I’m looking for immediacy. In my estimation, this is what’s too often lacking. Immediacy stirs both the emotions and intellect and forges interconnectedness. I use ‘immediacy’ in a somewhat broad sense to mean that whatever we’re dealing with, it’s happening right now, unfiltered by time, physical distance and the myriad other filters we humans have created for ourselves. To a large extent, this is a hopeless cause. I’m not going to go to Des Moines to watch my Toyota being built. I’m not going to visit the clothing factories that produce my shirts, nor the mills that produce the fabric, nor the ink plants that produce the dye. Just unworkable. And just the same, I’m still looking for immediacy.
I have spent my career working in schools, and I can tell you that schools are among the worst offenders when it comes to stripping away immediacy. To know the world, be in the world. But I’m getting dangerously close to going off on a school rant, and that’s not my intent right now. Perhaps tomorrow.
I recall a musical theater performance I attended. I love musical theater, but this performance just didn’t rock my world. As I thought about the show on the drive home, I could easily point to some particular aspects of the show that I thought were lacking, and then my attention turned to the music. The music was great. Good songs, superb musical arrangements. Given the quality of the music, the music should have boosted my overall experience. But it didn’t, and I was at a loss to understand why. Then it occurred to me. As great as it was, the music was canned, which in the world of music performance means that it was a recording. And that was the problem–it was canned. Not live. No immediacy. None. Who were these musicians, anyway? I’m guessing that the music, if it was indeed performed by real musicians and not created by a fancy music software program, was recorded some years back, probably in Southern California in a music studio in Century City by studio musicians cranking out another recording. All in a day’s work. The filters of time and distance flattened that otherwise excellent music into something emotionally weak for me. The music failed to excited me whatsoever, frankly, and that made it all the more glaring in its overall contribution to my ennui.
This insight led to a startling but inevitable and exciting conclusion. I’m putting together a performance season for my own musical theater company. I’m going to put musical theater on the stages of Title I schools in the coming school year. If you’re unfamiliar, Title I is a federally-funded program that assists low socio-economic schools, the schools I have been working in twenty-five years. My goal is to create magic on stage, the sort that brings roars of laughter and spell-binding enchantment. Nothing less. And I realized on the drive home that what these Title I school kids need is a live band to go with their musical theater experience. A six-person band, specifically. Music is cheap in our times, ever-present, always turned on, jacked up, pumped out, always accessible, increasingly so, thanks to iTunes and the newcomer Spotify. And yet, what of live performance? Theater in particular deals in the here and now–this is a large part of its fascination for me. And if this is so, then why wouldn’t I also have live musicians to go with the live performers? It only makes sense, and will increase the excitement by a factor of a million or so. I’m estimating here. Kids will hear and see a real live trumpet player not just playing music, but being a part of show and conducting him or herself throughout in a professional manner. This is immediacy, this is a connection. This is how kids learn, and this is what society, and schools, too often don’t provide.
If you’re interested in supporting this insanely exciting project of putting musical theater with live musicians in Title I grade schools starting September, please contact me! Contact Kevin@KevinMuirProductions.com, visit JesterEducationalTheater.com, or leave a message on this post.
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