THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, June 23, 1995 TAG: 9506230023
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: LIFE IN THE PASSING LANE
The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star has been following the paths
of four students in South Hampton Roads during their senior year in
high school. This is the last installment detailing their graduation
and hopes for the future.
SOURCE: By DEBRA GORDON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 98 lines
$67,200.
That's how much Will Dickerson has amassed in financial aid and scholarships to see him through four years of Boston College.
For Will has realized a dream - he's going to major in theater at one of the best theater schools on the East Coast. It's a dream he's held ever since he auditioned for a spot in the theater department at the Governor's School for the Arts, four long years ago, when he was a spindly freshman.
Now, just a bit taller, but immeasurably more mature and accomplished, Will finds himself face-to-face with both the end and the beginning.
The end of four years of 15-hour days, late-night rehearsals, unbelievably intense friendships and adrenalin-pumping applause.
And the beginning of a life that will lead, he hopes, to the Royal Shakespeare Company in London.
The money is a start - amounting to $16,800 for each year - but it isn't enough. His family must still come up with another $10,000 a year. So they've taken out loans, and Will is planning to work two jobs this summer. He also hopes to work during his first two years at college - before rehearsals start.
Somehow, the money will be found. But first, graduation.
Like everything else they do, Governor's School students do graduation like no one else.
First, there is the setting - the lovingly restored, jewel box environ of Norfolk's Wells Theater.
Then there is the music filling the lobby. And over to your left - a group of students playing flutes, accompanied by two cellists.
Find your seat, and your eyes are immediately drawn to the full orchestra tuning up in front of the stage. Then the lights dim, the conductor raises his baton, there is a single drum beat, and the orchestra launches into the momentous strains of the march from Wagner's ``Die Meistersinger.''
These kids never miss an opportunity to perform.
And so it goes throughout the evening.
There is the original poem by Jennifer Chaine, who is graduating from the Visual Arts Department. The string of words she enunciates loudly gives a sense of what the past four years have meant to these students: ``Tick. Tock. Grow. Scratch. Staple. Saw. Glue. Tickety tock. Sacrifice. Expressing. Long bus rides.''
There is the original dance the Dance Department graduates perform to the strains of Mozart - 11 graceful young women, their long hair streaming behind them as they dance barefoot upon the stage.
And there is Will.
In a wonderful bracketing with the monologue he performed to open the school year in September - a speech by Prince Hal from Shakespeare's ``Henry IV'' - he has chosen another Elizabethan playwright, John Webster, to end his high school career.
His two-minute speech from ``The Duchess of Malfi'' - in which the duchess's brother, who ordered his sister jailed and tortured, finds her dead and blames her servant - has nothing at all to do with graduating high school, Will admits.
So why did he pick it?
``It's not particularly inspiring, but it's a good monologue,'' he explained a few days before graduation. ``And I didn't want to do anything that was usually done.
``Something as abstract as a graduation can't be captured in one monologue.''
But there are plays he would choose to depict the past year. ``The Dumbwaiter'' by Harold Pinter, for instance.
For one, he said, it's an absurdist play and this past year has been, in many ways, absurd.
There was the newspaper reporter following him around all year. The nights he came stumbling home at midnight after rehearsing all evening to find his father, the habitual home improver, had built a new wall in the house, or added on a bathroom.
And throughout the play, two waiters stand in a small room waiting for their orders to come up. Sort of like the past year, he says, waiting to hear about SATs, college and scholarships.
And then, when the waiters' meals do arrive, they're not sure what's going to happen next.
Which is kind of how Will Dickerson, 18 and on his way to Boston, feels. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
BILL TIERNAN/Staff
by CNB