I consider myself an honest person. I care about copyright and I teach my students not to plagiarize. I respect the creative properties of others. Even so, it suddenly occurred to me that I may, in fact, be nothing but a common criminal!

The funny thing is that this occurred to me just as I was congratulating myself on how well the rehearsals for the play were going and how nicely my little “tricks” seemed to be working this year! You already know about the “stress trick” – but I didn’t yet tell you about the other “itsy-bitsy” changes I had to make to ensure smooth sailing for my crew of grade 8s.

Question: how many / what kinds of changes can a teacher safely make to a play? Don’t forget: I had the students' best interest at heart! 

I admit to;

• adding three extra characters because the play had 21 parts whereas my classes have 24 students in each.
• changing the opening scene a little bit…
• cutting two scenes that didn’t make sense…
• “translating” some of the place names to Turkish to make it easier for the audience (parents) to appreciate the jokes. (K-Mart has become “Tansaş”, Fed-Ex “Yurtiçi Kargo” and SAT “SBS”)
• replacing some hard-to-pronounce words with simpler synonyms. (suit has become “costume”, resumé “CV” and skedaddle (!) “get lost!”)

I hope there’s espresso in jail!

;-( CoffeeAddict