Jessie and Vicky win NHD dramatic performance award two years in a row

In a short three years, National History Day (NHD) has become a ubiquitous part of SMIC-I high school culture. NHD provides a competitive opportunity for students to practice their historical analysis skills, and even potentially qualify for Washington D.C. in the summer. While most of our students generally turn to more conventional NHD options such as creating websites or crafting essays, Vicky Zhang (11B) and Jessie Zhao (11A) boldly chose to act out live dramatic performances.  Not only that, but they have won 1st place two years in a row!

It all started with their performance at the Humanities Symposium event last year. Vicky, Jessie, and Tiffany Yeh acted out a short skit about Father Jacquinot saving Shanghai’s civilians from the Japan invaders. Their play received very positive reviews, especially from the history teachers, who commented that the play stands a very high chance of winning in NHD if the girls submitted it. As they predicted, their play, “Father Jacquinot: the Savior of Shanghai” won first place and qualified for going to Washington D.C., where they competed and learned from the brightest historians around the world. “Here’s a little bit of advice for everyone who’s looking to do drama for NHD: …in D.C., most of the performances that made it to the final round were really heavily based on historical interpretation rather than plot or dramatic aspects,” Jessie shared.

That summer, Jessie and Vicky already decided their topic for next year’s NHD––the Shantung issue between China and Japan in the Treaty of Versailles. “[For] WWI and the Treaty of Versailles, we learned about the western aspects a lot, but we never really talked about the Chinese side of things [in class],” Jessie explained. “As Chinese students in international schools, we really wanted to present a Chinese perspective.”

Jessie and Vicky have their own individual strengths. Vicky is skillful at research and historical analysis, while Jessie excels at writing scripts. The two worked perfectly together. However, they still faced challenges even in their areas of strength. “Our topic covers the span of eight years…[so] there’s always holes in research…times when we don’t know what happened,” Vicky said. Nevertheless, she overcame that difficulty by reading through books and manuscripts from 1923 in the Shanghai Library. Jessie, on the other hand, found turning long research papers into interesting scripts rather hard.

In the end, however, their play “The Shangtung Question” turned out to be an extraordinary piece. The quick-paced negotiations between the Chinese and Japanese characters were simply stunning. They also smoothly incorporated historical interpretation in their play by having one character freeze in the middle of acting, while the other one started narrating.

Their flawless combination of history and drama earned them a first place and the D.C. trip again. “Dramatic performances are actually very fun––people should do it more,” Jessie concluded.

Feature Image – Vicky and Jessie performing on Concordia’s stage in NHD Courtesy of Jessie Zhao