Gilbert & Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore

Catlin Gabel students will offer free performances of Gilbert & Sullivan’s operetta H.M.S. Pinafore in the San Juan Islands June 2-4 – Contributed photo

Eighth graders from Catlin Gabel School in Portland, Oregon, will offer free performances of their production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s operetta H.M.S. Pinafore at three community performances during the first week of June:

• Monday, June 2, 10 a.m. at the Life Care Center in Friday Harbor
• Tuesday, June 3, 1 p.m. at the Orcas Center on Orcas Island
• Wednesday, June 4, 1 p.m. at the Shaw Community Center on Shaw Island

H.M.S. Pinafore is a topsy-turvy story challenging societal, class, and gender rights in Queen Victoria’s England. Catlin Gabel updates this classic production with a cast of suffragettes of the progressive era and proletariats of the machine age set against a steam punk backdrop-all singing Gilbert & Sullivan’s sublime music. It’s a modern tale that everyone will enjoy.

Since 1988, our 8th graders have sung their way through the San Juan Islands, performing in schools and community centers and residential care facilities. Performing for audiences in the San Juan is an important class project almost as much as it is a musical, because our students come to see themselves and others in new ways. After the San Juan tour and as the capstone project of their 8th grade year, Catlin Gabel students present a full-scale production of that year’s Gilbert & Sullivan’s classic operetta back home on the school campus.

Catlin Gabel serves Portland and the world as an educational catalyst, drawing together dedicated educators, motivated students, superb curricular resources, and thoughtfully applied technology, in a beautiful and functional setting, all for the purpose of forming bold learners who become responsible action-takers for life. Catlin Gabel is an independent, non-sectarian, progressive coeducational day school serving 750 students from preschool through twelfth grade. Its roots go back to the Portland Academy, founded in 1859. The school occupies 60 acres on Barnes Road, five miles west of downtown Portland. For more about the school, please visit www.catlin.edu.

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