| As much as I enjoyed doing "The Show," I think I liked "Three Minutes to Midnight" even more, in part because it was something you had to throw together quickly after we got word we wouldn't be permitted to put on a production of "Grease." It was fun and zany and full of great music. I had relatives from out of town come to that show, and they were stunned at how talented our kids were, acting one minute, singing and/or playing an instrument the next; they even liked our "girl group" choreography, most of which was created by the girls themselves.
You "made magic" year after year.
Shawna 6 Hmmm. How about THAT one, Three Minutes ppl? I thought that Show had such a hectic time frame that it remains somewhat a blur, but what lovely music! It was so much fun! 7 And for the record, I never made a moment of magic, at least I don't think so. I was just a grunt. We had AMAZING students year in and year out who worked hard and who believed they could do it. That particular group sang and danced and played instruments, and had it all! 8 And that Show led us all to an amazing appreciation for the history of Rock 'n' Roll, and of all the original artists, many of whom were black groups whose music was given to white artists so that mainstream America would buy in. What a sad thing, and yet, it led to the eventual blending of many different styles of music that would come together as Rock 'n' Roll. 9 It also gave me, at least, an appreciation for the great Buddy Holly.
10 Thanks, Shawna, for the nice words. It's been a long time, my goodly friend. A lot of people will love having heard from you!
11 Moving on, Part 2: I got home last night exhausted, as always, from having gotten ALL my work done, finally, from the first semester. Yesterday was a conquest, when I handed back something like six reams of paper to the students. True, some had already been handed back previously, but the past two months saw an absolute deluge in papers and projects.
12 That coupled with trying to get to hospitals to see ailing relatives, writing new lesson plans, preparing for the holidays, and going through normal life stresses actually inundated me with some of the most stress I've ever encountered. Beginning on New Year's Eve, I found my Dad has bone cancer. Within two weeks, Helene's uncle became severely sick, and sadly passed away. I began sleeping less and less, but still kept up with my trips to the gym, but would get home late, and conk out.
13 At one point, I had spent almost an entire day with my sisters at the San Francisco VA hospital worrying about my Dad. I actually brought papers to grade, and spent most of the day in the cafeteria grading papers. I also had the normal issues that we all deal with on a daily basis, things that seem SO important, but that when measured against reality, become mere piffle.
14 So yesterday became something of a triumph over all of it. My classes enjoyed reading and studying all about Greek literature, and the second half of the period gathering all the papers and projects on which they had worked so diligently. While they enjoyed reading one another's magazines and stories, I played an audio of the music from Zorba the Greek, and shouts of "Opa!" rang through the classes.
15 The groups shared their work, their stories, and their friendships. As corny as it may sound, the classes bonded, friendships became closer, and I sat smiling over all of it. I had left vocabulary sentences of myriad pastel colors all over my whiteboard, and the room filled with mirth and laughter of friendships, many of which started in the Cathedral.
16 Lovely, lovely day of teaching. Lovely, lovely profession. Lovely, lovely students!
17 Of course now it is almost midnight, and I'm sort of wondering where to go from here. One class has finished a unit on Antigone, and the other is almost completely done with The Odyssey. I played some songs from Grease the other day once again, including the very wonderful "We Go Together", which brought back memories not only of Three Minutes to Midnight, but of a little jewel of a Show called Songs We've Heard, a Show featuring so many of my '05'ers, as well as some beautiful students on either side of that year.
18 Three Minutes to Midnight was originally supposed to be Grease!, by the way. Theatre people know that traditionally, Grease! was a show with a somewhat mediocre script, a reasonably lousy theme (nice girl turns into slut), and a sort of tepid send-up to Rock 'n' Roll's early days, but that was also a HUGE moneymaker. The challenge with doing Grease! was always obtaining the rights to do it.
19 Most musicals required simply writing the company that handles their royalties and then signing a few papers. Grease! traditionally was unavailable, and it finally came available somewhere around 1997. Ponch called those guys, and we had a sort of verbal okay to go ahead with our production, so we jumped on it early, and worked on a few scenes and numbers.
