Gallant Knights spotted at École St. Léon

Les Chevaliers de Westmount, as their French-language play was called, was put together by two grade 5 classes at the Clarke Avenue school, using Quebec children's author Anne Robillard's 10-book series, Les Chevaliers d'Émeraude.

Working on the play with the guidance of teachers, Sylvie Blouin and Cathérine Lê, since January, the students also had the help of volunteer parents. They wrote the script, built the sets, made the costumes and organized marketing to ensure that the project paid for itself.

Based on Robillard's continuing series of books, the play was a classic good versus evil story, about an order of knights who fight against a race that is half-human and half-insect. The students themselves described the play as funny, dramatic and action-packed. Robillard attended the production, which was staged at the school on June 7.

According to Hazel de Neeve, one of the parents who assisted, Robillard — who spent some time signing autographs afterwards — was "very moved by the production. The teacher said she cried." De Neeve praised Robillard's lengthy and detailed books for their ability to stimulate the imagination of children.

"These are big novels," she said. "Kids in grade school, they usually read small books and it's hard to get them catapulted up to the level of an adult-sized novel. For a lot of kids, these were the first ones they read of that size."

While even Robillard noted afterwards that the play's condensed retelling of the book's events might have left many of the spectators somewhat mystified, de Neeve said it was the ideal vehicle to get as many students as possible involved. The cast alone included nearly 50 students.

"There were 60 kids in the two classes and a lot of them ended up on stage," she said. "I think that was one of the aims." She also found that the play's conclusion — which seemed to honour the old dramatic convention, by which the stage ends up being 'littered with corpses' — bore a resemblance to ancient Greek tragedy.

Westmount city councillor Guy Charette, whose sons Edward and Alexander were in the cast, said, "It was a blast, it was great, I loved it … They had been working on that since the beginning of the year. They spent five months working on that play … I think they should do more of that … I wouldn't have missed it for the world … I think it was a wonderful exercise."