Ensights Magazine

Jack's Tale and Pullman Car

HS Fall Play: Jack’s Tale & Pullman Car Hiawatha

David Berry, Director of Theater
David Berry, Director of Theater and director of the fall play productions, reflects upon the fall's performances.
We all know Jack. He is what’s best in us and in those to whom we owe the lives we get to live. He survives and thrives through his two great gifts—his capacity to endure and his capacity to remain hopeful despite the dread and violence that lurk in this world. Jack’s knowledge that he can endure is deep-seated—he knows that he can and will “walk on, walk on”—and his hope is rooted in his faith in and compassion for his fellow man. That is his ultimate secret. His instinct that his survival depends upon the survival of others, that in order to gain what he needs, he must be willing to give. Throughout the play, Jack is always feeding the hungry. The incalculable value of what he gains from that is not always obvious, discernable, or measurable at first. But it saves him in the end. Pullman Car Hiawatha is the third in a triptych of one-act plays by Thornton Wilder which we began exploring in our Student Directed One-Acts earlier this year. Like Jack’s Tale, Pullman Car Hiawatha is as audacious in its near-universal scope as it is in its courageous optimism towards humankind’s ability to endure and to rise above the reach of our worser angels.
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Red Gables Campus (K–8)

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Ensworth is a coeducational, kindergarten through twelfth grade, independent day school.