D  e  s  e  r  t     E  x  p  o  s  u  r  e     March 2005

Playbill of Fare

Cliff High School stages dinner and a show in an ambitious annual fundraiser.

By David A. Fryxell

When the teenaged Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney decided to raise money for some worthy cause, way back in movies of yore, they'd enthusiastically cry out, "Hey, kids, let's put on a show!" Not once did their barn-into-stage ambitions extend to, "Hey, kids, let's put on a dinner theater!" That's because they didn't attend Cliff High School.

For a dozen years now, students at Cliff High, northwest of Silver City, have been raising money for the school's drama and art programs by turning the gym, one magical night each spring, into a dinner theater. Put those visions of cafeteria lines right out of your head—this is a sit-down dinner, served by volunteer waitstaff from the seventh and eighth grades. And, as if pulling off a dinner for 250 and a stage production weren't ambitious enough, last year the school added an art auction, with works donated by artists from as far away as Magdalena and Mountainair.

Gayle Reeves, who's now the head of food services for Silver City schools, raised the curtain on the whole idea back when she worked at Cliff High. Reeves was teaching home economics and drama. In one of those Judy-and-Mickey moments, she had the brainstorm of combining the two in a fundraiser: "Hey, kids. . .!"

In the early years, Reeves even tried to match the menu and decor with the featured play. Carl Levi, who teaches drama and art at Cliff High and who's been directing the annual extravaganza for eight years now, says he gave up on that notion a couple of years into his tenure, when the play was an abstract drama set in a post-apocalyptic world. "Roasted body parts—real appetizing," Levi recalls.

Instead, that year the decorations turned into an abstract art show of student works. The student art show has been part of the production ever since, and naturally led to last year's expansion to an art auction of donated works by professionals.

This year's play, April 4, will be "I Know I Saw Gypsies," an adaptation of the best work from an annual high-school writing program at New Mexico State University. Dinner is chicken cordon bleu—there's also a vegetarian option—with all the trimmings, plus dessert; Reeves still lends her food expertise to the meals. There's even a "bistro" (this is a high school gym, remember, so "bar" is out) serving specialty fruit and soft "mixed drinks." And there will be live music during dinner, new this year. All this for just $12 a person. Doors open at 5:30 p.m., dinner's at 6, followed by the art auction and the play.

The annual shindig is still in the high school gym, but you might not recognize it as such. "When I first got there, they were using old parachutes as drapes, to block off the view of the rest of the gym," Levi recalls. "I'm an old theater techie, so of course that wouldn't do. We built 150 feet of flats, which we cover with butcher paper."

The funds raised each year help defray the ever-escalating costs of not only the "techie" aspect of the high school's drama program—a set can easily run to $500-$600, Levi says—but also script fees and royalties. Each year Levi takes students to a high-school drama festival at Eastern New Mexico University in Portales, both to perform and to see their peers' performances, and the dinner theater helps with the trip costs as well. The fundraiser also benefits the school's visual-arts program.

Pulling all this together every year takes 30-plus adult volunteers, led by "Mrs. Drama," Levi's wife, Damie Nelson, who also teaches at Cliff High. "It's a big deal," Levi allows. "It's the high point of the social season in Cliff.

"That night, though, once I change out of my paint-stained blue jeans into my 'serious suit,' the work is done," he goes on. "Then it's just a whole lot of fun."

The dinner theater performance of "I Know I Saw Gypsies" will be April 4 at Cliff High School; doors open at 5:30 p.m. Tickets are $12 per person, available from drama students or by calling the school, 535-2051, or Carl Levi, 388-2128.

David A. Fryxell is editor of Desert Exposure.

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A Wing and A Prayer
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