Talent Show Highlights Global Voices
It was a standing-room-only crowd in the Experimental Theater on September 30 as the “Polyglot” participants prepared for an evening of song, dance, poetry, conversation and presentations. The one caveat? No English allowed.
Twenty-five groups of students and faculty took to the stage to perform in Spanish, French, Portuguese, Hebrew, Thai, Mandarin, Korean, Ukrainian, Hindi, Greek and even Morse code.
The event was organized by 15 student leaders aka “The Shareholders” of the Mainstage theater program, a nod to Shakespeare's theater company, which was run by actor-managers.
Richard Simon, upper school languages teacher, shared a special onstage moment with his daughter Viviana Simon ’24 when they performed “A La Claire Fontaine,” a French lullaby. “I used to sing this to her when she was teeny tiny,” he said. “This was absolutely my daughter’s idea. There's very little I like less than performing in front of an audience and something she really enjoys doing so she pressured me, and I caved.”
The audience cheered for the duo and, added Viviana, “It was touching to see so many excited faces in the crowd, and I’d love to do it again next year if my dad is up for it. He speaks around nine languages, so we’ve definitely got options for the next performance.”
Chanel Neal ’24 sang a song in Spanish and invited audience members to come on stage to dance. Upper school Spanish teacher Roberto Mercedes and the 4-year old brother of Angel Henriquez ’24 accepted Neal’s invitation. Ehimare Ehikioya ’24 beeped a message to the crowd in Morse code, explaining the process for folding an origami finger puppet.
The newest band on campus, The RECK, featured Cathy He '25 (vocals), Ryan Guan ’23 (bass/guitar), Eunice Wang ’25 (keyboards) and Mark He ’26 (drums) who performed a modern Chinese song. The Ancient Greek class mastered the Greek alphabet to the beat from Queen’s "We Will Rock You" and help from a more-than-willing crowd while faculty member Penny Peng assembled more than 20 Mandarin students to the stage to sing a beautiful song.
Cathy of The RECK reflected on all the performances. “I deeply believe that music is a language itself, so although I don’t understand every word, I feel the emotion from the singers and the melodies,” she said.
“I was blown away by the student performers, the class groups and the emcees emceeing in different languages. They were all phenomenal. The energy of the audience and the support of the audience felt like it was raising the roof of the ET,” said (Richard) Simon.
Faculty advisor Meg O’Connor would love to bring “Polyglot” back every year. “It was incredibly fun, but also really moving,” she said. “It turns out that the answer to the question ‘what happens when we stop speaking English on campus?’ is ‘we sing, we laugh, we tell jokes and stories, and we continue to connect.’”
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