Annie- April 2,3,4 York High School..7pm, 7pm, 1pm..

Next week York Middle School Drama Club will present "Annie, Jr".  It has been an incredible experience to direct this show.  This is not the first time we have directed and produced "Annie, Jr"- this is the second time at York Middle School.  The first time was my first collaboration with Mr. Carbone, a retired Horizons teacher at YMS and an actor, director, producer of many community productions in Connecticut.  The first time we did this show, we were less sure of each other, less sure of what our students were capable of..now we are pulling out all the stops!

We have an extraordinary cast.  Every girl cast as an orphan is a triple threat, and doesn't even realize it.  They all know each other's lines, so if someone is sick, (which has happened a lot this winter) there is always someone to take the line.  They never forget choreography or blocking, and they never break character.  The most amazing thing is how humble they all are, taking direction, listening to all of us, trying to get better at every turn.  Humble to the core, is what I can say.  The main characters are team players..Miss Hannigan is played by a brilliant talent that has now had a lot of experience in a short period of time.  She was a princess last year in "The Phantom Tollbooth" and has had summer experiences at Ogunquit Playhouse for a few years, so she has that character etched into her sinews at this juncture.  She is a happy child, but as Miss Hannigan, she is angry, cruel, intense, loud, frustrated, hurt, and under enormous pressure.  This all comes through in her song, her demeanor, her costumes, her facial expressions- priceless.

Our Annie is demure, motherly towards the other orphans, subtle in her emotions, her facial expressions are beautiful and her proficiency is remarkable.  I think she was memorized at the first blocking rehearsal.  Her singing voice is of an angel, yet it cuts right through to the back of the house, and she has subtle emotion driving every line of "Maybe" and "Tomorrow".  Her sophistication is impressive, she will be our new model for what Annie is supposed to be all about..not scrappy as much as intelligent, and soulful, truly working to bring herself and her orphan friends up a notch.  It has been an effortless experience working with her, and with the sensitive and kind girl playing Drake, as well as the thoughtful and intellectual girl playing Daddy Warbucks.

The fifth grade girls playing Lily and Rooster are phenomenal, I hope they return for even more challenges next year, they are fabulous!!! The two boys in the show are real troopers, also.  They keep us all believing that someday this will be an activity that will be as much about boys as it is about the girls fulfillment of goals.   We are fortunate to have a cast that is a metaphor in itself for community.  They help each other, they pitch in with all the props and sets and costumes, they are becoming a well-oiled machine..

DON'T MISS IT IF YOU CAN POSSIBLY BE THERE.  I know for a fact, you will be glad you came, glad you saw the next generation of singers/dancers/actors on that stage, glad you realized how many people get involved in this activity all winter long.

These are photographs from last year's performance, I will post photographs from this year, when I have them available to me.

Thank you in advance to all the students, parents, teachers, helpers, and audience who have helped us become and remain a self-sustaining club all these years.  Break a leg to all the performers next week and hope to see you all there!!!  

Modest Mussorgsky- Pictures at an Exhibition

MODEST MUSSORGSKY

Mussorgsky was a creative genius.  He was more original than any other Russian composer of his time.  He experimented with new melodies and harmonies. He was famous for his new kind of melody called “The melody of life”.  HE SAID, “IF I SUCCEED, I SHALL BE A CONQUEROR IN ART AND SUCCEED I MUST.”  HE WANTED HIS CHARACTERS TO “SPEAK ON STAGE AS THEY WOULD IN REAL LIFE, AND YET WRITE MUSIC THAT IS THOROUGHLY ARTISTIC.”  He was best known for his operas and songs, because he opened up new paths in terms of melodies, harmonies and rhythms, and yet he also took advantage of the rich Russian folk culture to which he had been exposed all his life.

He was born on March 21, 1839, to a rich land owning family, in Pskov.  He received music training from his mother and Anton Hernke, and though he published a piano piece at sixteen, he was supposed to go into the army.  He graduated from Cadet School and became a member of the Peobrazhensky regiment.  He met Balakirev and Parghomszksky which re-inspired his musical interests.  He studied with these men for a short time and wrote songs and two piano sonatas.  He finally resigned his army commission and devoted his time to composing music.  He wrote his Scherzo in B-flat for orchestra whose premiere was conducted in St. Petersburg on January 23, 1860.  

