because it represents my theme the most in the way that people can love and get through things with the help of loved ones and friends.” -Keller Pauly
“My design shows the two ways grief is shown in the story, one being grief that is shown through deep emotion and the other being grief that is hidden or pushed aside. This is shown by including pictures of emotion and images representing what Bill had to do after his son died, like talk to reporters and return his presents. . . My vision also shows Madeline’s sorrow, anger, and her search for her son.” -Lindsey Bacon
“I created this vision board by using keywords from my notes and the class notes on theme, mood, characters, and setting, and meshed each element together into one vision board. For example, I added a male character crying. However, in order to portray the grief that Bill is feeling in the book, I incorporated the ticket and the clouded thought bubble to portray his mixed feelings on his discovery of the ticket as well as the situation as a whole. This also doubles as a prop item. The image on the far left is added because I wanted to portray the grief of losing a child, as it is generally a very different type of loss than others. My props, in addition to the ticket, are the candles and the suitcase. The river and suitcase are placed where they are because of when they wash the clothes of their son in the story, but the word ‘healing’ is also incorporated into that section because I think that the river represented the family’s healing process and acted as an aid towards it. I think that the most important aspect of my vision board is the fire and clothing images because it represents the conflict of the story, and with no conflict there is no story. If I were to design the set based on a scene, the scene would be when Madeline is stepping over the river and expressing her grief. The set would have a hilly background and a river running through the center of it, so conversation can happen on either side of it, between Bill, the women and Olive, and Madeline can be in the center of it.” -Hannah Watson
“First, I thought about where it was taking place. We know that it takes place in Scotland, and in the story they talk about the rolling hills there. After that I thought about the theme, and I wanted to show how Madeline was mourning the loss of her son. Then I thought about important parts of the story like the memorial and how in the play there should be candles as props. Another prop that I thought could be used is a suitcase that would have been her son’s.” –Catie Austin
