Matthew & Nik's Retro Exhibition: The Grapes of Wrath

Jianmarco wrote some notes on Matthew & Nik's Exhibition.

This round of Exhibitions was different from any other. The eighth graders presented on their Legacy Projects and the seventh graders did ‘retro’ projects based on something they have done in recent years.

As a class we did a read-aloud of a play scripted directly from John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath. Nik and Matthew read the characters Granma and Grampa. For their Retro Exhibition, Nik and Matthew decided to write and debut an additional prologue scene for Granma and Granpa. Their Exhibition began with a fantastic presentation by Matthew on his additional research on the Dust Bowl, the period in which The Grapes of Wrath is set.

After the presentation, they divided up the parts for Grandma and Grampa’s scene amongst the audience, and then we all read their script. It was fantastic and captured the spirit and fun of Granma and Grampa in well-written, playful banter. After that, they had us speculate on where Granma and Grampa’s relationship would go. We all then read several of their scenes from the Grapes of Wrath script, and learned how Nik and Matthew had connected the scene they had written to the script we had read as a class.

I enjoyed myself and learned quite a bit about the Dust Bowl and the people who lived in that time.

Granma and Grampa (Zeffie Tilbury and Charlie Grapewin) from The Grapes of Wrath movie (1940).