When the Russian slaves were freed in 1861 the Mussorgsky estate had to be sold, and the composer had to get a real job, as a clerk from 1863-1867 in the Ministry of Communications.  However, he continued to compose music.  In 1864 he completed the first act of his opera, “The Marriage” in which he experimented with speech-like melodies for the first time.  Between 1865-1866, he completed several remarkable songs, and between 1860- and 1866 he completed sketches for his first orchestral work “Night on Bald Mountain.” (This piece was in Fantasia, if you have ever watched that movie by Disney.)

In 1869 he went back to government service, and for the next eleven years worked for the department of forestry.  He was suffering from nervous disorders and he was an alcoholic and sought out the company of disreputable people.  Even with all these problems, he managed to produce a number of beautiful pieces of music that are well known to this day:  Boris Godunov, 1874, Sunless and Songs and Dances of Death, Pictures at an Exhibition for piano, two operas he never completed “Kovarinchina” and “The Fair at Sorochinsk”.  He died in St. Petersburg on March 28, 1881.  

PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION:  This piece was originally written for the piano by Mussorgsky, but was orchestrated by Maurice Ravel, a French composer.  Mussorgsky wrote this piece after he visited an exhibit of paintings by a friend, Victor Hartmann, who had died.  The pictures inspired him..”The melodies come to me of their own accord..I can hardly manage to put them on paper fast enough.”  He chose nine of his friend’s pictures and sketches for musical ideas.

This is a suite, which is a group of pieces strung together but with separate sections and presented as one longer piece.  

1.) Promenade: This section shows the composer walking from picture to picture in the exhibition and it repeats several times throughout the piece of music.  

2.) The Gnomes: sprightly melody with offbeat rhythms, a design for a nutcracker.  

3) Old Castle: a sad sounding song that is inspired by a castle with a troubadour in front of it.

4) Tuileries: A picture of the famous garden in Paris.  This comes from the painting by Hartmann of his children playing with their nannies.  It has jolly confusing melodies and lively rhythms.  

5.) Bydlo: This is a Polish ox cart, and the music is slow and heavy like the slowness of the cart.  

6.) Ballet of the Chicks in their Shells: This is inspired by Hartmann’s designs for costumes and a setting for the ballet.  The music is fast and full of bird-like sounds with the use of many clarinets and flutes.

7.) Samuel Goldenburg and Schmuyle: a portrait of two Jewish men, one grand and rich, portrayed by a proud, stately melody, the other one poor, and humble and is introduced by a weak, indecisive subject.  

8.) Limoges Marketplace: a fluttering melody with leaping rhythms that suggest housewive’s gossip.  

9.) Catacombs: The somber melody here shows the darkness of the catacombs, where skulls and bones are left.  Mussorgsky wrote of this section, “ the creative spirit of the dead Hartmann leads me toward skulls”.  The skulls are lit up inside.  

10.) The Hut on Fowl’s Legs:  An oriental design of a clock in the shape of a hut, standing on chicken feet and showing off two rooster heads, gave the composer his next inspiration.  This picture made Mussorgsky think of Baba Yaga the witch, as she soars through the air looking for her victims.  It is based on a Russian folk song.  

11.) The Great Gate of Kiev: The suite comes to a close with a description of “The great gate of Kiev” in Russia.  This was a sketch by Hartmann for a projected monument in Kiev.  

The theme of the Promenade returns between several of the sections, to show the composer walking from picture to picture as if in a museum at an exhibition.

Islands

Once in a while I like to blog about my creative drama class.  This quarter I am working with a group of fifth graders.  Perhaps they would rather be somewhere else, probably gym, recess or lunch, but I have been impressed with their focus the last few classes, and their ability to listen and take direction.  They have improved greatly since the first day of class.

