JACKSON DRAMA CLUB PLAY OPENS TONIGHT

In choosing the Pulitzer Prize-winning play "You Can't Take It With You" for Jackson High School's 1995 production, director Joyce Schroeder wanted to give her students a memorable experience.

"It's a chance for the students to act in a famous play," she said. "I knew it was something they would always remember."

"You Can't Take It With You" will be presented at 7:30 tonight and Friday night in the high school auditorium. Tickets are $2.50 for adults and $1.50 for students.

Written by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, the play is set in the 1930s, at a time when exiled Russian aristocrats and Bolshevik-hunters no doubt stopped by American households all the time. It's a class-conscious romp that turns on the romance between sweet Alice Sycamore, whose family members are as loopy and unambitious as they are lovable, and Anthony Kirby Jr., scion of a wealthy family that seems to care more about social position than happiness.

In bringing together students from many different backgrounds, the production itself has been a microcosm of one of the play's themes, Schroeder says.

"What I like about drama is, I don't like little cliques. I don't want to make actors out of them. I want to teach them how to work together."

Schroeder, in her eighth year teaching drama at JHS, had welcome help this year from an assistant director, English teacher Jude Burgfeld. Burgfeld handled the set and furnishings from Cracraft-Miller Furniture & Decorating.