An Interview with Mr. Jeffrey Grove

CLIONA JOY PILIGAN | OCT. 31, 2022 | FEATURES

As homecoming week at Stanton College Preparatory School came to its end, the school’s distinguished drama club presented its first production of the 2022-2023 school year, “The Women of Lockerbie.” Directed by Stanton drama teacher Mr. Jeffrey Grove, “The Women of Lockerbie” is inspired by the bombing and crash of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988. In this interview, Mr. Grove explains the process of directing the play and its importance to the Stanton audience. 

Devil’s Advocate: How did you plan the layout of the play?

Jeffrey Grove: I had a drawing of the floor plan to scale, so I can see the space accurately and set pieces to know where we are sitting. I have little colored, cut-up index cards to represent the characters. I use pink for women, and I use blue for the named characters like Bill and Maddie.  I then plot them out on the plan and move them around like pieces on a chessboard, so I can plan who moves where and when. The next part is adjusting that to the reality of what the audience can see. Once you get that set, you begin running the actors through it. You can start developing things like characters, personalities, and emotions. The actor has to make a creative contribution that comes from themselves on how they see the character, working with the director’s help, and how the director sees the character.

DA: Was there any significant importance in the clothing of the actors? 

JG: I did tell my costume designers that we want them to look like adults. We want to avoid clothing that teenagers wear [and] think about middle-aged people. We also needed to [remember] that most of the characters are Scottish, not American, and that they live in a kind of damp, chilly climate. I also took into consideration the color, because they brought in a lot of stuff that was black since the characters have been to a memorial service for victims of the plane crash.

DA: What was the music choice for this play?

JG: We only have music when the audience is coming in to be seated, and that music continues a little bit after the curtain opens. Once that happens, the music stops. There is one moment in the middle of the play where some characters leave the stage and the stage is empty. The curtain stays open, the lights stay on. We had some music playing and wind, the sound of wind blowing to let us know that the stage was empty for one minute. But, it represents several hours in reality, so when the next scene begins, the time has passed.  I also asked for a hint of traditional Scottish music, but also sounded modern. I did not want Scottish folk music from the Renaissance. It is a modern play, set in the 1990s. We found somebody else who said, “I do not want bagpipes.” That is a stereotypical thing, and a lot of people find the sound of bagpipes annoying. So we found something that has a Celtic flute or Celtic whistle in it, and that is very traditional Scottish and much more pleasing to the ear. 

DA: What props were used for the play’s setting?

JG: We had a few pieces that already existed there. There is a little platform with one step up, and then a step unit that is about three feet tall. I brought those on to provide some new theater levels so that when people are standing on the stage, all the heads are not at the same height. It gives a little more variety in what we call the stage picture. The play is outdoors in the hills, so I bought pieces of military camouflage netting to drape over the steps, [giving the] patterns of grass and leaves. We were trying to suggest the play's outdoor setting without trying to do realistic grass, plants, and hills. To me, the setting of the play is not so important. What is important is the actions of the characters and their feelings. As long as we got enough, you can see that it is night and we are outdoors. 

DA: What were some setbacks during Thursday’s production? 

JG: There were not any [major] difficulties. There was a lighting effect at the beginning that was not the way I wanted it. The curtains opened on the stage while it was dark, and the lights were supposed to be on. I also think that we held on to the final scene a bit too long. There are little, piddly things like that. That does not mean a lot. It was a very smooth performance. The students, both onstage and offstage, had worked hard, practiced, and knew what they needed to do.

DA: What was the advice that you told your students before Thursday's run? Did some actors have stage fright?

JG: At this point, I do not think anybody was showing any signs of stage fright being an issue. If there are people who tend to get it, they know how to deal with it, and know how to channel that energy. By putting it into your performance, you keep stage fright from working against you, you make it work for you, so it does not cause problems.

 I did talk to my students before I went out to do the ticket sales, and it mainly was a pep talk. I told them I loved them, and that I was proud of them. I told them what a good show they had put together.  I did tell them a little story about my dad teaching me how to ride a bike. At one point, I turned around and I was halfway down the block. He was standing there because he already let go a long time ago, and now is the night I let go. I told my students you are not going to fall because you know what to do. 

DA: What was something in Thursday's production that stood out to you? 

JG: I was impressed by how adult-like the students seem, because all of the characters in the play are middle-aged, and all the actors are teenagers. It is hard for theater teachers to talk about this a lot. It is hard for young people to play middle-aged characters believably. Middle-aged people are still active, but they have lived long enough and experienced enough disappointment that they are kind of tired a lot. You see it in their voice, you see it in the way they move. A lot of kids do not notice it when they look at middle-aged people. But these kids were believable playing adults who were in their 40s and 50s. They did not seem like teenagers pretending to be middle-aged people. They were believably inhabiting these middle-aged people. I was impressed by that. I have seen enough high school plays with teenagers badly playing middle-aged characters, that is a big deal to me. If you do not believe the characters, how are you going to believe anything in the play? One of the parents even said something to me about that when she came up to me after the show and talked about how she realized how hard this play was to perform well. 

DA: How would you react to his play if you saw it for the first time, and had no knowledge of the story?

JG: There is enough in this play to fill in the details, so that if you have never heard about this particular plane crash, and how and why it happened, you would be filled in on it. The characters discuss the incident, and if they were all affected by it in some way. Older people like me are going to remember and think, “I remember when that happened. I remember seeing that on the news.”  

The students were not born when it happened. It is one thing I liked about it. It is a play that works for people whether they have heard about this incident or not. 

DA: What do you want the audience to learn from “The Women of Lockerbie?”

JG: I like them to feel for the characters who lost people. You are traumatized when you go through something like that. It takes a lot out of you emotionally. I want the audience to feel what these people went through. Even though it is a story about a dark incident, I want the audience to feel the love that these characters had, even though they suffered a terrible loss. Instead of lashing out in hate to get revenge for what happened, the characters wanted to reach out to others with love and compassion. Note that this play looks at one of the darkest terrorist incidents of recent times, and in that incident, it finds light and hope. I hope that the thing they are taking with them is that light and that hope. No matter how bad things get, we can find ways to find the good in the world.

DA: Is there anything else you would else like to add?

JG: I will be a little sorry to see this go, I always am. I put so much work into this show. The kids have been working on it since mid-August. But, I have been working on it longer because I spent a lot of time this summer studying it, reading it, rereading it, conceptualizing it, and visualizing it, so I would be ready to rehearse with the kids. When you get into a play that you love on that level, and you bring it to life, It is really hard to set it aside once it is over. 

But, I had a wise theater professor in college, who talked about that “post-show letdown.” He said, “What you need to learn is to let that drive you on to your next theater project. Find the next piece you are going to work on because you can start getting excited about what comes next.” It is like life, is it not?