From Kindergarten through 4th grade, I attended Whittier Elementary, a public school in Toledo made up largely of lower middle class kids whose parents worked at the Jeep factory. Not exactly a population that would typically be jonesing for an operetta. But my school was lucky enough to have a Mr. Szor, a music teacher who saw something in my class that would have gone uncultivated in most other places. With the support of parents and extreme enthusiasm of the kids, we put on a play.
But not just any play.
We put on a 19th Century Gilbert and Sullivan musical called 'The Pirates of Penzance' with a cast made up entirely of Fourth Graders. Learned in large part by repeatedly watching a movie version of the show starring Kevin Kline, Angela Lansbury, and Linda Ronstadt we delivered every note of music and every bit of dialogue in script, disregarding the fact that we had absolutely no concept of what we were saying a large chunk of the time.
This production is what got me on a stage for the first time and the experience has helped to shape me as a person.
My role, you ask? I was the very model of a modern major general.
...and I rocked that shit.
lyrics from "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General" as filtered through Translation Party:
Today, a typical bottling plant, the problem of most animal models
(click here to see the transformation)
No comments:
Post a Comment