The Comedy, the Tragedy

Once I wrote an opera.

 

It was the mid 1990s, in California.  I was 16.  I was heavily involved in my high school theatre program – and the band – doubly talented, or doubly geekified, you be the judge.  I was a junior, and as part of an upper level drama course, my classmates and I had to do a collaborative creative project.  We decided to solicit the assistance of a local theatre group and write and perform an opera together.   We contacted the group, and after some back and forth negotiations, they agreed to work with us.

 

I was nervous walking into our first meeting.  Would we all get along?  Would we create something worth watching?  How was this going to go down?  My classmates and I steeled ourselves, did a quick GO TEAM football pat on the butt, and then strode in, heads held high.  We knew the importance of game face when dealing with the type of people we were about to meet.  You show weakness, and they will eat you alive.

 

Fourth graders are vicious.

 

Our first meeting went surprisingly well.  The kids could barely contain themselves, they were so excited, and the teachers stuck around to do all of the kid wrangling.  This is how I prefer my teaching experiences – I swan in and do the fun stuff, and let the teacher be the bad guy.  I had the piano skillz and the singing skillz to help write and act as voice coach, and I was also slated to be the accompanist for the performance.  My fellow actors would play the parts of trees, bushes, houses, and the like.  The kids would be the singing stars.

 

We left the subject of our opera up to the children, and after careful boy-girl negotiations, they were able to agree that Jack and the Beanstalk would be a suitable story, with enough parts for kids of both sexes.  We went through the story and selected the key elements, deserving of their own aria, and then broke up into groups of 6 or 7 kids + 1 high schooler and each wrote one.  We had tryouts, assigned roles to the kids, and then while I furiously wrote out my sheet music, the rest of the group pulled out the tempura paints and butcher paper and began to work on the set.

 

It was a couple of weeks of studious work and very creative production design.  We had to figure out how to represent a cow, a growing beanstalk, two major playing areas (Jack’s home below the clouds, and the giant’s above it), a goose, a harp, and a giant tumbling several thousand feet.  We also had to figure out how to deal with the giant – does he die (horrifying!), or does something funny happen to him?  In every case possible, we tried to guide the children into solving the problem, and in every case, they did it.  On top of having to design and create the costumes and set, they were rehearsing and memorizing their songs, blocking the action, and doing the rest of their regular schoolwork besides.

 

A few weeks after that first planning meeting, the elementary school auditorium was full of kids from the other grades, their teachers, the administrators, our kids’ parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and whathaveyou, and local journalists.  The curtains parted, and I vamped on the keyboard as our Jack led his cow dejectedly across the stage, singing an aria about being poor and hungry.

 

A half hour later, we high schoolers melted into the background as the fourth graders took their bows, all smiles and wild excitement.  They got a standing ovation.  The reporters asked all of us a few questions, and we had a lovely write up in the local paper.  Teachers, parents, administrators, everyone slapped us on the back and said what a fabulous job we had done, and what a wonderful learning tool the experience had been.  Their kids loved it, they said.  It was all they talked about.  Their confidence was boosted, they were choosing to do creative stuff after school instead of watching t.v., they were dying to do it again next year.  We got A plus plusses on our project, and they ended up doing the collaboration every year with the fourth grade class.

 

Until No Child Left Behind.

 

😉  Didn’t think I was going to go all political on ya, eh?

 

Oh, I didn’t think I was either.  I was just reminiscing about the old days, and it spurred me to head to the web and check out how my old High School was doing.  Not well, not well at all it would seem, at least in the arenas of music, art, and drama. Our marching band, formerly famous nationwide with dozens of National awards, formerly under the direction of a full time teacher who taught four sections of band and one of choir every day, formerly several hundred strong . . . well, it’s been reduced, shall we say.  They have gone through several teachers since I was there – my band director retired after a fantastic 30 year career that included taking the band to perform in Russia – – – Vietnam – – – Singapore – – – to China, while I was a student. His position has been filled several times over, as cuts and cuts and more cuts have decimated any reasonable high school band teacher’s will to live.  One person now teaches at the high school AND the middle school.  One band class for each.  No advanced band.  No jazz band.  No wind instrument or horn instrument specialization.  He is a part time teacher, probably with no benefits.   I wouldn’t venture to guess his pay, but it is likely not enough.  The marching band has been relegated to a lower competitive class, due to waning participation.  The once great LO High School marching band is now looking a little ragtag.

 

On top of this, the funding to the elementary school music program has been cut, and when 2 teachers in the district resigned due to budget cuts in their programs and to their salaries . . . the district didn’t even advertise one of the positions.  Our theatre department is faring somewhat better, since the Theatre professor is also capable of teaching English, and therefore of value.  They still have performances, and if the pictures are any judge they are still a strong group.  Still doing production design with a paltry budget, but at least they still seem to have two shows per year.  Although when I was a student, we did at least four.

 

As everyone knows, the implementation of NCLB has been heavy on the penalties, but the huge funds that were supposed to support it got funneled into something else – war, I presume.  As a sometime tutor, I have had just the teeniest bit of exposure to the NCLB requirements, and I find it to be similar to Communism.  Great on paper, but completely impractical in the real world.  A teacher with 36 second graders in her class, no helpers except parent volunteers, is supposed to sit down with each kid once a month and listen to him/her read for five minutes, taking complicated shorthand notes on every false start, mispronounced word (even if it’s self corrected,) word said haltingly, word said with an extra “s” on the end . . .  Then she had to use her notes to come up with a score using some sort of convoluted system, and then submit the score.  5 minutes per kid, and while she’s doing this the other 35 kids are – what?  Sitting quietly at their desks doing work?  Hahahahaha.  I have never heard of such a ridiculous, impossible system of measurement.  And this is just one little piece of the pie.  This legislation has led to a winnowing away of any non math and non reading courses – many kids now take double loads of each of those, and the science, social studies, and foreign languages have withered on the vine.  The first things to go, though, as always, were music and drama and art.  They done withered on that vine, dried up, dropped off, and been stomped into a powder.

 

It’s enough to make you want to be queen of the world.  Now I’m off to furiously research any info on McCain’s and Obama’s stance on music in education.  I predict that it will be #7 zillion on the list, an afterthought, if it’s even there at all.

 

I miss my youth.