The 1961 WPHS Senior Skit

As many of you no doubt remember, it was a long-standing tradition at WPHS for the seniors to write and put on a satirical play, known as the "Senior Skit." The skit poked fun at the school, teachers, and students, among other things. Like previous years, we wrote a skit and were about to put it on when our beloved principal, C. Darl Long, got wind of it and censored it. His act of censoring it made the local newspaper, the Reporter Dispatch, as shown here.

This didn't sit well with us, but there wasn't much we could do. If this were to happen now, the script would be on the Web within 15 minutes and a YouTube video of the full production would probably be up there in a week. But in 1961, even getting the script reproduced was difficult as photocopy machines didn't exist. However, in addition to the "official" script, produced with Ditto masters, I have a copy that was Mimeographed, so we apparently we had a Samizdat version that was circulated underground, but I don't think it was widely available.

Just last year, I visited Mrs. Aileen Woroboff, one of our math teachers, at her apartment in California. She is 85 and sharp as a tack. Like me, she remembers C. Darl as autocratic and thin skinned. My guess, in retrospect, is that he had spent years planning the new high school building and didn't appreciate us poking fun at the outhouse on the front lawn and the like. But satires often poke fun at people and institutions. It's kind of the nature of the beast. If we had then known that his first name was Cloyd and he was from West Virginia, who knows what we would have done. But we didn't and he canceled the skit and that was it.

Until now. Through the power the Internet, here it is, the 1961 WPHS senior skit. Click on the image below for the unexpurgated script as a PDF file.

A couple of notes are in order. First, almost everyone who appears in the skit was modeled on a real person, mostly our teachers. The name of the character often gives a clue, but the habits and mannerisms of the characters are also based on the real teachers' characteristics. Second, the skit is simultaneously a satire on Thorton Wilder's play Our Town, starting with the opening soliloquy by the "Stage Manager." Third, this play was intended for production, so it contains stage directions to the actors. Also, since I (AST) was one of the directors my copy is full of additional (handwritten) stage directions, often in stage jargon (e.g., the "blue traveler" was the main curtain in front of the stage and "DSR" means "down stage right). Right after the script are my hand-written notes about props, sets, where the actors were to stand, and the other things we needed to actually produce the play. Fourth, fortunately, I wrote the names of the actors and actresses on the script, so you can see who would have played each role. Maybe we can finally produce the skit at the reunion. Everyone: learn your part :-)

Finally, if you read the script using Adobe Reader, you will see little yellow icons scattered throughout the script. If you double click on these, you will get explanatory notes for some of the more obscure jokes and remarks. If you print the script, you lose these notes.