20 Sadly, a little more than a month in on our rehearsals, we received word that some semi-professional company was doing the production in our area, and our bid to do it was turned down. I had to bring the cast together at a rehearsal and let them know that the Show was no longer available, that their parts were over, and that the production was not going to happen.
21 This mirrored what happened to my own high school production of Tommy, by the Who, in my senior year in high school. Our director had written the handlers of The Who, requesting permission to stage a production of the famous rock-opera by The Who. We began working on the Show, writing our own script, assembling a large cast that had the whole school watching, and even bringing in a rock band complete with a french horn!
22 Around two months in, our director gathered us in a circle at center stage and told us we couldn't do the Show.
23 In both cases, the students asked if they could do it under a different title. Our director thought about it, and we all went to his apartment that night to chill and talk about it. I suggested that we simply re-name the Show The Amazing Journey, after one of the songs from Tommy. Someone else offered Our Amazing Journey, so that there was less chance of lawsuits for doing the Show.
24 We wound up doing our own interpretation and version of Tommy. At that time, no Broadway production had even been written. It wasn't until years later that Broadway finally turned its lights on that rock opera, and with the help of Pete Townshend, the mastermind guitarist/rocker behind The Who, brought it to Broadway.
25 Likewise, our cast of Grease! was not to be left out. Personally, I was ready to just can the Show, give a few hugs, and move into summer without all the stress of mounting a huge production.
26 The students we had at the time were clearly among the best groups in the history of our department, many of whom could not only act and sing, but who could also play various instruments. Drama, band, and choir all had people in the production, so it was tough thinking of letting all those talented students down.
27 I remember Shawna coming into the Performing Arts office and pleading with me to keep a Show for this wonderful group, and the words that really hit me were, "Failure is not an option." I looked at her, and said, "You're right."
28 That night I went to the library, grabbed every book I could on the history of Rock 'n' Roll, and studied 'til I couldn't see. I then began writing the script, because we needed one. I read about how white artists became famous for the music of black artists, and of music that came directly our of the blues, and of jazz. I also read of the times, about the Cold War, and about the entire attitude of a younger generation that felt that we could all be annihilated in a second, so let's live and rock!
29 I read about how people in the 50's literally bought bomb shelters for their houses in the event of a nuclear holocaust, and that there was a world clock, whose second hand kept creeping to midnight. It began at something like ten minutes to midnight, midnight being the end of the world as we know it.
30 When America and Russia began threatening one another, the nuclear clock moved its hands swiftly towards midnight, moving at one point to three minutes to midnight. I thought of that as the title of the play, and began writing.
31 Within two days, I had written the entire script, interspersing almost twenty-five to thirty famous songs from the 50's into the Show, and featuring virtually everybody singing, dancing, and playing instruments. The Show had the girls working on many famous girl group songs, and the boys doing classic 50's rock.
32 It began with strange sounds, the cast walking on stage wearing 3-D glasses, which gained popularity back then, and the screen coming down with a picture of an atomic blast, complete with mushroom cloud looming large above everybody. It had strange music playing, a toy piano version of Buddy Holly's "Every Day" and the original news report of the airplane crash that killed Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, and Richie Valens playing softly in the background, the "day the music died."
33 Within seconds, the screen went up, and Chris Ramirez shouted, "Hello, BABY!" and within seconds the stage exploded into Chantilly Lace! Ponytails, poodle skirts, jeans, and slicked hair came on from offstage, and the Show was underway!
34 It was a fun Show, with LOTS of fun music, and a whimsical script.
35 That Show gave way to the scenes from Grease! that we subsequently did in both Songs We've Heard, and in 2006, My Favorite Things.
36 It's a little bit funny how the memories of students from all three productions now have memories of songs from a Show we never really did!
37 I was reminded of all of this just yesterday when I played the song "We Go Together" in my classes, and watched as my students danced and hugged during class. They totally enjoyed doing the unit on Greece.
38 In front of my room, dead center above my whiteboard, I have a sign posted in a sort of Greek font.
39 It says simply, "Greece is the word."
40 To me, it's still all one big Show.
41 That's it for today. Good times, good times. Still good times!
42 Hope this brought a smile.
43 Peace.
~H~
|
Recent Comments