Upper School Summer Reading 2024

When she was fifteen years old, Heidi Schreck earned money for her college tuition by giving speeches about the U.S. Constitution. Decades later, she traces the effect this document has had on four generations of women in her family. Deftly examining how the United States' founding principles are inextricably linked with our personal lives, Schreck also explores the ways in which their misuse has engendered violence and inherited trauma. With passion and wit, this galvanizing new play acknowledges the ways in which our Constitution has failed us while simultaneously offering hope that we may yet steer ourselves toward a better future.

With a chance at reclaiming their lives, the formerly incarcerated people working at Clyde's, a roadside sandwich stop, strive hard to overcome their personal challenges. Not so easy under their boss Clyde. In this razor-sharp comedy, this motley crew of line cooks, under a visionary chef, are given purpose and permission to dream through their shared quest to create the perfect sandwich.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Leopoldstadt was the old, crowded Jewish quarter of Vienna, a city humming with artistic and intellectual excitement. Stoppard's epic yet intimate drama centers on Hermann Merz, a manufacturer and baptized Jew married to Catholic Gretl, whose extended family convene at their fashionable apartment on Christmas Day in 1899. Yet by the time the play closes, Austria has passed through the convulsions of war, revolution, impoverishment, annexation by Nazi Germany, and the Holocaust, which stole the lives of 65,000 Austrian Jews alone. From one of today's most acclaimed playwrights, Leopoldstadt is a human and heartbreaking drama of literary brilliance, historical verisimilitude, and powerful emotion.

'Maybe this is the year, this is the moment, this is the dance where your lives will start!'

Somewhere in America, a revolution is coming.

An army of competitive dancers is ready to take over the world, one routine at a time.

With a pre-teen battle for power and perfection raging on and off stage, Dance Nation is a ferocious exploration of youth, ambition and self-discovery.