The Plays at Penn Johns School

When the night of the school program came and the red gingham curtains parted, our classroom was a theater filled with wit, drama, and far more comedy than we intended.

Last week I went with my sister to watch my niece play a bit part in a children’s music film, and the experience made Brenda and I recall the plays we acted in at Penn Johns School some twenty years ago.

“I wish I could get my hands on the old video of me playing Mrs. Brown.” Brenda told us. She, her daughter Angela, and I were eating supper at McDonald’s, after Angela’s part in the Mullet Family Christmas Music DVD filming was complete. The filming for the music DVD had been everything our Penn Johns school plays were not: calm, sophisticated, high-tech, and no one bursting wildly into laughter.

Angela didn’t know about her mother’s stint as Mrs. Brown, so my sister filled her in. “I played a fat Mennonite lady. I was stuffed with pillows and had a doily on my head— a real doily, the kind you put under a vase. I fell off of a chair, and the other kids helped me back up. The video was hilarious when we played it backwards.”

“I wish we had plays at our school.” Angela said.

When people ask where I went to school, I always hesitate.

Most people can give short, uncomplicated answers. “Homeschooled.” “Public school.” “Our church school.”

I say, “Did you ever hear about Penn Johns? No? Well, it was a public school, but not a normal one— I mean it had only two rooms— the Little Room and the Big Room…”

My school, Penn Johns, was a red brick country school, built in 1951. Most small public schools in Lancaster County either closed or “went private” and became Amish and Mennonite schools in the 1960s. Penn Johns remained a public school until 2008, long enough for me and my siblings to complete all eight grades in a public school that had a culture of its very own.

Since most of the students were from the Plain Community, our teachers did things differently than many public schools. Although they weren’t Mennonite or Amish, the teachers were Christians and respected our parents’ faith. We didn’t say the Pledge of Allegiance, have gym class, or celebrate Halloween.

That didn’t mean no fun. We had Fall Fest parties, Christmas parties, St. Patrick’s Day festivities, Easter Egg hunts, Spring Hymn Sings, and Valentine Day’s parties. All included food. One parent grumbled, “All they know how to do at that school is eat!”

But the highlight of the year at Penn Johns was the Christmas Program, and the best part of the program was the plays and skits performed by the students. Every child had a part. The Christmas Program was held in the spacious Big Room, and it was always a full house. Parents, grandparents, former students, neighbors, and sundry individuals who had no apparent connection to the school showed up for the big night.

Plays were recycled about every six years. My favorite plays were the funny ones, often with a wise lesson at the end. We also had serious plays, like Ebenezer Scrooge or the Twelve Days of Christmas (that one required creative props.) We also acted out the Nativity Story (I was Mary in first grade), and the whole class sang Christmas songs and carols.

To get ready for the plays, we first had tryouts, with the other students voting for the best actors. This was followed by weeks of rehearsing and memorizing lines.

When the night of the program drew near, the eighth-graders got the stage ready. The desks in the Big Room were rearranged to allow room for the platform, made from cement blocks and sheets of plywood. Wires were hung from metal hooks in the ceiling, and red gingham curtains concealed the stage and the wings where we stashed our props.

We got to wear special costumes when the roles required them. The Little Room teacher, Miss Birk, would rent real costumes for us to use during the dress rehearsal and the night of the program.

One year, we all dressed up like a historical character and recited a passage to the audience about who our character was and our importance to American history. I was Betsy Ross. Miss Birk told me, “Betsy Ross was a poor seamstress. So you don’t need a fancy dress.” I was very disappointed having to wear one of my older sister’s dresses, while the girls assigned to be first ladies got to wear elegant gowns and hoop skirts.

An older classmate, Norma, got to be Mary Todd Lincoln and wore a stunning pale green dress and hoop skit. Norma actually looked a bit like the real Mary Todd Lincoln, with a round face and dark hair. Miss Birk instructed Norma, “Now when you say, ‘my husband and son died’, start crying!” Mary Todd Lincoln’s speech dramatically ended with her weeping delicately into her handkerchief as she rushed off the stage.

We practiced and practiced, but a few things would always go wrong the night of the event. Mrs. Potts, the Big Room teacher, would prep us with the old saying: “The show must go on!” Costumes would go missing. A candy bar meant to be a prop got eaten by a student before the play. Lines would be forgotten. The curtain would fall down.

One year I was the narrator for The Shoemaker and the Elves. This was a gravy role, since I got to read from a script instead of memorizing lines. I also got to stand on the stage, wearing my favorite red dress, for the entire length of the play.

The gist of The Shoemaker and the Elves is that the kindly elves help a poor old shoemaker by sneaking into his shop at night and making shoes. The elves (the shortest kids in school) would work furiously and magically transform stripes of leather into shoes.

During the night of the program, with the house packed as usual,The Shoemaker and the Elves was running smoothly until the elves came into the shop, and there weren’t any shoes hidden behind the bench where they were supposed to be.

“Miss Birk!” One of the elves hissed to the teacher, who was sitting in the front row, script in hand in case someone would forget their lines. “Miss Birk! We don’t have any shoes!”

Miss Birk was a 40-year veteran of Penn Johns School. She whipped off one of her soft-soled loafers and thrust the shoe into the hands of the waiting elf, and the show went on.

“It’s odd,” we students would say, “Our audience laughs the hardest at the parts that aren’t supposed to be funny.”

When she was in her twenties, my sister brought her boyfriend to a Penn Johns program. My future brother-in-law commented, “Maybe I would’ve liked school if I could have gone to one like that.”

Years later, my mother recalls, “After you went to a Penn Johns program, you felt so much better than you had before you went.” She and my dad and the other parents would roar with laughter at every joke and clap loudly after every skit, play, poem, and song. They were all stoic Old Order Mennonites and Amish, farmers and laborers and homemakers who toiled from dawn to dusk to raise large families in a strict subculture in the 1990s, and on the nights of the program they were the best audience we could ever wish for.

Note about the photos: Sadly, I have no pictures of a Penn John School play. Most of our parents didn’t own cameras. The video my sister referred to was taken by a teacher at a rehearsal. If you are a former Penn Johns student and have any photos you’d like to share, I’d be happy to add them to this blog. Contact me here.