High School Class Adapts and Stages Classic Murder Mystery

By planning, organizing, and leading the symposium event, students in the Arts Pathway class are learning important 21st century skills such as problem solving, collaboration, and entrepreneurship.  Because the course is aligned to state and national learning standards, students are also acquiring the same critical reading and writing skills that they would in a traditional English class.

The day-long literary symposium model is not new to the students.  Developed over the past three years by Opera House Arts as “The Living Room Project,” the symposium model exposes students to the broader context of a work of literature through a multimedia exploration of its themes, a staged performance, and analytic group discussion.  DISHS students have already participated in symposia based on The Grapes of Wrath, The Old Man and the Sea, and The Things They Carried.

Get ready for a classic “who done it” when students in Deer Isle-Stonington High School’s Arts Pathway class stage scenes from Agatha Christie’s novel And Then There Were None.  The students in the class have been working since the beginning of the semester writing, organizing, and directing the event with the help of teachers Marion Austin and John Lincoln.  The event follows the “Living Room Project/Symposium” model developed by Opera House Arts.  

The day will consist of the entire student body participating in arts integrated activities about the novel. The high school theater class will perform chapters three, four, and the epilogue based on an adaptation written by the students in the class. On top of that, students will be putting on the performance for the public in the evening, where they will showcase the earlier events of the day, as well as have the adults participate in some of the same arts integrated activities as the student body.