On Friday we played a creative drama game called "Islands".  This game creates and builds community if played correctly.  The rules are simple.  You take several sheets of newspaper and put them down on the floor.  The newspaper sheets should not touch, there should be room for students to walk around the floor between the newspaper sheets.  There should be one less than the number of students playing the game.  When you say go, students walk around the room, not touching the "islands", as if they are swimming in the ocean.  When you say, "Shark" students must find a sheet of newspaper to stand on to get away from the shark.  Each time students go onto the sheets of newspaper you take one more piece of newspaper off the floor, so students have to share more and more space with each other.  You keep playing until you can't fit any more kids onto the pieces that are left.

When I described the game, the students first reaction was to say, "how do you win this game?"  I told them it is not about winning and losing.  It is about creating community.  They wanted to change the rules of the game.  If you don't get onto a sheet of newspaper, you are out.  I said, it is not about kicking someone out of the group, it is about including everyone, any way you can.  I told them to just try it out.

It was incredible.  I played quiet music and then when I stopped it, they all jumped to the newspaper sheets.  The more sheets I took away, the more people had to fit on small sheets of newspaper.  That meant that people had to hold onto each other, and some people by the end were carrying each other so they could fit together on the newspaper squares.  They were saving each other, instead of kicking each other off, and jockeying for position.  I was impressed.  Once they got the idea of the game, they were very receptive to it.

We had a reflection discussion after the game, and everyone managed to enjoy themselves a great deal, despite the fact there were no losers, only winners and survivors.  Why were there survivors?  Thrivers in fact?  Because we all worked together to stay away from the shark.  Some students said they still enjoy competition, and I said there is nothing wrong with that, it is just a completely different experience if you are helping each other, rather than trying to push each other out of your opportunity.

 Let's build community instead of creating more opportunities to compete with each other.  I think there will always be enough of those.  I hope students in my creative drama classes learn from these experiences that they will always need to do their best if they want the group, or the family, or the business or the play to be a success.

Stand By Me assignment EXEMPLAR

My mother would have been 81 today.  She was my hero.  She was vivacious, funny, wry, had a big personality and could make all the heads turn her way upon entering a room.  She loved people, she loved life.  She was a chef in a restaurant called The Peasant Stock,  in Cambridge, Ma.  She experimented with using peanuts with chicken dishes, she made the best bouillabaise in all the world, and she often cooked in bare feet, always wearing her Marimekko dresses in bright colors.  She was never bored, and she was never still.  She began every day with coffee, the newspaper, Robert J. Lurtsema's morning music program, and the New York Times crossword puzzles.

She raised five children, all girls, I was the middle child.  If you were sick, she would put her large cool hand on your forehead, to tell your temperature.  She could detect it within two degrees.  She was no nonsense, however, so if you pretended to be sick to get out of going to school, she always knew.  She would make it completely undesirable for you to miss school, by paying absolutely no attention to you, and telling you to go to your room until you felt better.  She could be tough, but she was also full of compassion and empathy.  She knew what it felt like to be an outsider, to be different, to be creative.  If you felt really lonely sometimes she would make you toast, cut in long strips with melted butter and cinnamon sugar.   These toast strips were called "cinnamon soldiers."

  She was a writer, a poet; she framed all her rejection letters from The New Yorker and put them in our downstairs bathroom.  She wrote letters to famous people, like Elizabeth Taylor and Jorge Luis Borges and they wrote her back.  Those letters were framed in the bathroom as well.  She took writing classes when we were little, kept big spiral-bound notebooks full of poetry, ideas, stories.  I remember she loved going to writing camp in the summer at Sewanee.  She brought back many sweatshirts and t-shirts from those trips, of all sizes and shapes.  I have kept the tiny ones for my grandchildren.

I remember many important moments when my mother stood by me.  The time I remember most vividly was when I had gone to many auditions for a solo part in a choral piece in Boston.  I was really nervous for the first audition, but when I went back for the next two rounds, I remember becoming more and more confident in my singing and being really sure about how I was perfect for the part.  So- when I didn't get it, I was devastated.  I called my Mom, and she said, "Oh Sweetheart, I don't blame you for being upset.  You totally deserved that part.  I am sure it was completely political!"  That was my Mom- writer, poet, party-goer, movie-goer, champion to those whom she loved, rooting for us, even when we never knew it.